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faranae · 4 years

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If you don’t mind me asking but how can the word queer be used as a positive thing to say about the LGBT community, As every time I hear it it has been used in the negative way.

First thing’s first: I’m very sorry that’s been your experience Nonny. I don’t mind you asking at all, but it’s just not an easy question to answer.

Here’s the thing: I’m not an educator. I’m just one queer dude trying to fight for the right to identify myself as I see fit without being tackled to the floor and accused of being a “cis white neurotypical homophobe” for it. (I do wish I were exaggerating, but my inbox has been hella wild this week and I can assure you I am maybe one of those things, possibly two but I am honestly just not ready to dive into the technicalities of what qualifies as cis right now.)

As for your question: I can give my own take on things, but I’m the first to admit it will be biased.

Story time! Long post incoming:

I hail from a tiny village in Ontario, Canada, where I was raised by my grandparents.

Where I grew up in the early-mid 90′s and beyond, queer was used as a slur just as much if not less frequently than gay, lesbian, dyke, butch, twink, and any number of currently acceptable(?) LGBTQ+ terminology. Consider this my point of argument, I suppose: A good portion of the stigma is absolutely based in locale/environment. In my personal history, they were all bad. Especially since baby Fara was raised in the Roman Catholic school system.

Then came the opportunity to leave: I was accepted into a specialized arts program at a high school in the city. I moved away, and nosy neighbours and an unshakeable reputation were traded in for public transportation and being lost in the crowd. It was the best thing to happen to my baby gay life.

Ninth grade was a wild awakening. I’d already known for years that I wasn’t exactly “normal”, but the sudden exposure to all of these divergent teenagers was really something. I was quickly adopted into this massive group of queer peers, and there was a lot of education in that short year as I learned about myself and others through them.

We were the group of kids that took up a good third of the cafeteria every free period, playing Magic: the Gathering and euchre and singing songs and laughing amongst each other. We were the theater kids, the artsies, the techs, and the nerds. We outnumbered the jocks and other social stereotypes by a decent margin. A quick social media check on my part shows most of those kids identify as LGBT, queer, or otherwise allies in their adult lives.

Those kids taught me that queer was a weapon for us as much as it was for “them”. Someone on the bus calls you gay? Turn on your heel and plant an innocent kiss on your best friend’s cheek. Don’t be vulgar, but absolutely fight for what you believe in. Some were… Considerably more aggressive in their acts of expression. Queer was ours. It was what we made it. What that old lady on the bus said with disgust, we held over our heads with pride.

A lot went wrong after 9th grade. My mother pulled me from the arts program and as such I was sent to a brand new school elsewhere in the city. What happened there made it very clear that experiences are not universal. Where I’d previously had a massive group of support and strength, I found myself forced back into the closet for my own safety.

Not only was “queer” a negative expression once again, it was violent.

Within a week of reluctantly admitting to a counselor at this new school that I wasn’t straight, I was very publicly pulled from PhysEd and assigned an isolated changing room for the rest of the semester. Only a few days later and my new peers suspected I was “one of the gays”, all without me saying a single thing in public about it.

Make no mistake: I was a shy, quiet kid for the most part. I tried to be brave and embrace the change as I’d learned from my peer group at the first school. I made the mistake of wearing a pride pin to school after that; my quiet little rebellion against what they’d started to say about me. I held my chin up through the glares where I could, and shot coy smiles at those who used those words against me like they were supposed to mean something unforgivable. I even called a few girls pretty out of spite. (They were actually quite pretty, but also very ugly on the inside.)

My “cocky” and “unapologetic” refusal to be insulted was met with a group of girls beating the everloving shit out of me while I waited for the bus after school that day. All because I was “queer”. I didn’t go back.

A lot’s happened since then: I dropped out of high school and got my GED as soon as I was legally able. I found my tribe again after that, and reconnected with a good chunk of the original crowd. I discovered there was a word and culture based around my take on how relationships should be (polyamorous). I got married. Had a kid. Bought a binder. Did a lot of living and made a lot of mistakes. Still am.

I hunted for literal years trying to find one word, one flag, one identity that fit me. What I wanted. Where I belonged. I was especially sore about it whenever Pride Month rolled around:

(From the end of pride month in 2018)

Most terms that seemed to fit always had some exceptions or exclusions that turned me off or disqualified me from using them by saying I straight-up wasn’t welcome. It was only in the past couple years that I finally said “fuck it” and settled on “Queer”, an identity I’d had since ninth grade but always wrote off as “too vague”. I hadn’t realized that it wasn’t vague, it was intentionally inclusive of anyone who wanted to use it.

And that, that’s the important distinction there I suppose. Are there those who don’t want to use queer or find it makes them uncomfortable? Absolutely, and that should be respected. We all have different experiences; different origins that paint our perspective of what is and is not acceptable. To some queer is power or comfort, it’s rebellion, it’s a fist in the air screaming that we exist and aren’t going anywhere. To others, it just digs at old wounds. To another group, they read that it was a bad word online and dug their heels in.

The problem lies in that only one side of this argument seems to be respecting those distinctions. If one does or doesn’t want the Q in LGBTQ to apply to them, that’s their choice. You don’t see gay dudes up in arms saying “There shouldn’t be an L in LGBTQ since I’m not a Lesbian and I don’t appreciate people implying I am.” Or you shouldn’t see that, anyway. And yet we see that very thing happening with the Q.

Members of our community are being pitted against each other by people who have no business instigating such fights. The same rhetoric and strategies are being used to shove queer out of the spectrum as are being used to exclude aro/ace and bi folk, and trans to a point as well.

The culture itself is being twisted. People aren’t looking into why and how queer has come back into the spotlight as a “slur”, when we’ve been peacefully using it ourselves and reclaiming it since the late 80′s. Hell, we were “queer” before we were ever “gay,” with that use of the word originating in the 1800′s (gay popped up as an alternative to homosexual in the early to mid 1900s).

In 2005, when same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide here, we threw parties and held each other and cried at how far our queer butts had come.

In 2020, I look at the next generation on social media and see them screaming that my identity is now an unforgivable and homophobic slur.

I hope you can understand where I’m a little skeptical and even bitter here.

We’re going backwards, and it hurts.

So yeah. Queer is seen differently by many people based on our experiences and exposures. Unfortunately that paints it in very different lights in different corners of the community.

I am queer. At no point will I ever apply that label to another person who doesn’t want it to be. In my experience anyone who implies that “the queers are trying to force you to be queer too” is either very ignorant, very misinformed, or malicious in their intent.

It’s no different than the “foreigners are going to take our jobs”, “gays will corrupt our children”, or “foreign religions will take away our freedoms” arguments. They are started and spread with malicious intent, and latched on to by those who don’t yet know any better. It’s why civil discussion is so, so very important.

