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captaingondolin · 5 years

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Obikin and 5, 8, 11, 12?😊

I say I’m not taking fic prompts and then I end up giving ridiculously long answers to these questions because I have no self-control. Ops :)

5. When one of them has a bad day, what does the other do to help cheer them up?

Anakin cooks, his stew is Obi-Wan’s go-to comfort food, and sometimes he bakes too, he learned how to make pastries especially for him (is Obi-Wan’s sweet tooth canon or fanon? Either way, I love it, I’m keeping it forever safe in my heart because it’s too cute) – but I have already used this in a previous answer, so it doesn’t count.

Anakin takes Obi-Wan to meet their friends. Obi-Wan is more of an extrovert than him (Anakin likes people, but people sometimes are exhausting – and yes, there is that line in the RotS novel about how Obi-Wan would gladly sit alone in a cave to meditate, but I think it’s more about how much people expected of him all the time by then. He has friends in every system he ever visited, sentients all over the place like him way too much, even pirates and other scoundrels and he kinda likes them too), but sometimes he gets a bit too caught up in his own head and forgets that he is allowed to just need his people around for no reason. Dex’s hugs and his pies never fail to put a smile on Obi-Wan’s face. Or they hang out with Padmé and/or Bail and Anakin is just happy to hear them geek out on stuff he isn’t even that interested in, stars in his eyes, happy that his Obi-Wan is so smart and so beloved.

Obi-Wan takes Anakin on little trips to places they’ve never visited before and he makes Anakin drive/pilot (this works for canon verse or AUs). The boy has always wanted to visit every planet in the galaxy, and even if he knows that’s impossible now, he is always so excited to discover new places. Obi-Wan does the planning and learns about their destination and can tell Anakin interesting facts and keep him entertained. That and a change of scenery usually work to make him feel better. Or he fucks Anakin’s brain out. There’s a lot of edging and praises and the whole “fuck the noise out of Anakin’s head”.

8. In a coffee shop AU, who would be the coffee shop employee and who would be the customer?

Anakin is the coffee shop employee. He’s actually working two jobs, he takes some shifts as a mechanic too. He is saving up to buy a house for himself and his mother, and one day he dreams of going to college. Obi-Wan is a professor who teaches history or literature. He owns an honest-to-got tweed jacket with elbow patches and is clearly unsuited to life outside his library and his office. Anakin finds him terribly endearing from day 1 and doesn’t know how to deal with the feelings. Obi-Wan has never slept less, because he keeps going back to buy coffee multiple times a day. Satine has to smack him over the head to convince him to make a move.

Or, Anakin is an overworked TA and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka own a fancy hipster coffee shop where Anakin is sent multiple times a day by snotty tenured professor Dooku, who thinks TAs are his personal assistants. Obi-Wan makes all the baked goods they sell and Anakin pretends to like sweets for his sake for months. Padmé has to smack him over the head to convince him to make a move.

(I just love my clueless boys)

11. What would they do to celebrate their one year anniversary?

In canon I imagine Anakin having all their small milestones memorized. You can bet he knows the exact date of their first kiss, and of their first near-kiss, and of the day they talked feelings… Obi-Wan is horribly clueless. He cherishes having Anakin at his side every day, and he hasn’t ever had the occasion to think about anniversaries in his life before. He might not even be aware that’s a thing people actually care about. Maybe he thinks it’s some overused holodrama plot (because he secretly watches space soap operas when he can’t sleep late at night, and he is too tired to think or do anything else and every time he closes his eyes he can see all the men who died under his command and OH NO, now I made myself sad) that doesn’t actually happen in real life (and now I made myself sad again about my favourite space priests being clueless about what family units actually do). For their one year together Anakin arranges their ship to be diverted to Jedha or some other place with cool temples or pieces of Jedi history, and takes him around to visit. Obi-Wan is speechless, he can’t believe Anakin managed that in the middle of a war, he can’t believe he is worth that much effort.

In AU Obi-Wan plans a special holiday months in advance. An Obi-Wan that was never a Jedi is still usually reserved and not good at spontaneity, but he loves Anakin so much and he wants his boy to know. He is good at planning and he knows exactly what Anakin likes. He mixes fancy and funny – he hires go-karts for them so they can run around the tracks for a few hours, and then takes Anakin to a fancy hotel with a bathroom that seems right out of a porn and a wonderful bed. They have the best bathtub sex, then move to the bed and Obi-Wan shows Anakin just how special he is to him.

12. When did they know that loved each other, and when did they first tell each other that they loved one another?

Oooooh, favourite question. And the one that took me the longest to answer because I start daydreaming with literal hearts in my eyes every time I think too hard about these two having feelings, you know?

Do you watch/know Brooklyn 99? (spoiler? That episode was out months ago, but it’s the last season) Whether you do or not, there’s this moment when Jake looks at Amy, who is complaining that there is a typo in the daily crossword on the newspaper, and he knows deep down in his very soul that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. Even besides the fact that literally everyone I know agrees that Anakin is totally Jake and that Obi-Wan would find typos in crosswords, this was such a sweet, understated moment. I imagine for Anakin it goes a bit like that. Despite the rocky start, when he thought Obi-Wan didn’t want him, he has thought that his Master was the absolute coolest ever for a long time. Admiration slowly turns into a crush that turns into enduring love, and one day he sees Obi-Wan look at Ahsoka with this proud smile that he usually tries to hide. She’s training or something, and doesn’t see him, and Obi-Wan hasn’t noticed Anakin yet. And Anakin just knows.

For Obi-Wan is way more dramatic. And traumatic. He thought he had sworn off romantic love a long time ago. He thought he would notice himself getting inappropriately attached before it was too late. And speaking of inappropriate, Anakin used to be his Padawan! He is completely blindsided by the revelation, which comes on a mission, after he has lost sight of Anakin in some dangerous situation, and for a moment there is a pain in his chest – he almost can’t breathe, what if that was the last time he had seen Anakin? What if – but it can’t be! Because he loves him! And then he panics some more about this.

When they are reunited, he hugs Anakin. Anakin has initiated a lot of hugging, but this is a first. Obi-Wan realises his mistake and tries to play it cool, but after that Anakin starts taking notice of many small details that had escaped him before and convinces himself that maybe, just maybe, he has a chance. So he reveals his feelings to Obi-Wan. He picks a quiet time, goes to Obi-Wan’s room in the Temple and – it takes more courage than facing an entire battalion of clankers on his own, but it’s worth doing. He is only shaking a little.

Obi-Wan tries to deny it, tries to tell Anakin that he is confused, which pisses Anakin off. In the end they start fighting, recriminating about of past issues, but actually that’s good, because they clear up a lot of things they were still mad about and then in the heat of the fight they are just so frustrated with each other that they start kissing. Violent mid-fight kissing that ends with one of them with his back against a wall and – oh, yes. They don’t come out of the room for a full day.

#obikin #dearobiwan #otp questions #ask #my tag #gondolin talks

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foxofthedesert · 5 years

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Arrow FF | Dinah x Laurel | A Christmas Miracle

A Christmas Miracle, Part 1 - The Pursuit (Click to read on AO3)

Winter has arrived in earnest to Star City, a little late to the party but right on time for the main event. The holidays are right around the corner. Literally. Christmas Eve is already fading into history along with the setting sun.

After a benign autumn, meteorologists had predicted this season would be Northern California cold at worst, which is to say mild compared to the rest of the country with temperatures hovering between the high forties and fifties. Up til now, they'd been spot on with their forecasts. Unfortunately their crystal balls ran out of juice yesterday while today a never ending assembly line of huge gray clouds rolls is currently lazily by, announcing more of the same dreary, wintry weather. If Dinah didn't know better, she'd think it was about to snow. In Coastal California.

Teeth chattering, she tugs her coat tighter around her shoulders to ward off the chill of an uncommonly cold afternoon. This is exactly the kind of shitty weather she thought she left behind when Central City was firmly in her rear view mirror. California was supposed to be sunny and warm, or so said the movies. Well, from where Dinah stands they were lying because she is a bundled up in several layers, a thick coat and scarf atop a sweater and tee with mittens on her hands and woolly socks on her feet, just like she always used to in Missouri.

Dammit. And I just had to wear jeans. Oh well, at least my boots are keeping my toes from freezing.

Cursing the weather and her own foolish choice to be out it in when she doesn't have to be, Dinah curls her shoulders in, stuffs her hands into her coat pockets, and soldiers on. She is on mission right now and has no time to feel sorry for herself.

The sidewalks of the Triangle are bustling with activity in spite of the cold and the waxing evening hour. Shoppers flitting about care little for the rules of polite etiquette in their single-minded pursuit of last minute gifts for their friends and loved ones. Others are meandering aimlessly about, stopping every now and then to gawk at the intrepid shops that bothered to put up decorations or lights or both. Others still have their heads down like Dinah, trying to blend in with the crowd and filter through on their way home or to their jobs. That Dinah's motive for laying low is far less innocuous is beside the point.

Earlier this afternoon she got a surprise call from the District Attorney's office informing her of a prosecutorial change for a current case. Not just any current case, either, but one involving a corrupt, insanely powerful chemical manufacturer based in Gotham which had spread its disease into Star City while the government was occupied preventing one disaster after another. For the better part of a month, Dinah has been grinding through evidence and conducting interview after interview with the one and only Laurel Lance. Since the beginning Laurel has been her partner in overseeing the Ace Chemical case and they were really just hitting their stride on it when the rug got pulled out from underneath her feet. Finally after months of tedious police work and highly stressful court appearances, the CEO and a bevy of her criminally corrupt lapdogs all guilty as sin of dumping toxic waste in the Triangle right on the outskirts of a school zone were fixing to go to jail. Dinah had thought Laurel would want to see it through seeing as she put as many grueling hours in than Dinah has, if not more, ensuring all the I's were dotted and ever T was crossed. With one call from A.D.A Martinez, Dinah was dispelled of that notion and it caught her completely off guard.

The case being pawned off to the longest tenured A.D.A. would not have sat so wrong with Dinah if it hadn't seemed to be as intensely personal to Laurel as it is to her. Normally Laurel Lance acted the prototype of a picture perfect D.A.: a bulldog who is always in control in the courtroom, professional to a fault in the office, and able to politic with the best of them. This case was different, though, even more so than when Laurel went to bat for Oliver while he was still stuck in Slabside. She was burning the midnight oil like never before and spent more hours with Dinah at SCPD going over investigative and arrest reports over and over again until they both had just about memorized them to the letter. Also Laurel's intensity levels were constantly through the roof, and that was saying something considering she is, in every avenue of her life, perpetually cut throat and high strung. Laurel often chastises her staff for no good reason, such as failure to include one minor detail in a relatively inconsequential report due for filing, which is par for the course for a hothead with a combative streak as wide as the Space Needle is tall. But she never did so publicly until working this case. Only last week when one of her paralegals forgot to pass on an innocuous enough message from a DAI, she berated him in front of half the office so badly the poor kid burst into tears, so traumatized that he fled work early and missed the entire next day as well. Once the outrage ebbed, Laurel actually confessed to Dinah that she felt intense guilt over her treatment of that employee.

Laurel Lance. Formerly of Black Siren notoriety. Felt guilty for hurting an underling's feelings. That alone told Dinah how important this case was to Laurel. That she went on to say that this was the first case she'd worked on since assuming Earth-Prime Laurel's life that she categorically refused to lose. Once she went on a bender working on the case, refusing any and all attempts by her employees to get her to go home. Finally after thirty-six hours they called in the cavalry.

"All those people that soulless, greedy bitch made sick deserve justice," Laurel had told Dinah upon being confronted about her obsessive, incredibly unhealthy behavior. "And I'm gonna get it for them. If that means I don't sleep until I get a guilty verdict, then so be it."

If Dinah hadn't put her foot down, she's pretty sure Laurel would have made good on that promise. As it was, she had to all but drag Laurel out of the Court House into the parking garage and then deposit the District Attorney in her shiny new Lexus with perhaps a little less gentleness than was called for.

The point of all this is that Dinah is worried – a lot – about Laurel shrugging off a responsibility she has been obsessing about so religiously over the past two months. Worried that something is wrong or worse, that Laurel has at last fallen off the reformation wagon. Dinah sort of hates herself for jumping to such a cynical conclusion, but there it is. Sometimes those old feelings of bitter acrimony crop up and taint the progress she has made with her former enemy.

Enemy. There's a word Dinah hasn't associated with Laurel in almost two years. Since they teamed up with Felicity to free Oliver from Slabside, she and Laurel have made such significant strides that she would consider Laurel her closest female friend. Which is still sort of shocking when she actually sits down and thinks about where they came from to arrive at what she would categorize as as intimate a friendship as she is capable of forming. No one could have predicted the turn their relationship would take thanks to Felicity's meddling, least of all Dinah, who had once believed the aptly utilized designation of frenemies would be the best she could ever attain with the woman who killed the man she loved. Yet here she is, wading through a sea of people on the streets in ass-clenching cold just to make sure Laurel is alright when she could be at home bundled up on the couch in her favorite blanket sipping on hot cocoa. And it's Christmas Eve for Christ's sake! That alone speaks volumes about how much she actually cares for Laurel.

What's even more amazing is that there is not a shred of doubt in her heart of mind that Laurel feels the same for her. Of course, there is some cause to call that into question, or at least to redefine what care means from Laurel's end. Of late, Dinah has been getting these weird vibes from Laurel, who has started looking at her and even treating her differently than she used to before they tackled this case together. Ordinarily that would be a bothersome development. Except the change is not in a negative direction. If anything, Laurel has been noticeably more attentive and considerate, which when combined with those vibes produce strange feelings and urges in Dinah she has yet to figure out the meaning behind. And that's not to mention what she is supposed to do about this sudden spike of awkward, nervous, excited energy that buzzes between them whenever they are in the same room together. There is a word for it, she is sure, though right now she is not prepared to break out her dictionary so that she can officially print the term on a label to slap upon the deeply complicated relationship she shares with Laurel Lance.

That said, not yet being ready to face what her subconscious has been screaming at her is going on but her conscious has been deliberately and stubbornly annoying does not preclude Dinah from springing into action whenever Laurel starts acting wonky. Such as today when she dropped a case they were both so passionate about for no reason this morning and then inexplicably cut out of work after lunch without so much as an explanation to her immediate subordinate beyond a clipped response, "Worry less about what I'm doing with my afternoon and more about closing this case. Your future here depends on it."

Since getting the call from A.D.A. Martinez, Dinah has been unable to shake a feeling in her gut that something is going on. Something she should be concerned about. So she did what she does best. Pulled rank at the precinct and decided to indulge her nosy side. Leaning upon all she has learned as a vigilante and as a cop, she stalked Laurel on the traffic cams to the street she is currently plodding down, having covered six blocks already, only to lose sight of her at the intersection of Weisinger and Papp. There is only one significant place of interest Dinah can think of at that location, and she cannot for the life of her figure out what Laurel would be doing there. Her gut feeling tells her to follow through, though, so she complies without further complaint other than some more grumbling about the weather.

Upon rounding the corner, Dinah spots the homeless shelter, the city's second largest, and trudges down the sidewalk towards the entrance. Foot traffic here has dwindled down to a negligible amount. Only the inhabitants of the shelter and what few individuals are willing to brave being seen among such a lowly, somewhat dangerous element. Such as Laurel. For whatever reason…

Once perpendicular from the shelter, Dinah quickly cuts across the street when the street traffic gives her a pause. She gives no thought to the fact she, a police captain, has just blatantly broken the law. Jaywalking isn't the first misdemeanor she's committed today and probably won't be the last. Now on the correct side of the street, she picks around the exterior of the shelter until she finds a bedraggled older man perched on a cinder block just inside the alleyway on the east side of the building. Prepared for just this opportunity, she pulls out her badge and then the stock photo of Laurel she'd snatched off her desk.

"Calm down," she says to the startled man warily eyeing her badge – former military judging by his close cropped hair, rigid posture, and army surplus jacket. "I'm not here to arrest you. Or anyone else. What's your name?"

He exhales, fiddling with an exotic, expensive looking watch on his wrist that seems off beyond it being worn by someone without means to purchase it. A second later he offers her a shaky nod, then responds, "Name's Marv."

"Nice to meet you, Marv. I'm Dinah." Dinah's eyes are again drawn to the strange watch, only to have it quickly hidden under a well worn jacket sleeve. For a split second she considers pressing about how a homeless vet came by such an extravagant piece of a bling, only to change her mind in favor of an expedient end to her mission to find out what the hell Laurel is doing here. Now that proper introductions are made, she doesn't feel bad about thrusting the photo of Laurel in his face. "Have you, by chance, seen this woman this afternoon?"

"Yep. That's Dinah. Been here every day this week. First time before eight, though."

Brows searching for her hairline, Dinah almost comments on the name Laurel gave out before she remembers that it actually is Laurel's name. Dinah Laurel Lance. Whose mother's maiden name was Dinah Drake. The synchronicity of those facts alone are enough to keep Dinah awake at night. When factoring in all that conspired to throw them into a collision course trajectory, which they somehow survived only to be caught up in a mutual orbit, she can't help but feel there is some unknown force at work. Call it fate, kismet, destiny or any other whimsical designation, something out there clearly wants her and Laurel close to each other, and Dinah isn't sure how she feels about that. Well, that's a lie. She knows how she feels, just doesn't want to admit it – even to herself.

"What's she doing coming here every night?" she asks around the lump in her throat that often forms when thinking about Laurel. When the man she's questioning shoots her a dryly outraged glare, she quickly amends herself. "Not that I'm judging. Just curious."

Marv accepts her apology with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "No sweat. I was a little skeptical too when she started comin' to help the staff and residents – ya know, pitchin' in where she can. Cookin' and cleanin' and all that domestic shit. Done some electrical repair work that needed doin'. Good at it, too. Also did most of the decorating for Christmas. Real talented gal."

Dinah's eyebrows shoot up into her hair line. Laurel Lance cooking and cleaning and fixing stuff and...decorating for Christmas? She fights the urge to pinch herself to make sure she isn't dreaming.

Marv laughs at her expression. "Don't blame ya lookin' that way. When she pulled up in that fancy car and came stridin' through the doors in that expensive suit, I figured she was some politician out for a photo op or somethin'. Only never was no cameras or reporters around and she outworked everybody the four hours she was here. And the next time she showed up, she dressed down for the occasion. To fit in better, ya know? Worn out tee, ripped jeans, nose ring, hair braided up nice and tight. Got down in the trenches without a single complaint. Nothin' like the high class bitch that strutted her fancy ass into a world she don't belong in. Nah. Figured out right quick she belonged alright. Just hides it real good out there." He indicates toward the wider world by a tip of the chin. "Good heart in that one, too. She don't know I know, but she's helped more'n a few us land jobs that start up after the Holidays. Like Jordie and Lew. I, uh, I'm one of 'em, too. Asked the guy who hired me why he did it. Wouldn't say anything except a pretty lady who has a way with words convinced him to give me a chance, that he wouldn't regret it. I knew who it was just like that." He snaps his fingers to accentuate the point.

Dinah hardly knows what to say to what she's heard. Never has she been given a less Laurel-like description, and yet she can sense beyond all doubt that she is being told the truth. The paradox being presented to her is confusing as all hell, and it only incites her curiosity into irresistible fascination. Another layer of the Laurel onion is being peeled away right before her very eyes and she is a captive audience spellbound at the unraveling.

"Wow. Uh...I have to say that surprises me," she says after a brief moment of speechlessness. "That doesn't sound like the Lau -" she stops herself short of giving out Laurel's name out of respect for her privacy, "Dinah I know."

"Guess that means you don't know her like you thought," Marv says, eyeing her wryly. "You showed up looking for her, though, which means she's awful important to you. What're you her girl or somethin'?"

"No!"

The denial comes a little too quickly and too defensively and too disingenuous underneath the abrasiveness for Dinah's liking. Her poor reaction only serves as an additional reminder that she is all too aware of her feelings for Laurel and is in that stage where she just can't accept them. Their ugly past is the main obstacle, and that should be enough, right? There is enough baggage between them to fill up the terminal in the O'Hare Airport claim center.

And then there is the fact that Dinah is pretty sure Laurel is straight. She has caught Laurel checking a few ladies out here and there, but chalked those smoldering glances up to either zealous admiration or incendiary envy. Most of the ogling Dinah has caught Laurel doing has been directed toward one particularly unavailable man who just so happens to be married to her closest friend on this earth and who treats her like shit most of the time – the latter of which seems aligned with Laurel's history of being attracted to men who treat her like shit, which is another subject Dinah would rather not dwell on to keep her blood pressure in check. Not that Dinah can use any of this evidence as definitive proof that Laurel is, in fact, straight seeing as the same could be said of her.

In so far as her friends-slash-teammates know, she has only dated men when that is not quite the truth. In college she had several experimental hook ups with hot coeds from other sororities, one of whom was a steady girlfriend for nearly a year whose name was Lynne. It was Lynne who helped Dinah sort through the mess of her emerging identity to figure out she was actually bisexual and not simply going through a phase. Since then she has primarily dated men since that is her preference, but she has slept with a few women in between boyfriends, the most recent a one night stand in Hub City right before Oliver Queen interrupted her misguided quest for vengeance. That said, Laurel has been the first she's thought of the way she did Lynne, and even then the comparison is lacking. What she feels for Laurel rivals how she felt about Vince when he stopped being her undercover partner and became her lover. And that frightens Dinah so badly that every time the thought crosses her mind she panics and quickly stuffs down all of those complicated feelings Laurel provokes.