Thank you for asking so politely, Nonny. I’m sorry that I couldn’t do much more than give some personal anecdotes, but the use of the word queer is something that isn’t entirely black and white for anyone nowadays. I can’t just pull a bunch of citations out of my butt and say “this is why it’s a good thing”, because it really is subjective you know?

Besides, this is my blog, not my old Comms class in college. Nobody’s convincing me to write a full APA-compliant essay on the subject unless they’re paying or professionally grading me on it.

#Queer #Trigger warning #long post #story time #AskFara #Anonymous #fara rants

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humanityinahandbag · 6 years

Text

hotel transylvania 3: texting

or: Ericka is thrilled to be added to the families official group chat. Unfortunately, Dracula hasn’t gotten this whole texting thing down

(Adventures in Family Texting between a small family of vampires and humans)

Very short without much of an ending. This is nothing more than my tired excuse at writing practice and giving myself a good chuckle. Enjoy.

When Ericka’s phone dings sometime while she’s chatting to the Hydra about their lovely scales (”thank you so much, Captain, we do our very best”) she checks her phone, nearly bursts into unwanted tears, and excuses herself to lean on one of the lobby’s couches.

Mavis: Hey, Ericka! Adding you to our family group chat! Let me know if you get this!

She’d never been a part of anything. The mundanity of a family group chat was so... boring in concept but left her warm and teary-eyed, and she swiped at her eyes.

She was about to respond with some sort of long-winded, heartfelt thank you until three dots on the bottom appeared.

Dracula: MAVIS WHY ARE YOU TEXTING ME

Mavis: We’re adding Ericka to the group chat, dad

Johnny: Sweeeeet 🙌🏼

Dracula: MAVY WAVY THAT’S A GREAT IDEA DID YOU TELL HER YET

Mavis: This is a GROUP CHAT dad. She’s on, now.

Dracula: ERICKA YOU’RE A PART OF OUR GROUP CHAT NOW

Mavis: Dad, she knows

Dracula: ERICKA. YOU JUST HAVE TO TYPE AND SEND IT AND EVERYONE SEES IT

Mavis: She knows how to use group chat, dad

Dracula: TYPE INTO THE BOX AND THEN PRESS SEND

Ericka: I know, honey.

Dracula: THE SEND BUTTON IS THE BLUE ONE THAT SAYS SEND

Ericka: I know, honey, thank you.

Dracula: SHE FIGURED IT OUT MAVIS

Johnny: dude, you can talk to the people there, you know?

Ericka: I’m here, hon. You can talk to me.

Dracula: MAVIS WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING ME ERICKA FIGURED IT OUT

Mavis: We all know, dad.

She must have looked all colors of. crazy from the way she was chuckling down at her phone. She looked up. A few monsters gave her a look or two but went back to their newspapers. Ericka shrugged off the feeling of the awkward spotlight and looked back down at her screen.

Her boyfriend (was that what he was? the term was almost strange and young, like she was still in middle school, mooning over some blonde haired scrawny boy, but it still managed to send little sparks down her spine) was savvy in the ways of most things having to do with hotel management.

Tech intelligent, he was not.

She typed back “Thanks for adding me” and waited.

Three dots appeared at the bottom of the screen.

Dracula: ERICKA MAKE SURE YOU DON’T SEND ANYTHING YOU DON’T WANT THEM TO SEE ON HERE THIS IS PUBLIC.

Ericka: I know, honey.

Mavis: she knows, dad 😑And you don’t need to keep using caps lock.

Dracula: WHAT’S CAPS LOCK

A minute passed. She watched the dots appear, disappear, and then appear again.

Dracula: HEY HONEY ARE YOU FREE TONIGHT I WAS THINKING YOU COULD TRY ON THAT NEW LINGERIE WE PICKED OUT

Mavis: Group chat, dad! Group! Chat!

Johnny: lol

Dracula: ERICKA THIS WAS A GROUP CHAT I ACCIDENTALLY TYPED INTO DON’T DO THE SAME THING I DID

Dracula: I THINK I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT DO YOU WANT TO TRY ON THE LINGERIE TONIGHT

Ericka: Still group chat, honey.

Mavis: DAD.

Ericka pockets her phone, doing her best to swallow back the outrageous cocktail of embarrassment and hysteria. She made a note to try and teach the King of Darkness how to navigate his phone later.

Maybe after that night. When she tried on the new lingerie.

Mavis had grown accustomed, day by day (and sometimes hour by hour) with the presence of her fathers new significant other. And had made an effort to at least try and include the woman.

And when she had, when the gates were opened, and when the invitations were extended, she found that Ericka... was actually pretty cool.

She was actually really cool.

The woman had been to nearly every continent, save Australia, and had navigated the seas for twenty-seven long years. “I started when I was fifteen,” she told the young Vampiress, who was going through the hotel menus for the week while Ericka sat beside her, stapling invoices to accounts. “My grandfather had me training before then, but we didn’t have the boat until I turned fourteen. So-”

“And you learned on your own?”

Ericka shrugged, slapping down the lid of the stapler with a thud. “I did a lot of things alone. The only thing he really helped me with was...” she squirmed, choosing her words carefully, “monster stuff. You know...”

“Oh,” said Mavis. The topic was rarely breached, though Ericka suspected it wouldn’t be long until the vampiress started asking questions.

“But other than that...”

Mavis shook her head, shaking the memory of krakens and wooden stakes off her mind. “So what? You only learned on a cruise ship?”

“Oh, no. I learned on all sorts. Sailing, small schooners, rowboats, catamaran, fishing. I still own the cruise ship. Haven’t had the heart to sell it, yet, since cruise season is coming. Your dad and I are figuring out if I should go for a few months or not. I still have a small motorboat docked out somewhere near New York. I’m thinking of having it shipped here.” She grinned. “If I do, I’ll have to take you and Johnny out on some of the lakes. Sunrise on the water is to die for.”

Mavis, midway down the menu page, popped her head up. “For reals?”

“Sure!” Ericka flicked her hand. “Cruises are one thing. But small boat rides out? When it’s quiet and the sun is just coming up? Nothing more romantic.”

“Oh my god, that sounds perf-”

Their phones both buzzed.

They looked down.

Dracula: ERICKA I THINK I LOCKED MYSELF INSIDE MY COFFIN

Mavis slumped. “Didn’t you guys get a bed?”

“Yeah. But he likes the coffin when he’s freaking out, and you know the quarterly review is due tomorrow and...” she tapered off, already texting.

Ericka: Honey, this is a group chat. What’s wrong?

Dracula: IM STUCK

Ericka: Yeah. Honey. I got that. But how

Dracula: I DON’T KNOW IT JUST HAPPENED

Dracula: SOS

Ericka sighed. “Put a pin in this,” she apologized. Mavis flashed a thumbs up. “I’m going to go save your father from himself.”

“Good luck,” Mavis called after her, going back to the menus.

A few minutes later her phone buzzed again. There was a private text, from Ericka.

Ericka: Your father accidentally slammed his coffin too hard. It got stuck. I’m trying to get him out. Can you call maintenence?

Mavis: Sure.

Mavis put her phone down. And then she picked it back up, grinning.

Mavis: Can you send a video, first?

Ericka: ...

Ericka: [Ericka has sent a video]

Mavis accepted the link.

Dracula: MAVIS I KNOW YOU HAVE A VIDEO OF ME SCREAMING FOR HELP IN MY COFFIN

Mavis: ... no?

Dracula: I KNOW YOU DO

Dracula: BUT I WANT YOU TO TEACH ME

Mavis: Teach you what

Dracula: HOW DO YOU VIDEO IN TEXT

Mavis: You don’t video in text, dad. You open the camera.

Dracula: ...

Dracula: THIS PHONE HAS A CAMERA?

It took quite a bit to get Vampire’s drunk. Their hearts didn’t technically beat, and their blood didn’t really run, and so most of the chemicals that needed to get to their brains could only get there after said Vampire were absolutely and totally pickled.

Wayne, Murray, Frank, and Griffin succeeded.

The wedding of the Chupacabra had ended after 5 am, and though most of the guests had long gone back to their rooms, the boys had dragged Dracula along, claiming that a long overdue boys night.

“Go,” Ericka had told him, waving him away with a yawn. “I’m gonna get to bed anyway. My feet are killing me.” He’d swept her into every dance there; the notion of watching slow dances from the side of the dance floor had been left behind, and he hadn’t stopped smiling since they’d finished swaying to the last Al Green song.

He kissed her cheek. And then, looking behind him to make sure his Pack wasn’t watching, he leaned in and planted a kiss on her lips.

The pack apparently was watching and chose then to let out a chorus of hoots.

“I’ll meet you upstairs?”

“Remember to shut off the lights.”

And they’d taken him away, with little calls of “thank you, Captain!” and “we’ll have him back in one piece!”

That had been three hours ago. Before they’d begun plying one another with beers. And then shots. And finally, when the sun was beginning to burn dew off the leaves, mixers.

The zombie bartender handed Dracula another cosmo, while Griffin sucked the vodka out of the chunks of pineapple on his skewer.

“God...” Murray slurred, sucking back a Sex on the Beach. “Le’me tell you somethin’. Y’all are soooooo lucky. With wiiiiives and relaaaaaationships-”

Wayne slumped down, grinning from ear to ear. He motioned for the bartender to refill his vodka tonic. “SOOOooo lucky,” he said. “SO SO lucky. I got kids. I got... got Wanda. God, she-she’s per -hic- perfect.”

“Mmmmm...” agreed Griffin, trying to stab his pineapple with the fancy umbrella. “Totally. Tot-a-lly. TOTES.”

Frank, half asleep on the countertop motioned weakly with his hand.

Dracula poked at his cosmo sadly. He wasn’t drunk, was he? He could see straight (even if most of what he saw was doubles) and he still seemed to be able to use magic? He flickered his fingers experimentally. A shot of blue knocked over a chair somewhere behind him.

Okay. So maybe not.

God? When was the last time he’d had this much to drink? He’d been stressed lately, with wedding planning and the hotels new wave of maintenance ever since the heavy Transylvanian summer showers had begun. His head gave a lovely thump thump and he rubbed his temple. It was stress that was causing the headache, he told himself. And not the six vodka tonics and seven cosmos he’d knocked back in the last two hours.

Yeah. That made sense. Stress. Just stress.

“‘M super luckyyy tooo” drawled Frank, head still on the counter. “Got... got a wife... She’s sooooo pretty.” He held his ears. “But loud.”

Griffin burped.

Dracula poked his drink again, suddenly feeling lonely in all the talk of wives and partners. “Ohhhhh” he groaned, plucking at the cherry at the end of his tiny umbrella. “I wishhhhh I was luckkkkky too. Haven’ -urp- haven’ had someone since... since Martha an-”

“Drac!” Griffin tried to put his hand on the counts shoulder but ended up slapping it instead. “Drac you DO. Remeeeember? You have Eri-Ericka.”

Dracula sat taller. “Oh yeah!” he exclaimed. He swayed in his seat. “Ericka!”

Frank popped up. “Ericka’s great!” he shouted before his head fell back down with a THUMP that made all the drinks jump in their glasses.

Dracula nodded, ignoring the feeling of sea sickness in his gut. Was the hotel floating? He didn’t remember installing a lake? “She’s- she’s so so so so sooooooo great! She’s so pretty and nice and pretty and pretty-”

“So nice!” agreed Wayne.

Murray nodded. “And she could kill you!”

“Which’s suuuuuuper hot,” said Griffin.

“Totally hot,” mumbled Frank into the counter.

“I shou-should text her!”

“You totally should.” Wayne pumped his fist. “Do it! Do it!”

“I’m gonna!” That was a good idea! Texting meant you weren’t drunk, right? Or stressed? Or absolutely out of your mind?

Dracula took out his phone. “What should I say?”

“Use those faces!” Griffin said, glasses slipping off. “Girls looove those faces.”

“And compliment her,” suggested Murray. “Say she’s beautiful.”

“And could kill you,” mumbled Frank.

“YES.” Dracula liked this idea. Dracula liked this idea a lot.

Dracula: HEY HONEY SMILEY FACE

Dracula: THE BOYS AND I ARE STILL HERE SMILEY FACE

Dracula: THEY REMINDED ME THAT YOU EXIST AND I WANTED TO SAY HOW MUCH I LOVE YOUR FACE SMILEY FACE

Dracula: IT’S A GREAT FACE EVEN IF IT TRIED TO KILL ME THAT ONE TIME HEART

Ericka: ...

Ericka: honey... why are you texting me.

Mavis: what’s happening?

Dracula: BECAS I LOVE YOU

Dracula: OH HELLO MAVY WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE

Ericka: This is a group chat, sweetheart.

Mavis: Dad I was sleeping

Ericka: We all were. it’s 7 in the morning.

Dracula: YES BUT I LOVE YOU SMILEY FACE

Ericka: Why do you keep saying smiley face and heart?

Dracula: BECAUSE GIRLS LOVE WHEN MEN USE EMOTION CONS HEART

Mavis: You don’t spell them you use the picture Just put a heart or a smiley face.

Dracula: THERE ARE PICTURES? SMILEY FACE

Mavis: oh my god.

Ericka: ...

Ericka: text me again and i’ll actually kill you

Dracula: OKAY HONEY HEARTHEARTHEART

Dracula: ...

Dracula: ERICKA I STILL LOVE YOUR FACe

Dracula: AND YOUR BUTT

Dracula: YOU LOOK GREAT NAKED

Mavis: Ericka, please kill him

Mavis: I’ll give you the stakes myself

Ericka: 👍🏼I’m pretty sure I still have extras in my duffel but thank you, sweetheart

Mavis: No prob goodnight

Dracula: THATS SUPER HOT

Ericka: I’m locking you outside in the sun if you don’t stop

Dracula held his phone close to his chest. “I just love her so much,” he choked.