Sucking in a breath through her teeth, she lets it out slowly to compose herself before giving a more rational response. "I mean...I know her, yes. We work together. We're also friends. Of a sort. I just..." she trails off into a sigh. "Look, it's complicated. And not that it's any of your business but I was worried about her. She took off from work early, which she never does, and then abandoned a case really important us both. Seeing as she has a penchant for self-destruction, here I am."

After a contemplative hum, Marv nods to himself. "So she is some sort of bigwig politician."

"How do you figure that?"

Marv chuckles drolly. "Ain't hard to figure out. To be workin' with a police captain – got that from your badge by the way – she has to either be a cop or someone real important. And she ain't no cop. Heard her let loose some salty language about some of y'all. Don't leave much else possible. Lawyer, I'm guessin'. No, wait." He snaps his fingers again, eyes alighting. "Now I know why I though she looked so damn familiar. She's the D.A. ain't she? What's her name? Laura? Laurel! That's it. Laurel Lance. Well. I'll be damned."

The expression of utter amazement upon Marv's face is mirrored in Dinah's. "You and me both buddy," she says, taking a pause to process all she's learned. That Laurel has been volunteering at a homeless shelter for the past two weeks. That while still her sassy self, the Laurel that threaded in so seamlessly into the upper echelons of Star City society just as fluidly accommodated to the acclaim-repellent, elbow-grease-required strata of the most humble of the most humble that the mass production and low human value culture of America can produce. Laurel has also made another and even more drastic transformation in shedding the cold, calculating, vicious skin of Black Siren only to casually adopt the fully functional, productive citizen persona of the woman so beloved by so many a statue was built in her honor as if it were no big deal at all. All taken together, her series of adaptations is in Dinah's estimation an accomplishment of which few aside from the most elite social chameleons can boast.

All of that begs the question: who is the real Laurel Lance? And that is a question to which Dinah has no answer except to say she is dying to find out. Laurel is a jigsaw puzzle with a million jumbled up, radically disparate pieces spilled out before her as if to taunt that part of her brain that craves a challenge. Solving the unsolvable was one of many reasons she decided to become a cop after serving her enlistment in the Marine Corps, and there aren't many she's encountered that have her more vexed – and more invested – than Laurel.

As much as she would love to say that was the only reason she's out here in the tit-freezing cold talking to a complete stranger, her heart is not absent of engagement in the mystery of Laurel, either. Something about Laurel has tugged at Dinah's heartstrings for a long time now, since far earlier than their detente to aid Felicity's quest to exact vengeance upon the Dragon and the subsequent cooperation to free Oliver from prison. Maybe it was watching a shell-shocked daughter silently grieve when Quentin died while maintaining a facade of strength in support of a sister she didn't even know. Or maybe it was watching her, with Quentin's devoted fatherly guidance, slowly but surely step out of the inky blackness she inhabited out into the light of a nascent dawn and prove one day, one act, one speech at a time that there really was a fleshly, beating heart in her chest capable of great warmth that courses with red blood that bleeds like every one else upon the infliction of a wound. Or maybe, just maybe, it was getting to know the woman behind the innumerable masks and finding her to be as infinitely interesting, and surprisingly funny and charming on top of that, as the projections she offers up to the world to protect a heart that is far more fragile than she could ever bear to admit. Whatever the cause, there is no denying that Laurel has – probably without even trying – slipped past Dinah's own inner defenses and taken up residence in a place precious few have ever occupied.

"So, is she still here?" Dinah asks after deciding she best not think too much longer about this lest she become unnerved and tuck tail to run for the hills. Which is distinct possibility as scary as these unfurling feelings for Laurel are.

As if ignorant of her internal turmoil, Marv nods sharply, then indicates back toward the building with his head. "Yep. You'll find her inside. In the kitchen probably. Or out serving. Dinner ran over 'cause she got here a little late. All she did, wasn't right to start without her. Worth the wait though. Prime eatin' in there."

"Glad to hear it." Dinah means that in more than one way, though she declines commenting along those lines out of curiosity as to why Marv here is out in the cold with her instead inside and warm tucking into some dessert or something. "By the way, why aren't you inside? Gotta be better than freezing your ass off out here, especially if the food is as good as you said it was."

In response, Marv grins as he gives his belly a satisfied rub. "Already been through the line. I'm stuffed, and it can get loud in there, so I came out for some peace and quiet. Besides, it's a nice evenin'. I'm from New York, ya know. This cold reminds me of home."

"Missouri here by way of St. Louis." Select few outside of Team Arrow know that about Dinah, and that prompts her to wonder why she feels so comfortable sharing it with a total stranger. There is just something about Marv that she can't quite put her finger on. Something familiar. Hmm. "Gotta say, I don't miss the winters down there and they're a far cry from what y'all get in New York," she then adds as she studies the older gentlemen, noting his features remind her a bit of her grandfather, which satisfies that pique of curiosity for the time being.

"Yeah," says Marv, one corner of his lips quirking up just like Laurel's do – a ridiculous comparison that comes out of left field and is swiftly dismissed by Dinah. "But it ain't Christmas less it's cold, you've been fed like a prince, and you're with family. Guess two outta three ain't too bad for a washed up old vet."

Dinah's heart goes out to Marv. She knows the loneliness of having no roots left to speak of worth contacting this time of year. An only child of two only children, her mother's death the year she enlisted signaled the end of any familial obligations. So she cut clean after her discharge, moved to Central and never looked back. Thankfully she has since discovered a new family in Star City, one she did not inherit but chose of her own volition. Also known as the best kind of family.

"Not bad at all. I don't have any family left either. Gotta take what you can get around the holidays, right? Also, you're not all washed up. You figured my rank out with a single glance at my shield."

"My eyes still work. It's the rest of me that don't. And no offense, Cap, but that question you asked me earlier can apply to you, too. What the hell're you doin' standin' out here in the cold yappin' with an old geezer like me? Didn't you come here for a reason?"

Brow raised at his cheek, Dinah nonetheless shifts nervously from side to side. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did. Just..."

"Not what you expected to find, eh?" Marv interjects, rich green eyes twinkling in amusement. "Looks like your girl's got some surprises up her thousand buck sleeves."

"That she does. And I told you, she's not my girl."

Marv chuckles amiably at the denial that rings hollow to them both despite it being the truth. Laurel may not be her girl, but Dinah is increasingly becoming aware of the fact that she wants her to be.

"Yea, sure," he says. "Keep tellin' yourself that, Cap, maybe some day you'll convince yourself." Abruptly he shifts on his cinder block throne, clears his throat, and just like that Dinah knows the conversation is about to be over. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to enjoy a few minutes of that peace and quiet I came out here to get before I go back in and rejoin the rabble."

Dinah holds her hands up in surrender, recognizing the dismissal not as a suggestion but as the command that it is. "Alright. Message received." Unwilling to depart just yet for the fondness for this man she has so swiftly developed, she hesitates for a second as her analytic brain sifts through various potential scenarios in which they might meet again. For a variety of reason, not the least of which is statistical probability, most of them aren't good. "Listen," she says after the silence stretches out too long, causing Marv to arch a brow impatiently. "Stay out of trouble, you hear? I don't wanna see you in my station for any reason. Got it?"

Her reply is a mock salute and an equally sardonic, "Sure, boss. No need to worry, though. I don't got any plans to get locked up until at least the New Year. But I'll be sure to target your precinct if I change my mind just for the repeat pleasure of your company."

Recognizing the joke at her expense, Dinah rolls her eyes and quips, "In that case I'll keep the cell warm I reserve for unrepentant smart asses," before swirling to beat a hasty retreat. Back at the alley entry, she veers in the wrong direction only to be course corrected by Marv's consequent shout of, "Hey, Cap? That's the wrong way to the door, ya know." Dinah does know. She was just too damn nervous and uncertain all of a sudden to go through with confronting Laurel about her unexpected injection of the Christmas Spirit. Apparently being called out for her cowardice by a down-on-his-luck vet is the cure for that malady. Straightening her shoulders, she nods her appreciation at a man who in such a small span of time made such a large impression upon her.

"My bad," she calls back. "Thanks!"

She can see Marv's cheesy, smug grin even in the low light afforded by the street lamps and the single outside fixture attached to the outer wall of the shelter. And she certainly has no problem hearing his reply.

"You're welcome! Now, stop lyin' to yourself, march inside there and do what you gotta do to get your girl and make this a Christmas to remember."

To her astonishment and a degree of elation she has not experience since she in High School, Dinah does not bother to correct him this time. In light of all the revelations she experienced tonight about herself and Laurel, along with Marv's timely encouragement just now, clarity descends upon her with an intensity that cannot be denied. For far too long she has been too terrified – albeit for oh-so-many very good reasons – to directly confront the undeniable reality that she is falling in love with Laurel. And instead of inciting a panic that will derail the astounding progress she has made in the process of a single conversation with a man with whom she has only just become acquainted, instead of making her want to run away as fast as her legs will carry her, it does the exact opposite.

Against all rational explanation, and wildly contrary to how she felt on seconds ago, all Dinah wants to do right now is run straight to Laurel. So that's precisely what she does.

#dctv #fanfic #arrow fanfic #arrow #dinah drake #laurel lance #dinah x laurel #laurel x dinah #aka Dinahmite!#or:#dinahsiren #christmas #i may or may not throw together cover art for this #probably not tho cause I'd have to hurry and I am not good with manips #see my post history for proof

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anyroads · 3 years

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My mom: cancel culture is out of control! The head curator of SFMOMA got fired, just for saying that he would still buy art from white men!

Me (literally, my petty ass sent all this to her in an email): He wasn’t fired, he resigned. Anyway, I pulled together a bunch of quotes from reliable news outlets who published stories on the subject HOLD MY BEER:

"Gary Garrels, the museum’s longest-tenured curator, was asked about comments attributed to him in a @changethemuseum Instagram post in June. The post recounted that when Mr. Garrels had earlier spoken about “acquisitions by POC artists,” he had added, “Don’t worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists.” ... When a staff member suggested that Mr. Garrels’s comment was equivalent to saying, “All lives matter,” Mr. Garrels responded: “I’m sorry, I don’t agree. I think reverse discrimination — —”What he said after that was drowned out by gasps and someone saying, “He didn’t say that!” —

New York Times

("Racism and prejudice aren't quite the same thing. Racism, rather, is best known as a system in which a racial majority is able to enforce its power and privilege over another race through political, economic and institutional means. Therefore racism can be described as "prejudice plus power," as the two work together to create the system of inequality.” — Philip Lewis, Mic.com "There has never, ever, ever been a national set of laws or system put in place to systematically oppress white people or push them to a status that is "less than.” Not once. Ever. So "reverse racism" can truly never exist.” — Elite Daily)

"Used by opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the expression [reverse discrimination], said Justin Gomer, assistant professor of American studies at California State University at Long Beach, “has been one of the most effective ways to undercut efforts to achieve racial equality.” He said, “It was popularized in the 1970s by civil rights opponents."