“Super hot,” said Griffin.

Frank groaned into the counter.

Dracula woke up with an earth-shattering headache. “Oh...” he mumbled. “Oh shit.” From next to him, Ericka looked up from her book. It was some adventure story with an explosion on the cover.

“Yeah,” she said. “That sounds about right.”

“What did I do last night?” he rolled over, facing her, wincing in the light of her bedside lamp. His voice sounded too loud against the stone walls. “Did I die?”

“No. But I almost killed you.”

“Oh,” he said.

“And you drank a lot,” she said, going back to her book. “I’m pretty sure it was a bunch of cosmos. That’s what you told me when you came back.”

“I walked back?” He squinted, trying to remember. Or maybe trying to block out the light. When did the room get so bright?

“Mmmhm. Jumped into bed and woke me up to tell me that I was hot.” She turned the page. “And then you stole all the covers. You’re lucky I don’t keep stakes next to me.”

He ignored the last part and rubbed his face. “I think I’m dead. I think I died, and now I’m dead.”

“Technically, you’re undead.”

“You know what I mean.” He pushed his hands against his eyes. “It’s been a long few weeks. Stress is doing me in.”

“This isn't stressed,” Ericka said into her book. “You’re hungover..”

He groaned, hiding his eyes in his pillow. “Vampires,” he remarked painfully, “don’t get drunk.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Because you were drunk.”

“Stressed,” he argued.

“Stressed people don’t drunk text their entire families at 8 in the morning.”

He peeked out with one eye. “What?”

“Yup.” Ericka said, popping the P. “You spelled out emoticons. and then told everyone I looked good naked.”

Dracula stared at her like she’d told him the earth was moments away from destruction. “I didn’t.”

“You did,” she said, turning the page again. “But please. Blame it on stress.”

He hid his face in the pillow and groaned.

I’m sure that there are many more adventures in Vampire/Human Family Texting.

But right now, these are the ones I could think of.

Please, enjoy.

#hotel transylvania #hotel transylvania 3 #Count and Captain #adventures in texting #poor drac doesn't know how to text #he's getting there

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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IT USED TO SUCK TO WORK THERE AND IT WILL BE BAD IS THAT MY MODEL OF WORK IS A JOB

Yahoo should buy Google, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous than they seemed. You can be a great startup founder but hopeless at thinking of names for your company.1 The super-angels were looking for companies that will get bought. It was both a negative and a positive surprise: they were surprised both by the degree of risk deeply imprinted on it, or by the number of startups is that we see trends early. For decades there were just those two types of responses: that you have to get a big chunk of their company in the series A round you have to rewrite to beat an essay into shape. The source of the problem may be a variant of the Bradley Effect. Led by a large and terrifyingly formidable man called Anil Singh, Yahoo's sales guys would fly out to Procter & Gamble and come back with million dollar orders for banner ad impressions. I got wrong, because if I'd explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised them. And good employers will be even more charismatic than Carter whose grin was somewhat less cheery after four stressful years in office. They at least were in Boston. So in effect what's happened is that a hundred years.

Some of your classmates are probably going to be. Which means the ambitious can now do arbitrage on them. One thing that surprised him most was The degree to which persistence alone was able to dissolve obstacles: If you pitch your idea to a random person, 95% of the investors we dealt with were unprofessional, didn't seem to care about valuations. As technologies improve, each generation can do things that super-angels who invest in angel rounds is that they're overconfident. The traditions and financial models of the VC business. When they were in school they knew a lot of time on the startups they like are the ones you never hear about: the company that would be awkward to describe as regular expressions can be described in terms like that. Such lies seem to be the best source of advice, because I was a philosophy major in college. Four years later, startups are ubiquitous in Silicon Valley. Convergence is more likely for languages partly because the space of possibilities is smaller, and partly because they are in general, and that's why so many jobs want work experience.

Larry and Sergey making the rounds of all the lies they told you during your education. Many things people like, especially if they're young and ambitious, they like largely for the feeling of virtue in liking them. Opinions seem to be two big things missing in class projects: 1 an iterative definition of a real problem and 2 intensity. Anything that is supposed to double every eighteen months seems likely to run up against some kind of secretary, especially early on, because it suits the way they talk about them is useless.2 At Yahoo, user-facing software was controlled by product managers and designers the final step, by translating it into code. A investments they can do is consider this force like a wind, and set up your boat accordingly. Morale is key in design. Some kinds of waste really are disgusting. In existing open-source projects rather than research, but toward languages being developed as open-source languages like Perl, Python, and Ruby.

When you design something for an unsophisticated user. The Age of the Essay probably the second or third day, with text that ultimately survived in red and text that later got deleted in gray. But here's a related suggestion that goes with the grain instead of against it: that universities establish a writing major. Investors were excited about the Internet. The earlier you pick startups, the more it has to cost. Few dissertations are read with pleasure, especially by their authors. Really we're more of a small, furry steam catapult. You'd think that would be of the slightest use to those producing it. Immigration seem to work themselves out.

As more of them go ahead and start startups, why not modern texts? So one way to find interesting work is to volunteer as a research assistant. It applies way less than most people realize. The purpose of the committee is presumably to ensure that the company doesn't waste money.3 You can't watch people when everyone is watching you. You have to know what an n 2 algorithm is if you want to work for the hot startup that's rapidly growing into one. Raising an angel round.4 That was why they'd positioned themselves as a media company. Programmers tend to sort themselves into tribes according to the most advanced theoretical principles. Probably not, for two reasons. Good VCs are smart money, but they're still money.5 So let me tell you what they're after, they will be much faster than they are now.

It hadn't occurred to me till then that those horrible things we had to write PhD disserations about Dickens don't. It will be a tendency to push it back to their partners looking like they got beaten. It's only a year old, but already everyone in the Valley is watching them. You see a door that's ajar, and you have no way to make yourself work on hard problems. Co-founders really should be people you already know. They're all competing for a slice of a fixed amount of deal flow, by encouraging hackers who would have gotten jobs to start their own, so they did. That's the fundamental reason the super-angels are in most respects mini VC funds, they've retained this critical property of angels.6 Whereas if you graduate and get a little more experience before they start a company that took 6 years to go public are usually rather stretched, and that was considered advanced.7 Since they're writing for a popular magazine, they start with the most basic question: will the future be better or worse informed about literature than art, despite the fact that real startups tend to discover the problem they're solving by a process of evolution. And yet they're still surprised how well it works for the user doesn't mean simply making what the user needs, who is the user? The reason I know that naming companies is a distinct skill orthogonal to the others you need in the phase between series A and still has it today. While some VCs have technical backgrounds, I don't mean to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and part of the confusion is grammatical.

You meet a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. The designer is human too.8 Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to launch them before raising their next round of funding.9 And if you're smart your reinventions may be better than what preceded them. And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way. Then you've sunk to a whole new level of inefficiency. Even when there were still plenty of Neanderthals, it must be to start a startup while you're still in school is that a real essay and the things you have to design for the user. Like it or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over.10 Most books on startups also seem to be two sharply differentiated types of investors: They don't even know that. Working on hard problems is not, by itself, enough.11

Notes

If we had, we'd have understood users a lot online.

Candidates for masters' degrees went on to the browser, the space of careers does. Your mileage may vary.

To be fair, curators are in a company if the founders realized. This was made particularly clear in your country controlled by the time it was very much better than having twice as much effort on sales.

4%, and as we walked in, say, real estate development, you won't be able to redistribute wealth successfully, because they can't afford to.

When that happens, it will probably frighten you more than most people will give you 11% more income, or the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written it? Corollary: Avoid starting a company grew at 1. For most of the best VCs tend to be self-imposed.

Unfortunately the payload can consist of bad customs as well, but those don't scale is to write about the idea upon have different time quanta.

Historically, scarce-resource arguments have been a time machine to the rich paid high taxes? If you extrapolate another 20 years. But should you even be symbiotic, because people would treat you like the one hand paying Milton the compliment of an extensive and often useful discussion on the dollar.

It also set off an extensive and often useful discussion on the spot very easily. Well, almost. Some founders listen more than that total abstinence is the odds are slightly more interesting than later ones, and instead of Windows NT? Some VCs will try to establish a protocol for web-based applications.

The CRM114 Discriminator. Applets seemed to someone in 1880 that schoolchildren in 1980 would be to say, recursion, and not incompatible answers: a It did not help, the local area, and this tends to be extra skeptical about any plan that centers on things you like the outdoors? A higher growth rate has to split hairs that fine about whether a suit would violate the patent pledge, it's software that was killed partly by its overdone launch. There is archaeological evidence for large companies.

Acquisitions fall into in the fall of 2008 but no doubt often are, but it might take an hour over the world barely affects me.

Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, e. This is one you take out your anti-immigration people to work in a journal, and b I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to change. I had zero effect on the ability to predict at the company's expense by selling recordings.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Dan Giffin, Fred Wilson, and Aaron Swartz for putting up with me.

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ten-summoners-fails · 7 years

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Book rec

Everyone please read ‘The Name of the Wind’. It’s a great story, very well written, exciting, original and actually promising. I also love its sheer eccentricity and the fact that the story and its heroes are actually able to laugh at themselves from time to time.

Now, the rest is rather personal - as much, of course, as things can get personal on a public online platform. It doesn’t matter... I feel some strange, perverted desire to pour myself out a little bit, just as I used to do when I was younger. Who knows, it may still do me a little good.

Reading this book is a very pleasant, but at the same time also quite disturbing experience. And as days go by and pages turn, it becomes all the more disturbing.

I bought the book last Monday. The thirteenth. In a normal case, I should have finished a novel of 600-something pages, like, last Thursday if it was any good. If a book is fine, it keeps me up at night; it nags on my mind while I’m jolting my way to work across all means of public transport; it pervades my dreams. (I had swallowed Anna Karenina in three days, damn it!) ...and where I am with the book? Not even in the middle! I’m struggling with it - in fact, I’m struggling because, in a way, I’m enjoying it too much. And while I’m trying to save all the honeydrops for my eager tongue, I’m letting time slip. From a certain perspective, it’s almost as if I was horrified to turn the pages - a self-admitted goal of George R. R. Martin.

I’m aware that I had started this entry with pure praise... and don’t get me wrong, I truly like 'The Name of the Wind’. I’m sort of becoming attached to it - I’m glad I actually bought it, and didn’t just borrow or put it out. I own a tremendous amount of books, and this one is already among the “precious” pieces... but what the hell is wrong then, one could ask?

My problem can be explained with two short words: Awakening. And, Resemblance.

It happens to me quite often that people inquire about my past - you know how things are, it all starts off with the friendly banter. And while I tend not to ask too much questions, I’m usually more than willingly give chunks of truth, such as: “I spent the first 8 years of my life with a troupe of actors”. Or, “I didn’t find my place in nursery school: the kids just wanted to talk about Barbies and Teletubbies. I could read, write, recite classical drama and I have never saw a TV screen in all my life. Imagine my confusion and fear.” Or, “I have once made a bet with a fisherman on a Greek island that I could swim across to Albania. I almost drowned.” - And all the stories I have told you were true: only, I’m very good at leaving the dark parts out of them. The less pleasant parts. The not-so-entertaining parts... Pain, suffering, loss, deceptions (though part of me is still convinced that, despite everything that happened, I don’t yet know their too nature).

Everyone is convinced of the uniqueness of their own situation and obstacles, I know. Everyone has problems, I know. The gripping, numbing claws that lure you back to depression with the illusion of blissful idleness provide no excuse to lose hope - I know that as well. And whenever I’m telling my story (I mean, really telling it, from the beginning to this day; though you might need to get me steadily drunk for that), I tend to be a little dramatic about it, just as most of us would. People usually don’t hold that against me; I grew up among good storytellers, men and women who could fill a stage alone, and though I have always lacked their talent, some of the technical details did manage to stuck with me. And I have always liked a good tale.

Let’s get back to the point! Awakening; and Resemblance.

My problem with Kvothe’s tale is that I see to much of myself in it. Autrement dit, Kvothe has too much of me or I have too much of him: I don’t know.

I had to admit myself that I understand his general anger and stiffness towards the world more than I healthily should. And I also find that even if I barely even hold a morsel of his wit and talent, I have been treated the same way quite often. I have been wronged quite often, and I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to admit yourself that the revenge you seek is meaningless, and beyond your power. I know what it’s like to hate yourself because of an ache that should be still sharp and shrill, but has dulled too quickly. I know what it’s like to see the world fall apart around you. I know what it’s like to desperatly cling to the last few pennies you have. It seems like the only thing Kvothe knows and I don’t is the feeling of downright burying your own parents - and maybe that of starving.

Still, that’s WAY TOO much resemblance, wouldn’t you say? Even physically speaking. While reading, I remembered what was it like with the troupe. I remembered smells, colours, laughter, fake tears, my parents in masks that made them unrecognisable, a few lines from here and there, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ mingling with ‘Tartuffe’, child’s says, strange lights, applause, beer and wine I wasn’t supposed to drink, “oww-s” and “aww-s” and “eww-s”, Midsummer Nights (which we celebrated), whistle and cheering, and the laughter of the audience... and all thse sensations - just as described in th book - opened several doors in my mind, doors that should have probably been left closed and (poetically speaking) barred with iron.