Leigh Raiford, associate professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, called the term “the hollow cry of the privileged when they find themselves challenged to share power.”

And even some of Mr. Garrels’s defenders are surprised he used it.

Kevin Beasley, a Black artist who views Mr. Garrels as a supporter, and credits him with collecting his work for the museum, said that when he heard Mr. Garrels’s comment he “was shocked,” and wondered, “Is this Gary? It didn’t make sense.” …

But others say Mr. Garrels did not just momentarily misspeak. Many staff members say they recalled remarks he made during a panel discussion about female artists in January in which he spoke about “parity” for women and that it would take time — and added: “The other thing I have to say is I reassured artists we will continue to collect white men. There are a lot of great women artists but also still a lot of great men out there as well.”

Aruna D’Souza, the author of “Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts,” said in an interview that Mr. Garrels’s remark “wasn’t just a slip of the tongue.”

His message, she said, was: “‘Don’t worry, we can keep collecting men, too. Things aren’t going to change that much.’"

“Gary Garrels’s comment,” she continued, “was upsetting because he was making it explicit, whiteness will still be at the center of the institution.”

...

After the Zoom meeting, an anonymous group of former museum employees calling themselves xSFMOMA started a petition that drew several hundred supporters and called out Mr. Garrels for using “white supremacist and racist language.” The petition demanded he resign. — New York Times

""As Senior Curator, he represents the museum in tone and content. Through actions and words, Gary has been obtuse (at best) to the point of offense or deliberately racist (at worst) in his retorts to criticism," the petition says. "Amongst SFMOMA staff as well as in public view, Gary has used and continued to use white supremacist and racist language such as 'reverse racism.'"

The petition further describes Garrels as "ill-equipped to further SFMOMA's agenda of inclusion and equity," calling his removal from SFMOMA "non-negotiable." As of the time of this article's publication, the petition had 280 signatures.” — Newsweek

Then the museum’s store employees sent an email to the executive staff denouncing Mr. Garrels’s comments as racist. “We are not asking for an apology we’re asking for action and accountability,” the letter said.

The next day, Mr. Garrels lost some essential support when an unsigned email to staff from “Members of the Curatorial Division” was sent, saying they “collectively” disavowed Mr. Garrels’s reverse discrimination comments. They added, “We will no longer accept such racism denial; unilateral power over systems, money and colleagues; and comments, made publicly and internally, that are offensive and reckless.”

It demanded “actions and accountability for Gary’s conduct.” — New York Times

"Garrels’s resignation was accepted by both the museum’s director, Neal Benezra, and its board of trustees. A spokesperson was unable to comment on whether leadership requested his resignation or if Garrels had been the subject of any formal complaints prior to the staff meeting.

The curator’s resignation comes at an extremely tumultuous moment for the museum. Since the shutdown, it has laid off or reduced the hours of more than 30 percent of its staff. But it has also been the subject of aggressive criticism regarding its treatment of employees, particularly those of color, and its handling of issues of race and equity.

Garrels is the fourth employee to leave the museum this month in the midst of this internal turmoil. Nan Keeton, deputy director for external relations, left the museum on July 2 by mutual agreement after she was involved in the widely reported censorship of a critical comment on Instagram from a former employee, Taylor Brandon, about SFMOMA’s treatment of Black staff members. The museum’s recruitment staffing manager and its director of HR have also resigned.

Garells recently became the target of criticism after it emerged that he (as well as the museum’s director) had received no-interest home loans from the museum, which some saw as emblematic of its unequal treatment of employees. (Garells’s loan was worth $500,000.)” — artnet

One museum employee of color who asked to not be named because of fears of losing a job said it felt like time for Mr. Garrels to leave.

“We were trying to make all these changes,” the employee said. “He was an obstacle to that. We were working so hard for so long and for him to make these statements, it was so disheartening.”

Mr. Garrels’s departure was part of an ongoing debate about racial equality in the staffing and the collecting at the museum, which draws close to one million visitors annually. The staff, which numbered nearly 500 before a coronavirus closure and layoffs, was 59 percent white, 16 percent Latino, 12 percent Asian and 4 percent Black (the remaining staffers identified with two or more races), a spokeswoman said.

Maria Jenson, executive director of SOMArts, a San Francisco organization that supports art for social change, and a former SFMOMA public partnerships manager, said the resignation was a “reflection of much larger issues.”

“The same types of people keep getting hired for key leadership roles — namely people who are white and privileged,” she said. “Meetings feel like a social club.”

Last year, the museum staff went through racial equity training. But incidents still occurred. At the height of Black Lives Matter protests, SFMOMA had blocked from view a critical comment by a Black former museum employee, Taylor Brandon, who called museum officials “profiteers of racism.”

...No Neutral Alliance, a coalition of artists of color, was participating in the museum’s online exhibitions, but because of the way Ms. Brandon was treated, some of the artists are now boycotting the museum.” —New York Times

#I did not come to play #no he did not get cancelled for saying he would continue to buy work from white men #there were clearly deep rooted issues #and his reverse racism comment was the last #not the first straw

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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12 Things You Should Know About Genesee Brewery

Walk into a bar anywhere in the Northeast and ask for “Jenny,” and you’ll likely get a pint from New York State’s oldest brewery. Since 1878, The Genesee Brewery has brewed the same flagship Genesee Beer — also known as “Genny” beer — at its Rochester brewery. Along with this traditional American pale lager, the brewery is perhaps best known today for its Genesee Cream Ale, which set the standard for an original American beer style.

But Genesee has seen a lot of changes over the last 142 years, from Prohibition to the rise of craft brewing. Now part of FIFCO USA, the eighth-largest beer company in the United States, Genesee is keeping things fresh with trendy collaborations and dry-hopped variations of its classic beers.

Think you know Genny? Read on for 12 more things you should know about this classic American brand.

Genesee Cream Ale rises to the top.

Genesee Cream Ale, also known as Genny Cream Ale, maintains a bit of a cult status with beer drinkers. It’s hard to imagine a time when Genny Cream Ale wasn’t an option at your local watering hole. But the beer wasn’t actually introduced to the Genesee lineup until 1960, making it 82 years younger than the original Genesee Beer.

Looking for an alternative to the standard pilsner, then-Brewmaster Clarence Geminn turned to a classic American style. He developed a unique recipe (one that remains a secret but that Genesee has faithfully stuck to it) to craft the beer, brewed with ale yeast but fermented at lager temperatures. The result endures as the standard for all cream ales to this day. In the years since it first debuted, it’s taken home two gold medals from the Great American Beer Festival.

Who’s Jenny/Genny?

The brewery’s nickname, “Jenny” or “Genny,” has likely been around for decades but its 1952 ad campaign solidified it for everyone not already in the know. According to Genesee records, the original ad featured model and actress Daphne Dore (though some still question the identity of the first “Jenny”) balancing a pint of Genesee beer on a tray. A tagline invited customers to “ask for Jenny.”

The campaign succeeded and grew to become the brewery’s most successful ad to date. Over the years, several women stood in as “Jenny” to walk in parades or appear at events. While the last “Jenny” ad ran in 1962, the image of “Miss Jenny” still appears on brewery merchandise and patrons continue to ask for “Jenny” as they pull up a chair at the bar.

Genesee’s equipment draws crowds.

The original location in Rochester underwent a $50 million revamp in 2017. Construction lasted for nearly three years. The most exciting part of the project happened when Genesee’s 12 brand new fermentation tanks floated along the Erie Canal from Albany to Rochester, passing through the 35 locks that raised or lowered watercrafts as they flowed on through. Curious fans came to watch the tanks on their journey until they reached the brewery.

Turn left at the giant Genesee Beer sign.

In the early 1950s, Genesee gifted the people of Auburn, N.Y., with an iconic (and hard to miss) landmark. A 26-foot-high, 48-foot-wide Genesee Beer sign took its place atop a six-story building and lit up the sky every night until the 1970s when it shut off for nearly 40 years. In 2011, the brewery teamed up with local businesses to refurbish the sign with over 9,120 LED lights and relight it with a big festival in town.

Cream work makes the Dream work.

After fellow New Yorkers Other Half Brewing from Brooklyn launched a satellite location in Bloomfield, just a half an hour drive from Rochester, local journalist Will Cleveland had an idea: Other Half should brew a beer with its new neighbor, Genesee. Both breweries agreed, and got to brewing. Genesee brewmaster Dean Jones and Other Half’s Sam Richardson merged Cream Ale with elements of the Brooklyn-based brewery’s Dream and Daydream series. The collaboration resulted in Genny Dream Ale, an oat cream ale with lactose and a dose of Citra hops. The smooth, creamy beer came with a hoppy bite.

The Tri-State collaborations didn’t stop at Other Half: Genesee most recently concocted Hop State of Mind Cream Ale with Queens-based Big aLICe Brewing using hops from Chimney Bluffs Hoppery in Wolcott, N.Y. The beer blends Genesee’s classic Cream Ale with New York State artisan hops for another smooth brew that features a burst of hoppy flavor.

The original brewery bowled a strike.

Beer was a booming business in Rochester long before Genesee showed up. In 1857, one of the many breweries landing in the city, Reisky & Sky, opened its own saloon and bowling alley. This was the location that local entrepreneur Mathius Kondolf purchased and renamed Genesee Brewing in 1878.

While the bowling alley is long gone, the current Genesee Brew House still occupies buildings from the original Reisky & Sky brewery campus. In 2012, the newly refurbished location welcomed guests with lots of exhibits to show off the brewery’s past.

Its longtime brewmaster was born into brewing. Literally.

The Wehle family first stepped into the business in 1916 when Louis A. Wehle accepted the position of brewmaster and became the youngest person to hold that position in New York. That same year, Louis’s wife gave birth to their firstborn, Jack Wehle, on the property of the brewery.

When the brewery shut down during Prohibition, the elder Wehle opened a bakery and earned enough money to purchase Genesee Brewing in 1932, just in time to reopen it as the Genesee Brewing Company.

Jack Wehle, who joined the company at age 22, took over as chairman when his father passed away in 1964. Jack’s son, Ted Wehle, would later succeed him in 1993. When Ted passed away in 1999, that ended the Wehle family’s 67-year legacy running the brewery.

Genesee partied like it was 1933.

The 18th Amendment to the Constitution passed in 1919, and while Genesee was forced to close, Louis Wehle took up a new career as a baker. His business was so successful that he was able to sell it in 1929 for $1.3 million, which he then used to purchase the old Genesee Brewery as well as a neighboring brewery just in time for the repeal of Prohibition. He even hired as many of the former Genesee employees as he could.