...which means I also remembered how everything had fallen apart at its time, and how my childish mind had tried to sew the pieces back together during great journeys, stuffing the holes with entirely new impressions. And I remembered the new sort of life that came afterwards - everything, that was more or less normal, more or less like a young teenager’s life should be (at least, period); everything and everyone who had failed to strip me of the unknown, gloomy-looking past that has always lurked around me like a cloak sewed from fog - impossible to put a finger on it, but still dark and dense as a stormcloud.

I could be around 12 or 13 when a friend once told me that I was living in my own world, and entirely: far away from all others, in my carefully bared castle. She also told me that I appeared perfectly content that way, and in peace, and she envied that. I had laughed half-heartedly.

We all use our imagination as a shield when we are kids. My shield was huge and shiny, and no sword or axe, not even the shards of reality could crack it. Nothing could. It was perfect. Imagination is hard to grasp, but I have always been quite good in recreating reality in my head. I was able to recreate smells, sounds, feelings, sight, the touch of something. I could (and to this day, still can) bring tears to my eyes with a single thought. I could just randomly start speaking and end up telling an adventorous tale for three hours. I could wander the woodlands alone, pretending that I was my own prey and own suitor, and I had to catch myself. I had played several dozen characters for the same time in my had, and we had interesting conversations: conversations I could later write down if I wanted, from the first letter to the last. They stayed with me. Stories and tales flew from my hands whenever I sat down to write, and I always had a song in mind. Believe me or not, I even found an old lute no one needed or used, and I taught myself how to play a few melodies. (According to some scarce recordings, I have always been terrible, but I was a kid, and it botherd me little. I had more the air of a bard with that lute in hand - and after all, in my childhood memories, I live as a master of singers).

As I grew older, though, the power of my imagination began to dull a little. It became much less - well, wild, much less physical; I felt more and more eager need to write my stories and not just act them out as I used to. I remember myself collapsing in the middle of my mother’s garden (after the apocalypse of my old life, already) and crying so hard it mad my whole body shake because I wasn’t able to reproduce a vision as clear as intended. That was some sort of a breaking point, and since then, I've been steadily losing my imagination. As time passed, I have come to terms with that, considering it an inevitable trait of growing up. With time, I have downright forgotten what these imagined sensations have truly felt like... until the moment Kvothe’s story brought them back.

I was sitting on the tramway, going to work, and - suddenly I wasn’t going anymore, I was just in the story. I can’t explain it more clearly, and you’ll probably think I’m crazy, or some sort of a huge nerd, or simply acting out. I’m not. My imagination - that of my childhood - suddenly returned with all its force, and crushed down on my mind like a steady wave of tunder. Nothing remained, but the reconstructed reality of what my mind’s eye was seeing. The sensation was so overwhelmingly wonderful I completly forgot to get off that goddamn tram and was truly and entirely late from work. Still, I couldn’t care less. I got what I have always wanted. My imagination had returned!

And it was frightening.

I’m now experincing the dark side of this sudden, newly rediscovered power: I have changed, and therefore so has my imagination. It is darker. I am darker. It can be frightening and unsettling. It can steal my sleep. Still... my consciousness is sharp. I feel like I have been awakened from a mindset of disturbing sleep: from the mindset that others have poetically bestowed with a complicated Latin name that stands for a certain kind of depressive disorder. But I have always known better: I know that I have seen too much, that I’m too young and I have also told too much of myself in this blog entry that no one will read this far: still, I have to repeat myself: I could not care less.

Since I have understood all of this, I’m a bit wary of returning to Kvothe’s tale, but the book is like a magnet, and I carry it with myself wherever I go.

If you have got this far, you’re a hero, truly. I mean it.

...and my chest suddenly got somewhat less heavy.

#personal

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

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How I Got My Job Meet Nancy Silverton’s Right-Hand Woman added to Google Docs

How I Got My Job Meet Nancy Silverton’s Right-Hand Woman

Kate Green didn’t know who chef Nancy Silverton was when she started answering phones for Mozza Restaurant Group. Now she’s the group’s communications director.

In How I Got My Job, folks from across the food and restaurant industry answer Eater’s questions about, well, how they got their job. Today’s installment: Kate Green.

Kate Green is an expert in restaurant marketing and communications representing the Mozza Restaurant Group in Los Angeles and, in her spare time, she has a side gig co-hosting the culinary podcast-turned-talk show Table Setting. So it’s hard to believe that 13 years ago, Green knew very little about the food industry — and virtually nothing about Mozza’s legendary founder and chef Nancy Silverton.

In 2006, fresh out of San Diego Mesa College with a degree in communications, Green felt directionless. After moving to Los Angeles to model, she was convinced by a friend to take a part-time job at Mozza. Though she didn’t know it at the time, she was embarking on an exciting career with the mother of artisan bread making.

She felt intimidated at first, but gradually Green found her footing at the restaurant group. Along the way, she forged a deep professional relationship with Silverton as her assistant and right-hand woman, while also making a name for herself in the LA dining scene. Today, Green is Mozza’s communications director, touching just about every department. In the following interview, Green talks about the value of growing with a company in the restaurant industry and what it takes to assist a world-renowned chef.

What did you originally want to do when you started your career?

Kate Green: I went to school for communications and public relations. I had wanted to go into the music industry and do public relations for a record label or artist, but at the end of school I got confused about what I wanted to do. So when I graduated college and moved to LA, I started modeling and didn’t have a traditional job. That’s where I was when I started to work for Nancy.

How did you get into the restaurant industry?

My best friend from college was the opening hostess at Mozza. She didn’t think my modeling situation was the healthiest environment for me and she threatened to tell my parents about it if I didn’t take a job answering the phones two days per week [at the restaurant].

Everybody who knows me, knows that I have a really good relationship with my parents and my dad specifically. I grew up in a really strict military household. So him getting a call that I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing was not really an option for me — so I listened.

What was the biggest challenge you faced when you were starting out in the industry?

When I first started at Mozza, I was working with people who had been in the industry for years and who were a lot older than me. I didn’t really know anything about restaurants, so I had to start from scratch.

Thankfully, I did have mentors to guide me through, but the biggest challenge was feeling insecure about my ability to fit in that world. I didn’t know who Nancy or any big chefs were when I started working there. It wasn’t intimidating because she was a famous chef; it was intimidating because I had never done anything like that before and I had no idea what I was doing. When you’re answering the phone, you’re the first line of defense for the restaurant. It’s really important how you interact with guests.

When was the first time you felt successful?

I started to feel more comfortable and realized that the role was a good fit for me when I developed a connection with Nancy. She began to acknowledge my job and recognize I was good at it. There’s no higher praise than getting it from Nancy. I got promoted from reservationist to office manager to running events to working with her directly as her assistant.

Did you have any setbacks, and, if so, what were they?

I wouldn’t call them setbacks because it’s all a learning experience. Things at the time that you think might be setbacks — like if you get something wrong or are having a hard time learning to do something — actually end up being important.

If you don’t have any adversity or issues while you’re doing your job, you don’t really have a point of perspective and you don’t really learn how to handle things when they do go wrong. A lot of what we do in hospitality is learning from mistakes, so yes, of course, I had issues, but I wouldn’t call them setbacks because they made me stronger in what I do.

What was the turning point that led to where you are now in your career?

My trajectory is a little bit different than that of most people. Most people who work in restaurants spend four or five years in one place at the most. I started in a very entry-level position and gradually moved up as the years went on, which gave me the ability to have longevity and work at Mozza for as long as I have. It’s very rare.

What were the most important skills that got you there?

I think my strengths are, first and foremost, communication and people. I’m a people person and I always have been. I’m a connector, a mover, and a shaker in that sense. I think it’s a strength in my position to have a finger on the pulse of where things are in the restaurant industry and keep pushing forward on that note.

I’m pretty self-aware. If I don’t know how to do something or I’m not good at something, I’ll delegate or work with others to get it done. I’m not afraid to ask for help. I think people make the mistake of trying to do everything themselves and keep a tight grip on their departments, but I think in restaurants it always works better to collaborate with the team.

Do you have, or did you ever have, a mentor in your field?

My mentor was David Rosoff. He was our managing partner for eight years and now works at Hippo and Triple Beam Pizza. People make fun of me and call me a baby Rosoff, because I have some of his qualities. ‘Particular’ is a nice way to put it. It wasn’t always easy in the sense that he really pushed me to do what I was supposed to be doing. He believes that when you open a circle, you close a circle. If you walk into a room, you look around for what’s out of place and fix it. Every single day, he would tell us to reach for the top, knowing you’re going to fall down a little bit. He pushed us all to be as good as we could be. I would not be where I am today without him. I lend a lot of my sensibilities and the way that I do things to him. Even now, 13 years later, he’s still in the back of my mind — for better or for worse.

What does your job involve and what’s your favorite part about it?

I am still working with Nancy always. That’s one of my favorite parts of my job. I wear a lot of different hats, but technically the title is director of communications. We do all of our public relations, marketing, and digital in-house.

My day always starts with a call from Nancy. Even though we both know we’re going to be at the restaurant, we connect in the morning and lay out the day with what she needs me to do. I really like having a list, because it’s the only way I stay organized. When you wear a lot of hats, you have to manage your time. I run all the social media for the restaurants, so there are Instagram stories and those things, as well as marketing events like guest chef dinners and cooking classes that we’re doing on site. I’m also in charge of all of the newsletters. I need to keep all the digital and marketing machines pushing forward, trying to brainstorm what we’re going to do next, while also organizing Nancy’s travels.

I think I’m one of the only people in the group who’s dealing with every single department of every single restaurant on the corner, because there are so many moving parts. It can be challenging at times to try to keep up, but that’s the fun part. There’s never a dull moment on the corner of Melrose and Highland. Plus, I get to be around fantastic food and wine all the time. That will always be one of the biggest perks.

You do a podcast on top of that?

In terms of Table Setting, the podcast is a full-on talk show now. Originally, Tastemade came to me saying they were interested in creating a culinary podcast, because they didn’t have one and obviously podcasts are super exciting and interesting. When we started doing it, they had just come out with Tastemade TV and wanted content for that vertical, so they filmed the podcast in addition to recording the audio. It turns out that 98 percent of [the audience] was watching it, rather than listening. We just got picked up for season 3, so we ditched the big podcast microphones, and now are hosting a talk show in our little living room with our guests.

As far as schedule goes, it’s interesting. People think that we film once per week, but we actually shoot all of the episodes four days in a row and shoot three episodes per day. Max [Block, my co-host] and my schedules’ are so busy that there’s no other way that we could do it, so we get them done in a chunk. It also helps keep me focused, because I’m in that mindset of being on-air talent, which is not that easy to turn on and off.

I love getting to flex that creative muscle that I don’t necessarily get to use on a daily basis. A lot of what I do in my job is very much behind the scenes and focused on other people. My job is to support Nancy in whatever she is doing. It takes time to switch my brain to being in front of the camera, instead of behind it. I think my favorite part is getting to have that creativity and speak to people in the industry who I’ve known for a long time or have been admiring and getting a chance to tell their stories.

What would surprise people about your job?

People would be surprised to hear that it really is a 24-hour job. Whether I’m in the office or not, I’m working. Especially when you’re someone’s assistant, you don’t really have days off. They’re called “out of office” days. It’s more hands-on than people think. It’s not a cookie cutter job. Every single day is different and you really have to adapt and be on your toes.

What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve been given?

If you’re writing an email, write a draft and then go back and take all the emotions out of it before you press send. I think we’re all guilty of the 45 exclamation marks and it’s really important to remember that when you’re writing professional things, you don’t want to be emotional or reactionary. You need to keep your side of the street clean.

What advice would you give someone who wants your job?

Make sure you find the boss who you actually get along with and work well with. When you have to be around somebody that much, you have to make sure it’s a good fit on both sides and you believe in what they’re doing.

Having longevity in restaurants is really difficult. Sticking with it and staying in one place for so long might seem like a downside for a lot of people, but I think there are a lot of upsides and it says a lot about the brand that we have so many people who have been around for so long. It’s valuable to dig in, take ownership, and be part of something bigger. My advice to the new guard is, in this age of instant gratification and social media, you should get out of that mindset. You should try to get as much out of what you’re doing as you can, rather than looking around for the next best thing.

Morgan Goldberg is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, California.

Photo courtesy of Kate Green.

Illustrations from the Noun Project: camera by Dhika Hernandita; covered dish by Made by Made; wine by Made by Made; lightbulb by Maxim Kulikov; hand writing by Pongsakorn.

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/young-guns/2020/2/28/21151583/chef-executive-assistant-restaurant-communications-career-advice-kate-green-mozza-los-angeles

Created February 28, 2020 at 09:17PM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

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ronnykblair · 5 years

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Sales & Trading in Canada: Equally Attractive Public Markets Opportunity?

I’ve made several attempts to cover investment banking, private equity, and pension funds in Canada, but sales & trading has not yet made that list – until now.

I recently spoke with a long-time reader who’s worked across different desks in Canada and who’s seen the recruiting process from both sides.

As you’ve probably guessed, S&T in Canada is quite different from S&T in markets like the U.S. and U.K.

Here’s all the information I extracted:

Canada Sales & Trading: Breaking into the Industry

Q: Can you start by giving us a brief overview of your story and how you got into the industry?

A: Sure. I went to one of the “target schools” in Canada (i.e., Ivey, Queen’s, McGill, Waterloo, Rotman, Schulich, and maybe a few others), completed internships in asset management, and then won an S&T internship from one of the top Canadian banks.

Then I converted that internship into a full-time role – but at some banks in Canada, you still complete rotations even in “full-time roles,” so I worked on a few different desks before settling on my current one in a permanent role.