Genesee is one of the few breweries in the country that can say where it was when Prohibition ended. The company restarted shipping beer on April 27, 1933. To mark that milestone, Louis Wehle hosted a huge bash. The event brought 4,000 attendees to the Powers Hotel in Rochester.

Genesee’s post-Prohibition beer delivery rivaled the Clydesdales.

Wehle also marked the end of Prohibition with a new beer: 12 Horse Ale, an English-style ale. He even got fancy with delivery, designing a 12-horse hitch — the first of its kind. Twelve red roan Belgian horses hitched in rows of three pulled a red wagon from bar to bar. A businessman through and through, Wehle made sure to trademark his one-of-a-kind hitch, making it the first official stamp of ownership for the brewery.

Now only occasionally available, the beer itself was the first Genesee beer brewed with top-fermenting ale yeast, one that the brewery acquired from England that year and would go on to gain notoriety as Genesee’s proprietary yeast. It was used in the brewing of all Genesee’s ales from that day forward.

Another former brewmaster brewed there for half a century.

In 2019, John Fischer retired from his position as Genesee’s corporate brewmaster. He’d been brewing there since 1967, making him the brewer with the longest tenure at the company. And while he did take a three-year leave of absence to serve in the military, he came back and created Honey Brown, a golden amber lager with a malty flavor.

Genesee’s Christmas tree is two stories high, and made with steel.

A new holiday tradition was born in 2014 when Genesee stacked 300 kegs in the shape of a Christmas tree. The structure stood over two stories high. Each year, the brewery recreates the “tree” in front of the Rochester brew house. In 2019, the “tree” reached 27 feet.

Genesee races to the finish line.

The brewery’s longtime legacy extends outside of beer. Since the 1970s, Genesee has sponsored race cars and raceways, including Warren Agor, who drove car number 13 around stock car tracks all over upstate New York. Genesee Beer’s logo graced the side of the car.

That legacy races on as Genesee teams up with Watkins Glen International Race Track in Schuyler County, N.Y. The pace car for each race features the Genesee logo.

The article 12 Things You Should Know About Genesee Brewery appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/genesee-brewery-guide/

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johnboothus · 4 years

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12 Things You Should Know About Genesee Brewery

Think you know Genny? Read on for 12 more things you should know about this classic American brand.

Genesee Cream Ale rises to the top.

Who’s Jenny/Genny?

Genesee’s equipment draws crowds.

Turn left at the giant Genesee Beer sign.

Cream work makes the Dream work.

The original brewery bowled a strike.

Its longtime brewmaster was born into brewing. Literally.

When the brewery shut down during Prohibition, the elder Wehle opened a bakery and earned enough money to purchase Genesee Brewing in 1932, just in time to reopen it as the Genesee Brewing Company.

Genesee partied like it was 1933.

Genesee’s post-Prohibition beer delivery rivaled the Clydesdales.

Another former brewmaster brewed there for half a century.

Genesee’s Christmas tree is two stories high, and made with steel.

Genesee races to the finish line.

That legacy races on as Genesee teams up with Watkins Glen International Race Track in Schuyler County, N.Y. The pace car for each race features the Genesee logo.

The article 12 Things You Should Know About Genesee Brewery appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/genesee-brewery-guide/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/12-things-you-should-know-about-genesee-brewery

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chicagoindiecritics · 4 years

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New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: MOVIE REVIEW: Working Man

(Image: imdb.cpm)

WORKING MAN— 4 STARS

Movies becoming timely is almost always an accident. They’re made months in advance and can never reliably predict the future they will enter when released. The right match of content and happenstance can elevate a film’s mystique, even that of a tiny little indie that normally wouldn’t carry much of one at all. The award-winning Working Man, filmed in and around Chicago last year, debuts on VOD services today to a sheltered public facing jobless claims that topped 30 million in two short quarantined months. The distinctive part about this movie is that it displays a sense of workplace fulfillment that would still work if that bellwether statistic was zero. Timeliness only makes it better.

LESSON #1: THE SLOW DECLINE OF FACTORY INDUSTRIES— Working Man presents a slice-of-life story surrounding a tight-knit community of workers beset by the closure of their once-busy factory. The veteran workers speak of a hey-day when the fictional New Liberty Plastics used to employ 500+ people and built the sturdy success of the surrounding community. Ask any Grain Belt or Rust Belt community, and they have their own (or several) New Liberty Plastics equivalents where foreign diversification or automation have replaced people and production.

The film arrives at the last half-day where the few dozen rabble remaining sadly collect their final paychecks. An envelope and a feigned handshake are the only thanks they get stepping off this line and into the unemployment one. The longest tenured floor employee and last one to leave is Allery Parkes, played by professional TV/movie villain Peter Gerety. Quiet to no end on the outside, you wonder how hard his disappointment is kicking and screaming on the inside.

Allery is a creature of habit who passed on retirement years before and emotionally depends on the normalcy of a work routine, from his usual lunch gear to his short walking commute to and from the factory. His wife Iola (the ever-glowing Talia Shire) is eager to see him relax into retirement, but Allery is unsettled and uncomfortable to the point where he begins going back to the factory by himself every day even after the shutdown.

LESSON #2: POINTS OF PRIDE— Allery doesn’t go there to mope or to protest. He goes there to continue his comforts and to clean the place up. You see that “work” for him is more than a source of means. There’s a different worth, so to speak, to work for this man. It is one of many points of pride to his sense of diligence and dedication. These are character traits we don’t often see portrayed in movies about workplaces where louder and more argumentative characters move the needle. It is flat-out empowering and pleasant to see a veteran old soul employee who is not a trope of the conservative and irascible complainer.

Allery’s neighbors and former co-workers, led by the more ardent mouthpiece Walter (Billy Brown of How to Get Away with Murder), catch wind of what Allery is up to. They admire his efforts and begin to join him rather than chastise him as a senile senior. What starts as shared occupation turns into solidarity and a mini-movement that challenges corporate aims and bolsters contagious hope.

With a different slant or pace, a movie like Working Man would land uncomfortably closer to kumbaya whimsy. Victories would be assured and cheers would be telegraphed on command through the editing of Rocky Oscar winner Richard Halsey working alongside his daughter Morgan. That’s not the case here whatsoever. Patience is paramount. Debuting feature writer/director Robert Jury constructs strengths of wisdom and honesty in each collective cog of this narrative machine. Reality is not bent to suit or save all happiness. Losses are real and the characters emerging as leaders or sources of esteem have tangible flaws that formulate both their limits and their passions.

LESSON #3: ALL WORK IS HONORABLE IF YOU DO IT RIGHT— This mantra can encapsulate the crew who made Working Man, the characters on-screen, and the performers who portray them. The inspired have created the inspiring. You root not for heroics but for satisfaction of the efforts shown. Mix in the lucky fate of timely poignancy and those efforts have become rewarded in the form of Best Narrative Feature Film laurels from the Kansas City International Film Festival and SCAD Savannah Film Festival.

The person who exemplifies that lesson the most is Peter Gerety as Allery. One of the greatest perks of the independent film scene are the special opportunities to see a long-time character actor get a lead part and run with it. Their bigger and more stock work keeps them employed and present, but it’s in places like this where you truly realize their full talent. If all you’ve ever seen of Gerety is his “hey, I know that guy” animated and nonchalant heavies in the likes of Ray Donovan, Flight, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Wire, and dozens more, you (and this very writer) have overlooked a true master.

Gerety, who turns 80 this month, brings a remarkable level of affecting introvertedness to this damaged leading role. Contrary to his career gilded by a brand of explosive boisterousness, the actor uses massive presence and body language to fill the drama of Working Man. Often alone with his thoughts and sorrow, Peter gives Allery a shuffling gait, and even a wobble of his agape jaw, that never surges into caricature. Restraint and resonance like that is a hearty treat and a revelation all its own.

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Bloomberg’s Bruising Debate Dents His Odds

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A no good, very bad night for Bloomberg

Mike Bloomberg has spent over $400 million during his ascent in the polls for the Democratic nomination. But money apparently couldn’t save the billionaire from a widely panned performance at last night’s presidential debate. It was like “the gap between an influencer marketing campaign and putting an actual product in front of reviewers,” as Nilay Patel of The Verge put it. (As a professional tech reviewer, he knows what he’s talking about.)Mr. Bloomberg didn’t seem prepared. “His meek rebuttals seemed to inspire a wider reckoning among his peers, who slashed and bickered with an eagerness the race had not seen before,” Matt Flegenheimer of the NYT writes. He did get in a jab at Senator Bernie Sanders, though: “What a wonderful country we have. The best-known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses. What did I miss here?”How the other candidates whacked Mr. Bloomberg:• Senator Elizabeth Warren: “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians, and no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump.”• Joe Biden: “The fact of the matter is, he has not managed his city very — very well when he was there. He didn’t get a lot done.”• Pete Buttigieg: “Most Americans don’t see where they fit if they’ve got to choose between a socialist who thinks that capitalism is the root of all evil and a billionaire who thinks that money ought to be the root of all power.”• Senator Amy Klobuchar: “I don’t think you look at Donald Trump and say, ‘We need someone richer in the White House.’”A hot topic was the issue of nondisclosure agreements that some former female employees of Bloomberg L.P. signed after accusing Mr. Bloomberg of harassment and discrimination. Mr. Bloomberg refused to release those women from the N.D.A.s, calling them “consensual” — then appeared flustered by further attacks by Ms. Warren and others.Prediction markets quickly soured on Mr. Bloomberg’s performance. His odds of securing the Democratic nomination have tumbled about 10 percentage points in 24 hours, to about 19 percent, according to ElectionBettingOdds.com.Our favorite snark from Twitter comes from @IvanTheK, with one for the Bloomberg terminal users: “Team Bloomberg right now: ”The takeaway: “There was little in the debate to suggest that Mr. Sanders, the national front-runner and the favorite to win Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday, had been knocked off balance,” Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin of the NYT write.

End of an era for Les Wexner and Victoria’s Secret

The longest-serving C.E.O. in the S&P 500 will step down after selling a majority stake in Victoria’s Secret, the WSJ reports. The deal between Mr. Wexner’s L Brands and the private equity group Sycamore Partners would value the lingerie company at $1.1 billion, the NYT writes.Mr. Wexner bought Victoria’s Secret for $1 million in 1982. It now accounts for more than half of revenue at L Brands, which the 82-year-old billionaire has run for the past 57 years. Mr. Wexner will remain on the L Brands board and retain his stakes in both Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, which will be what’s left in the L Brands empire. (When Mr. Wexner steps down, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett becomes the longest-serving blue-chip C.E.O., at 50 years.)The retail tycoon’s long tenure ends under a cloud, with the NYT revealing a culture of misogyny, bullying and harassment at Victoria’s Secret and increased scrutiny over Mr. Wexner’s deep ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. From its peak in 2015, L Brands’ market value has fallen by about 75 percent as Victoria’s Secret has struggled to adjust to changing trends in fashion, especially notions of female beauty and representation in advertising.

An unexpected choice for UBS’s new boss

Ralph Hamers of the Dutch bank ING has been named the next C.E.O. of the Swiss banking giant, replacing Sergio Ermotti. Although it was an open secret that UBS was looking for Mr. Ermotti’s successor, Mr. Hamers was not at the top of market watchers’ shortlist.What’s the plan now? Mr. Hamers has spent nearly 30 years at ING, and as chief was credited with a digital transformation of the predominantly retail-focused bank. UBS is a different beast, relying much more on its high-touch wealth management operations. It’s not hard to imagine that Mr. Hamers’ cost-cutting at ING could come to bear at UBS, which has recently struggled to keep its spending in check.Mixed signals from the markets: The share prices of both UBS and ING were up on the news.

The White House sees no problem with monopolies

Having a few big companies dominating markets isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to the Trump administration, Jim Tankersley of the NYT reports:In their annual Economic Report of the President, released on Thursday, Mr. Trump and his advisers effectively dismiss an emerging line of economic research that finds large American companies increasingly dominate industries like telecommunications and tech, stifling competition and hurting consumers.Yes, but: The administration is nonetheless looking into whether tech companies are too big, though that may be driven by settling political scores instead of purely economic concerns.

The E.U. sees many problems with monopolies

Officials in Brussels yesterday unveiled proposals to gain “technological sovereignty,” as policymakers in Europe fear that their economies are becoming overly reliant on “gatekeeper” tech companies based elsewhere (mainly the U.S.).A key passage in the report suggests an expansive view of antitrust policy that could make life difficult for many U.S. tech giants:Competition policy alone cannot address all the systemic problems that may arise in the platform economy. Based on the single market logic, additional rules may be needed to ensure contestability, fairness and innovation and the possibility of market entry, as well as public interests that go beyond competition or economic considerations.Further reading: This being the E.U., the policy plan is spread across a convoluted array of reports, factsheets and communiqués. Politico has a useful summary.

The speed read

Deals• Alstom and Bombardier are trying to shield their train merger from the political turmoil that sank Alstom’s previous deal with Siemens. (Bloomberg)• Chinese conglomerate HNA is reportedly in talks for a state bailout, which could involve selling off its airline assets. (Bloomberg)• Forever 21’s deal to sell itself to its two biggest landlords is official. (Reuters)• Founders Fund, the venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has raised $3 billion for its latest funds. (Axios)• The political comms firm SKDKnickerbocker plans to announce this morning that it has acquired Sloane Communications, a financial P.R. shop. “This is our first (not last) acquisition,” the SKDK chief Josh Isay tells us.Politics and policy• The White House conceded yesterday that the trade war had hurt U.S. economic growth. (Bloomberg)• Boeing has pushed Washington State lawmakers to end tax breaks for the plane maker to avoid international trade sanctions. (NYT)• The Fed flagged the coronavirus outbreak as an economic risk at its meeting last month. (NYT)• How the pharmaceutical industry lost some of its pull in Washington. (WSJ)Tech• Some Oracle employees are planning a walkout today over the company’s founder, Larry Ellison, hosting a fund-raiser for President Trump. (Business Insider)• Google reportedly plans to end E.U. data protection practices for British users post-Brexit. (Reuters)• The first wave of next-generation 5G wireless networks will probably cover only a quarter of the world’s population, according to McKinsey. (Fortune)• MGM Resorts said that it suffered a data breach last year, but that customers’ financial data was not exposed. (NYT)Best of the rest• Some companies have stopped hiring smokers. (FT)• Want to buy one of WeWork’s Gulfstream jets? It’s on the market. (Business Insider)• Jho Low, the fugitive financier at the heart of the 1MDB fraud scandal, was reportedly spotted recently in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. (Bloomberg)• Hate corporate buzzwords? “Take a deep dive” into this article and let’s “touch base” later. (The Atlantic)We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Read the full article

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massachusettshafb596 · 4 years

Text

10 Compelling Reasons Why You Need City Of Somerville Massachusetts

Incredibly cosy place, magnificent breakfast and amenities, extremely clean shared toilets, very good and Safe and sound area. I might definitely continue to be there once more in a completely new stop by to Cambridge or Boston.

The obligations and responsibilities listed under are illustrations of the assorted varieties of get the job done carried out. The omission of particular statements of responsibilities isn't going to exclude them from... Entire Description

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S. under the title Stairway to Heaven, which derived from your movie's most well known Distinctive impact: a broad escalator linking the opposite Globe and Earth. Reversing the result in The Wizard of Oz, the supernatural scenes are in black-and-white, even though the ones on the planet are in Technicolor.

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It can be noted the show will take the format of 3 x 60 minute episodes, adapted by Mick Ford – The person powering ITV’s critically acclaimed drama One Father.

] will be the multipath impulse reaction that requires under consideration the impact of channel impulse reaction, the RF entrance-ends in the transceivers like Electricity Amplifier, LNA and Arbitrary Notch Filter as well as antennas concerning the transmitter antenna n

In the rest of Segment 9., We're going to go over two typical eventualities of fastest spectrum sensing: solitary channel with non-Bayesian detection and several channels with Bayesian detection depending on partial observations.

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The hardware elements also include Instrumentation subsystem, Unbiased WLAN keep an eye on method and support server. These elements offer the testbed with power skills like radio measurements, MAC/community layer watch in the radio grid’s factors and enormous data storage support [102, 103, 104].

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The agile, program defined radios which can carry out In keeping with algorithms are fundamental constructing blocks. When Just about every node is computationally clever, wi-fi networking faces a novel revolution. For the method degree, functions such as cognitive radio, cognitive radar and anti-jamming (even Digital warfare) haven't any basic variation and so are unified into one framework that requires inter-disciplinary understanding. Radar and communications need to be unified since both of those involve dynamic spectrum obtain—the bottleneck. Spectrum agile/cognitive radio is a completely new paradigm in wireless communications—a Distinctive software of the above general radio.

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chrisbowler · 7 years

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A Framework for Creating a Robust Onboarding Workflow

This post was originally published on the Wildbit blog.

Onboarding is a word that has been around for some time, but has seen increased usage in the world of SaaS in the last 10–15 years. Not surprisingly, this has corresponded with the advent and maturation of customer success as a discipline. And the two are related.

What is onboarding? It’s the process of getting someone up to speed so they can be as effective as possible and achieve success. And you usually want that to happen as quickly as possible. The term can refer to new hires for your own company (employee onboarding). But for most SaaS products, we use the term to describe the process of getting new customers acclimated to our service.

I’d like to share the framework for how we've created some of the onboarding campaigns here at Wildbit.

First things first

Before I talk about some of the activities involved in creating an onboarding campaign, I’d like to step back and talk about onboarding at a high level. There are a couple of important aspects to keep in mind.

First up is one of the most crucial aspects of customer success as a discipline. I hold to the idea that customer success is just that: a focus on the customer. That means I only want a customer to become engaged with our product because it makes their life better. And so I purposefully choose to work for companies where that is the case. I can feel good about helping someone be as engaged as possible with our products because we’re helping people solve real problems.

As Kathy Sierra puts it in Badass: Making Users Awesome:

People aren’t using the app because they like the app or they like you. They’re doing it because they like themselves. What are you doing to enable more of that?

Second, your onboarding is not the first step in guaranteeing the success of your customers. The fanciest, nicest looking, most clever onboarding campaigns cannot help people who do not need your product. If there is no problem that your customer is trying to solve or if your product focuses on the wrong problem, new customers are not going to stick around. Building a successful product starts with understanding your market and your ideal customer, having good marketing, and doing your best to find those people.

Once you have identified the right group of people to help, it’s important to remember that your onboarding should focus on them, not on you. Keep this in mind as you complete the activities below. You should focus on how your product helps the new customer solve their problem. The last thing we all want when we check out a new tool is to see a long list of features or messages that focus on the product or company behind it.

Last, it’s important to remember that anyone in your company can build these campaigns. The responsibility will fall on different shoulders at different companies, but the best onboarding examples are from companies who put the customer at the centre of their entire product development process. Designers, product managers, and customer success teams should all understand the vision of your product and the problem it solves well enough to guide someone new to a successful adoption.

Now, let’s dig into what’s involved.

The Framework

Now, there are many different ways to implement onboarding for a product. Different approaches will work better for some companies than others. I’ll discuss various options below, but remember that there is no one perfect way to do this. The best onboarding is flexible and iterative.

However, there are several exercises you can go through that will help you gain a better understanding of how to guide new customers to success.

Define your levels of engagement

The purpose here is create a tool that allows you to gauge how integrated your product is into someone’s business (again, we can feel good about this when we believe in the value we provide). Think of it in this sense: how hard would it be for someone to switch from your service to a competitor? The harder it is to switch would indicate a higher level of engagement with your product.

Let me illustrate with one of our products at Wildbit. Beanstalk is a development workflow platform where you can host, review, and deploy your code as a team. If someone signs up to Beanstalk, creates a new Git repository, then makes some commits and pushes them to Beanstalk, this would be a low level of engagement with our product. At this point, they could very easily sign up for a Bitbucket or GitHub account, switch the remote URL in their Git config, then push those same commits to their new remote repo in this other service.

But if they had pushed their commits to Beanstalk, then used our deployments feature to update their live website (instead of manually updating their site via FTP), suddenly they gained value they did not previously have. And it’s value they cannot get from some of our competitors. If using this feature becomes sticky and they then considered switching to a different service, they now have to replace the value they get from using ours. They are more engaged.

And that is what we want to outline here: it’s a tool for measuring how engaged people are with our service.

This is not a complicated process at all. Here’s how to create one:

list out the possible activities a user can perform with your product

group those activities into tiers (the number of tiers doesn’t really matter, but I keep it simple and stick to three)

each tier is a level of user engagement

You can then take these tiers and tie them into your user journey. I like to picture an ideal user journey, where someone goes from signup to highly engaged. I document what that journey might look like, and envision where the different activities would occur in that journey.

This does not need to be an precise measurement, but something that gives you a rough idea of how engaged your customers are. It should be flexible as the events themselves may change over time, being more or less important to your customers. But it should help you to identify your core features and what you want to focus on with your onboarding materials.

Identify your Wow moment

Once you have an idea of what an ideal user journey would look like for a highly engaged customer who is getting as much value from your product as possible, you want to identify the Wow moment. If you're familiar at all with onboarding, you may have heard of this term. There are a few other terms that get at the same idea (golden motion, day zero, MVE (minimum viable effort), TTFV (time to first value)). They are all focused on one thing: what is the quickest path to your customer’s success.

David Skok defines it this way:

Wow! is the moment in a free trial where your buyer suddenly sees the benefit they get from using your product, and says to themselves “Wow! This is great!”.

Whether your product has a free trial doesn’t matter. What matters is your new customer experiencing that moment when they realize that your product can make them better at what they do.

That is your Wow moment: when the new customer likes how your product makes them feel.

Now, it’s not always easy to identify where this moment takes place in your product. You may have to take a few guesses to find it. So you take your ideal user journey that you mapped to your levels of engagment, and you make another best guess: where is that Wow moment?

Again, I’ll use Beanstalk as an illustration. Commits are great, but deployments are where people realize the benefit of our product. All our longest tenured, biggest fans tell us that our deployments are what makes the difference when compared with other options they’d considered.

Pushing changes to a remote repo is a good first step, but as mentioned above, it’s easily replicable. But when an agency developer signs up for Beanstalk, then configures their workflow so that they can commit changes to their staging branch, push those changes to Beanstalk, then when those changes are automatically deployed to their staging environment and they can test seconds later …

That’s a Wow moment.

Map out the steps to Wow … in reverse

Once you have chosen a wow moment to guide people towards, start to identify the different steps required to get there. Take your ideal user journey you mapped out in step 1, then work backwards.

Lincoln Murphy describes it this way:

You create a plan to get here by identifying “initial success” and backing out from that goal while identifying success milestones along the way.

And don’t be afraid to go deep on this analysis. When you're very familiar with a process (like using your product), it’s easy to take things for granted. You will want to view your product from the perspective of someone seeing it for the very first time. Where you see 3 or 4 steps, someone unfamiliar with your product may see far more.

As Samuel Hulick points out in Mind the Gap, even the most simple processes involve more than we first think of. He uses the example of listing the steps to create a peanut butter & jelly sandwich (a seemingly simple procedure) . When his grade school teacher followed the instructions given by the students, the results were not as intended:

Our instructions created crappy sandwiches because they failed to bridge the gap between what seemed obvious to us and what actually happened in reality.

What seems obvious to you is not at all obvious to someone new to your product. And it’s important to remember that you're so familiar with your product that you may have trouble identifying all the steps involved with getting started using your product. As Hulick points out in his book The Elements of User Onboarding:

Ironically enough, your product’s first few impressions are SO make-or-break that you simply can’t afford to evaluate them as the expert that you now are — you have to try to forget everything you know and come in with a totally fresh perspective.

Beanstalk also provides a good example here. I mentioned above that getting started with Beanstalk involves making commits in a local repo, then pushing changes to the remote repo in Beanstalk. That sounds like a couple of simple steps. But for someone brand new to Git, it’s actually a complex process.

First, you have to log into Beanstalk and create a new repo. From there, you can open a command line interface (CLI) to take the next step (the words ‘command line’ are scary enough on their own for even some novice developers) with the following commands:

git clone https://accountname.git.beanstalkapp.com/gitreponame.git -o beanstalk cd gitreponame echo "This is my new project on Beanstalk." > README git add README git commit -m "My first commit." git push beanstalk master

And this is just one way to get started. Our team has to be ready to support people in many different scenarios. And our onboarding has to do the same and get them started on the right foot.

Map out a list of touchpoints to get them there

Once you have identified your Wow moment and what you believe are the steps required for someone to experience that moment, you can start to create your onboarding materials. This is where there can be a wide variety in onboarding experiences. The type of content, the medium used, and the timing of messages can vary greatly from one product to the next. And that’s how it should be: different products have different audiences and different needs. Let’s review some of the options.

Types of touchpoints

Email has long been the medium of choice for SaaS products sending onboarding messaging and information to new customers. But with the rise of the mobile web and modern browser technologies, in-app messages and SMS are popular as well.

What works best? It depends.

Context is the key for many messages you may want to send to a new customer. And in-app messages, when well designed, can be delivered at just the right time. However, when overused, they can distract the user from the job at hand and worse, annoy them.

Email is still a great option as it can deliver the required information, but allows the customer to process it at a time that suits them best. However, it’s vital to remember that most people in 2017 suffer from too much email. Your messages need to be well written in order to stand out (that’s an entire subject for its own blog post).

Touchpoint triggers

Another aspect of your touchpoints is how they are triggered. The two basic options are timing and behavioral.

Messages that are triggered by timing are the standard type that have been used for a long time. They are easy to set up and can deliver the basic information about your product that each new customer can benefit from. They may resemble a flow like this:

However, with the tools we have available today, it’s more valuable to build campaigns based on what you new customers do with your product (or do not do). These are behavioral (aka contextual) messages.

Again, using Beanstalk as an example, if a new customer has not pushed any commits to a repo in their account by 3 days after signing up, we send an email that is focused on helping them get to that point.

Over the past 12 months, this email has had a 43% open rate and, even better, a 12.5% conversion rate. There are so many examples in this category, it could also be a post all on its own. I will stick to pointing you to some great resources:

One Size Onboarding Does Not Fit All

Your User Onboarding Flow Is Too Shortsighted

The Secret to Successful Customer Onboarding

A solid onboarding campaign that provides real value to your customers will likely involve a combination of message types initiated by different triggers.

To get you started, we’ve provided a collection of resources for your use. It includes an onboarding checklist, a BPI & user journey template, a nurture path template, and some message samples. Enjoy!

There is a lot involved in setting up a robust onboarding workflow. However, it’s (obviously) worth your time and attention. The more people you can help achieve success earlier on, the better you’ll feel. And your business benefits.

Once you have something like the above in place, the next step is to validate and iterate.

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global-news-station · 4 years

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TOKYO: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving premier, said on Friday he was resigning because of poor health, ending a stint at the helm of the world’s third-biggest economy during which he sought to revive growth and bolster its defences.

“I cannot be prime minister if I cannot make the best decisions for the people. I have decided to step down from my post,” Abe, 65, told a news conference.

Abe has battled the disease ulcerative colitis for years and two recent hospital visits within a week had fanned questions on whether he could stay in the job until the end of his term as ruling party leader, and hence, premier, in September 2021.

As news of the resignation spread, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei average .N225 fell 2.12% to 22,717.02, while the broader Topix .TOPX shed 1.00% to 1,599.70. The selling wiped $4.7 billion off Tokyo’s $5.7 trillion stock market value, which had more than doubled during Abe’s tenure.

The resignation will trigger a leadership race in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – most likely in two or three weeks – and the winner must be formally elected in parliament. The new party leader will hold the post for the rest of Abe’s term.

Whoever wins the party poll is likely to keep Abe’s reflationary “Abenomics” policies as Japan struggles with the impact of the novel coronavirus, but may have trouble emulating the political longevity that may be Abe’s biggest legacy.

“The broad picture remains in tact. In terms of economic and fiscal policy, the focus remains very much on reflation,” said Jesper Koll, senior adviser to asset manager WisdomTree Investments.

“Longevity will be a struggle.”

On Monday, Abe surpassed a record for longest consecutive tenure as premier set by his great-uncle Eisaku Sato half a century ago.

“As head of the ruling party he worked hard on Abenomics for eight years,” said brokerage employee Naohito Kojima, 55.

“There were various problems but if someone else had been leader, it’s questionable whether they could have maintained a stable government as long as Mr Abe. He did various diplomatic negotiations and I think the pros outweighed the cons.”

Abe’s resignation also comes amid an uncertain geopolitical environment, including an intensifying confrontation between the United States and China and ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

FALLING SUPPORT

The conservative Abe returned as prime minister for a rare second term in December 2012, pledging to revive growth with his “Abenomics” mix of hyper-easy monetary policy, fiscal spending and reforms. He also pledged to beef up Japan’s defences and aimed to revise the pacifist constitution.

Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus and scandals among party members, Abe has recently seen his support fall to one of the lowest levels of his nearly eight years in office.

Japan has not suffered the explosive surge in virus cases seen elsewhere, but Abe had drawn fire for a clumsy early response and what critics see as a lack of leadership as infections spread.

In the second quarter, Japan was hit by its biggest economic slump on record as the pandemic emptied shopping malls and crushed demand for cars and other exports, bolstering the case for bolder policy action to avert a deeper recession.

Abe kept his promises to strengthen defences, boosting spending on the military after years of declines and expanding its capacity to project power abroad.

In a historic shift in 2014, his government re-interpreted the constitution to allow Japanese troops to fight abroad for the first time since World War Two.

A year later, Japan adopted laws scrapping a ban on exercising the right of collective self-defence or defending a friendly country under attack.

But Abe proved unable to revise the U.S.-drafted, post-war constitution’s pacifist Article 9, a personal mission that also eluded his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who quit as premier in 1960 because of uproar over a U.S-Japan security pact.

Abe resigned from his first stint as prime minister in 2007, citing ill-health after a year plagued by scandals in his cabinet and a huge election loss for his ruling party. He had since kept his illness in check with medicine that was not previously available.

The post Japanese PM Abe resigns over worsening health appeared first on ARY NEWS.

https://ift.tt/32C9Xde

#World News

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jobsearchtips02 · 4 years

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Corporate Boards Suffer From an ‘Experience Gap’ as the Coronavirus Upends Business

In late 2008, with financial panic gripping the economy and automobile demand evaporating, General Motors Co.’s board met three times a week. The car company’s health was failing as executives tweaked forecasts daily. The job of pressing executives for a realistic rescue plan fell to 12 independent directors.

This type of boardroom triage was common during the Great Recession, after the dot-com bubble burst and in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. Plenty of vulnerable businesses went the way of GM, filing for Chapter 11 or going belly up. The survivors gripped the wheel hard and steered sharp, capitalized on rivals’ misfortunes or simply got lucky.

As the new coronavirus wreaks havoc on U.S. corporations, and entire industries teeter, it’s fair to ask how prepared today’s boardrooms are. I would argue that a movement that was designed to make boards better may instead leave some of them flat-footed as their companies face this crisis.

The culling of the ultimate boardroom insider has taken place over the past couple decades without much fanfare, as investment advisers and governance experts made war on the “overboarded” director.

These are the directors who held a half-dozen or so public board seats at the same time. Some companies sought out such people to fill their directors chairs, believing their broad perspective on a multitude of industries and companies made them experts on best and worst practices.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

For directors on multiple boards, how many board seats are too many? Join the conversation below.

Detractors say these directors are overworked, and advance the old-boys’ network at a time when diversity is top priority. If a director simply bounces from board room to board room, can they really focus on the specific needs of a troubled firm? And, if the same people keep getting tapped for new board openings, how will younger prospects with fresh ideas get a shot?

“The reason there are concerns about overboarding is exactly times like these,” said Rusty O’Kelley, co-leader of Russell Reynolds Associates’s Board & CEO advisory. “It may be easy to juggle multiple boards when times are going well, but what happens when too many board seats and other commitments get in the way?”

Jerry Davis, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, recently published a paper called “Who Killed the Inner Circle?” that reflects decades of research. He estimated there were at least 90 directors serving on five or more corporate boards of major U.S. companies in 1974. The number fell to 75 in 1994. By 2012, Shirley Jackson, then the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was the lone ultra-insider at a major firm.

“The inner circle has vanished,” Mr. Davis said. As a result, the amount of shared insights among corporations is shrinking with it. He notes

JPMorgan Chase

& Co. once was connected to 48 different companies via its directors’ various affiliations; today that number is nine.

These affiliations have proven invaluable in past times of crisis. When GM was skidding toward bankruptcy,

Ford Motor Co.

relied on a longtime board member with deep connections and multiple board seats—ex-

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

President John Thornton—to help it survive its own liquidity crisis. Mr. Thornton remains on Ford’s board as its longest serving director.

“I think there is this simplistic notion out there saying that sitting on many boards is a bad thing,” said Alexander Ljungqvist, a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and a director at a Swedish pension fund. “This ignores the fact that there is a trade off between a breadth of experiences and connections, and a limited attention.”

The argument that overboarding stiffles diversity is wrong, too, Mr. Davis said. Of the 21 directors on the most U.S. boards, 61% were women or minorities.

Mr. Ljungqvist largely blames influential proxy advisers, such as

Institutional Shareholder Services,

and investment funds for adopting a “one-size-fits-all approach.” ISS and other advisers recommend voting against independent directors with more than four seats.

BlackRock

and Vanguard, two of the world’s largest institutional investors, draw the line at three.

Patrick McGurn, the head of strategic research and analysis for ISS, said there has been a lot of recent boardroom turnover “that favors more inexperienced directors.” Fresh blood ushers in new ideas and alternative perspectives—something that Mr. McGurn said many investors value these days—but he acknowledged that the turnover comes with a downside.

“When you hit a crisis like right now, you don’t have that well of experience that says ‘when 9/11 came around or the financial crisis hit this is what we did,’” Mr. McGurn said.

Being a director isn’t a cakewalk. Last week, Bill Gates stepped down from the boards of

Microsoft Corp.,

which he founded in 1975, and

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

In a LinkedInpost, the 64-year-old Mr. Gates said he needed to quit so he could “effectively prioritize my commitment” to philanthropy.

Mr. O’Kelley estimates a board seat consumes 200 hours per year, and the obligation was growing even before the new coronavirus pandemic. “More is being expected of directors by institutional investors,” he said. The list includes dealing with an onslaught of activist investors, keeping tabs on disruptive technologies and paying attention to environmental and social-good initiatives.

But Samir Kaul, a founding partner of investment firm Khosla Ventures and board member at several private companies and one public, said juggling multiple boards at major companies is possible because directors aren’t there to run the show.

“At a big public company, you are really focused on governance,” Mr. Kaul said. Board members are typically asked to tinker with immediate tactics or dig into the nitty gritty financial details more often at smaller start-up companies with few employees.

Longtime turnaround expert Steve Miller, who has served on several boards, said he tapped his connections and expertise in the bankruptcy and restructuring fields, acquired from his 17-year tenure as a United Airlines board member, when he joined the board of

American International Group Inc.

He joined AIG in 2009 as it began a major overhaul after the financial crisis, and stayed on at United until 2010. Now he’s the chairman of Purdue Pharma.

Mr. Miller told me all directors need to balance their schedule. “Everybody’s got a life, but if you sign up for board service, you know what you’re getting into. You’re either going to leave or you’re going to suck it up.”

Mr. Miller signed on at Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, in 2018 as it grappled with mounting litigation over accusations that it helped fuel the opioid epidemic. In an opinion piece published by the Journal, he said he “never encountered a situation as challenging or important to society than the one I now face.”

In his 40 year career as a turnaround specialist, Mr. Miller has seen fellow board members effectively juggle multiple directorships. One director Mr. Miller met while on the board of automotive supplier Federal-Mogul Corp. sticks out. Jack Pope, holding a half-dozen or so seats, “would show up to discuss a 200-page securities filing and would say without looking, ‘The number on page 86 looks a lot different than the one on 127. Can you explain that?’”

Conversely, “I’ve also been on boards where people are overwhelmed by being on one board.” Mr. Miller believes the well-rounded director is as necessary as ever and setting restrictions on the number of other boards a director can service on could limit the overall effectiveness of the board in guiding the company.

“There has almost never been a time where nearly every industry has been driven into crisis by the same thing,” he said, referring to the pandemic.

Directors on multiple boards are necessary fixtures in these boardrooms. “They’re parachuting in and can make a big difference,” Mr. Miller said. “They don’t just accept everything at face value.”

Write to John D. Stoll at [email protected]

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/corporate-boards-suffer-from-an-experience-gap-as-the-coronavirus-upends-business/

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

Text

We Asked 10 Drinks Pros: Which Rye Offers the Best Bang for Your Buck?

Rye’s modern resurgence continues to demonstrate that Americans just can’t get enough of the distinctive and time-honored spirit. In 2019, the number of cases of American rye more than doubled in annual volume from five years earlier.

Part of rye’s popularity lies in its versatility. It has been a featured spirit in some of America’s most storied cocktails, from the iconic Sazerac to the potent Vieux Carre, while also being high quality enough to enjoy on its own.

As demand increases, so too does the number of brands available on the market. To sort through the many options — and opinions — VinePair asked 10 beverage experts which brands offer the best rye for the price.

Given that many bars and restaurants are currently closed and/or struggling due to the Covid-19 pandemic, at the time of reporting, VinePair requested that bartenders provide links to personal Venmo accounts, GoFundMe campaigns connected to their place of employment, or other restaurant and bar industry fundraisers of their choice. To learn more about helping the hospitality community at this time, please visit: How to Give Back to Hospitality Professionals Impacted by Covid-19.

“Rittenhouse Rye has always been my go-to when a cocktail calls for rye. Dependable and flexible, this Kentucky-style rye has a lower percentage of rye in the mash and a heavy presence of corn, making it approachable for everyone. Also, it’s bottled-in-bond, which is a stamp of quality and tradition. At least four years old, and bottled at 100 proof, it can stand up in any classic cocktail, like a Manhattan or Sazerac. It’s very reasonably priced in the mid-to-low $20s; it will never let you down.” — Ryan Lindquist, Bar Manager, LUXBAR, Chicago Donate: Gibsons Restaurant Group Emergency Employee Relief Fund

“I love American Spirit Resurgens Rye. It’s local to Atlanta, super delicious and complex, and it doesn’t have a huge bite that some ryes have which can sometimes intimidate guests.” — Michell Boyd, Beverage Manager, Hampton + Hudson, Atlanta Donate: Hampton + Hudson Small Business Relief Fund; Relief for Hampton + Hudson STAFF; Michell Boyd on Venmo

“High West Double Rye. This rye is a blend of two different rye whiskies with different compositions that are blended to create something simply sublime. The blend is mostly dominated by a young rye that has been aged for two years (95 percent rye and 5 percent barley) with the older being a 16-year rye (53 percent rye, 37 percent corn, and the rest a mystery). If you’ve never tried this bad boy hailing from Utah, it’s a steal for under $30.” — Mohammed Rahman, Bar Manager, Kata Robata, Houston Donate: Mohammed Rahmann PayPal

“Old Overholt bottled-in-bond. For around $25 dollars this rye is great on its own as a sipper and beautiful in cocktails. This rye by law has been aged at least 4 years in a federally bonded warehouse before release and touches in at 100 proof. The higher proof lends itself extremely well to mixing because the rye notes still shine through without being overpowered by dilution or other assertive flavors. Notes of stone fruit (think dried apricots), citrus, hay, and cereal are apparent on the nose while the mouth turns into a scorched salted caramel and coriander finish.” — Brett Helke, Beverage Director/Wine Director, Toast & Perro Blanco, Norfolk, Va. Donate: Toast Corner Spot on Venmo

“Rittenhouse Rye is always the first one I reach for. Its price has gone up over the years but it’s perfectly spicy, and being bottled-in-bond, strong enough to stand up to any mixers in a cocktail. My old corner bar in Chicago sold a can of Hamm’s and a shot of Rittenhouse for $5, [the] perfect end to a day.” — Graham Courter, Bar Manager, Main Street Meats, Chattanooga, Tenn. Donate: Main Street Meats Gift Cards

“Best bang for the buck, Pikesville Rye. A revived brand from Heaven Hill, once produced in Maryland, this bottling is everything people fell in love with Rittenhouse, but two years older and 5 percent more alcohol.” — Westin Galleymore, Spirits Director, Underbelly Hospitality, Houston Donate: Westin Galleymore on Venmo

“I love WhistlePig‘s new product, Piggyback Rye. Being innately a lover of WhistlePig, this new value-priced rye is designed for mixing but doesn’t lose the integral character of the original.” — Christine Kang, Beverage Director, The Breslin, NYC Donate: Fundraiser for Ace Hotel Employees by Ace Hotel Group

“Wild Turkey Rye is one of my favorites. The history behind the longest-tenured master distiller in America, Jimmy Russell, is legendary and the product speaks for itself. They’ve always used the same process, yeast strain, and proportions when making Wild Turkey, and I am certainly proud that it’s produced in Kentucky, so close to my Tennessee home.” — Ellen Talbot, Lead Bartender, Fable Lounge, Nashville Donate: Ellen Talbot on Venmo

“The hipster bartender shot is Old Overholt. It’s the rye they all think they are the only ones who know about. Over the last few years, it has moved up from the bottom shelf to the second shelf, and it’s in a lot of menu Manhattans in the craft world. It’s pretty good, higher proof, and gets the job done. I have always been partial to George Dickel, which has also seen a recent resurgence and change in the company it keeps on that second shelf. High West has been cranking out a lot of their Double Rye, which is more affordable than it once was. This is a good thing. And if you want ‘bang’ as in higher price but higher proof, Pikesville Rye is awesome and alive at 110 proof.” — Jeremy Allen, General Manager/Head Bartender, MiniBar, Los Angeles Donate: MiniBar Staff Tips

“I’ve been a big fan of Rittenhouse Bottled-in-Bond Rye for a long time now. It’s been a staple on my back bar for nearly a decade. It’s big and spicy and is exactly what you want out of a rye whiskey.” — Ryan Lotz, Beverage Director, Traveler Street Hospitality, Boston Donate: Bar Mezzana Gift Cards; Shore Leave Gift Cards

The article We Asked 10 Drinks Pros: Which Rye Offers the Best Bang for Your Buck? appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/10-best-quality-rye-brands/

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johnboothus · 4 years

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We Asked 10 Drinks Pros: Which Rye Offers the Best Bang for Your Buck?

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Via https://vinepair.com/articles/10-best-quality-rye-brands/

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isaiahrippinus · 4 years

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We Asked 10 Drinks Pros: Which Rye Offers the Best Bang for Your Buck?

The article We Asked 10 Drinks Pros: Which Rye Offers the Best Bang for Your Buck? appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/10-best-quality-rye-brands/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/620543973003591680

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