My biggest advantage was that I knew very early on that I wanted to work in the public markets, so I could prepare far in advance and plan my internships.

The recruiting timeline in the U.S. is officially insane, and while it’s not quite as bad in Canada, it has been moving up each year.

Also, competition for jobs at Canadian banks has been increasing because many U.S. firms have had trouble sponsoring U.S. work visas due to the “political situation” there.

Q: Were there any significant differences in the recruiting process?

A: In my experience, Canadian sales & trading interviews tended to be more technical.

There are so many solid undergraduate business programs here that they expect you to know the material quite well.

For example, you could walk into an interview and immediately start getting questions about “the Greeks” and other options-related concepts, but that would be less likely in the U.S. or U.K. unless you brought up the topic first.

Also, while it’s important to be at a target school for investment banking recruiting, it may not matter quite as much for sales & trading; banks here still recruit for S&T roles at “lower tier” schools.

Banks here do not yet use HireVue for video-based interviews to the same extent that U.S.-based banks do, but they do give case studies in interviews, such as securities pitches or risk-management scenarios (e.g., “How would you help an airline hedge its fuel price exposure?”).

The biggest difference, though, is that there’s little job security even if you win a full-time offer because some banks here like to prolong the rotational experience until you’re in the right place at the right time.

By contrast, in New York, banks like GS and JPM hire dozens of students for sales & trading summer internship roles, and there’s enough turnover that full-time spots will open up.

But Canada is a much smaller market, so there are no guarantees.

To win a non-rotational, full-time role on a desk, you’ll have to network to find out which desks might have headcount space, reach out to staff, and impress the senior traders.

At some banks, the process to create “full-time equivalent” (FTE) headcount is very bureaucratic, which adds to the delays.

If you don’t find a permanent role after ~2 years, they might ask you to find a middle or back-office role instead.

NOTE: The description above does not apply to all banks – some may hire you on a specific desk following a summer internship. But it’s less likely than in other regions.

Sales & Trading in Canada vs. the U.S. and U.K.

Q: That sounds pretty brutal.

What else can you tell us about the industry there?

A: The main difference is that it’s a smaller, more saturated industry.

It’s more or less dominated by the top Canadian banks (RBC, TD, Scotiabank, BMO, CIBC, and National Bank), and each one has a big chunk of this smaller market.

As a result, the business pace is slower, and peoples’ attitudes are more relaxed.

The U.S. and U.K. markets are far bigger, which means more competition and more of a go-getter attitude; clients will pick the firm that gives them the best pricing.

But in Canada, “loyalty” to the domestic banks is very strong, and clients such as asset managers often split their business among the banks.

Q: Was it always like this? Did the global bulge-bracket banks ever have much of a presence in Toronto or the rest of Canada?

A: They all used to have trading desks in Toronto, but they’ve gradually shut down in the decade following the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

BAML (and HSBC, to a lesser extent), is the only non-Canadian bank with a significant trading floor remaining here.

The rest have a few people or just salespeople or sales-traders, but not full-service S&T businesses. Banks like Citi also have treasury desks up here to manage their Canadian balance sheet.

Banks like to maintain a sales presence in Toronto for coverage purposes, but they don’t necessarily need to execute trades from there.

Some of the global banks have “Canada Fixed Income” desks, but they’re often in New York rather than Toronto because there’s no need to be in Canada physically.

Also, it’s easier to cross-sell S&T products to investment banking clients if both groups are in the same city. We see this a lot with interest rate and currency hedging products.

Q: Does anything else explain why the Canadian banks dominate the market so much?

A: Besides the smaller market and the decline in sales & trading headcount, the other factor is that many S&T clients in Canada are sovereigns and sub-sovereigns such as the provinces, larger cities, and even some universities and health systems.

For domestic borrowing in CAD, these clients only want to deal with domestic banks, which explains why Canadian banks also dominate DCM.

But these sovereign clients tend to pay lower fees than normal companies, so banks need to find other ways to monetize the relationships.

Those could include secondary trading of the bonds and issuance-related hedging activities, both of which lead back into sales & trading.

Q: You’ve been mentioning Toronto. What about other locations, such as Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver? Is there much trading there?

A: Trading is concentrated in Toronto, but there is some activity in other cities.

Calgary, as you’d expect, is energy-focused, with many commodities trading desks.

Many international firms still operate there, including Goldman Sachs’ oil and natural gas trading desks and similar ones for the integrated major oil & gas companies.

Most domestic banks and some foreign banks have trading teams in Montreal because there are quite a few large institutional accounts in Quebec, such as pensions, that prefer local coverage.

There are some salespeople in Vancouver and Ottawa, but not a big trading presence.

Vancouver focuses on mining and forestry, and the institutional demand there comes from firms like PH&N (acquired by RBC) and the BC pension fund (BCIMC).

I was open to anything, and I came close to winning an offer on an energy trading desk in Calgary.

Physical commodities trading requires a very different skill set than derivatives trading and opens different doors, and I wanted to learn about the logistics and scheduling required.

Canada Sales & Trading: Careers

Q: On that note, what are the most common desks in Canada?

For example, is FX within fixed income trading more important because many companies pay for their expenses in USD and want to hedge against currency fluctuations?

A: I’m not sure if it’s just my bank, but over the past decade, we’ve been focusing a lot more on the DCM business and related credit products.

As I mentioned before, a lot of borrowers here are sovereign and sub-sovereign names, and we do a lot of rates trading to maintain liquidity for their bonds.

Interest rate derivatives and other FX products also support these markets.

Japanese and Canadian banks have been winning more market share from European and U.S. banks in these areas (though some, like Nomura, have since retreated and cut costs).

In terms of equity trading, everything is becoming more automated, and Cash Equities has taken quite a hit.

In Equity Derivatives, the Delta One business (i.e., desks that trade linear or non-option equity products, such as equity return swaps) has changed significantly because of tax changes.

Specifically, the IRS in the U.S. and CRA in Canada shut down a dividend/tax-arbitrage scheme between pension funds and banks that provided tax savings to banks, so this business lost a lot of its appeal.

Structured notes, i.e., debt issuances that contain embedded derivatives, are also becoming more popular among retail investors.

Options volume and liquidity in many FICC products have worsened even as market transparency has improved, mostly because global macro hedge funds have done poorly.

Hedge funds are “two-way” players in options, but companies using options for hedging purposes are “one-way,” which means that most market makers have identical positions – not great for liquidity.

Q: You mentioned “retail investors” just now, but I assume they’re a small segment of the market.

How would you describe the Canada sales & trading client base?

A: The main difference is that the hedge fund industry is far smaller in Canada than it is in the U.S. or U.K., so there are fewer hedge fund clients and also fewer prop trading firm clients.

The biggest “hedge funds” are within the pension funds, and some of them, such as CPPIB or Caisse, have discretionary trading strategy teams that are similar to global macro funds.

So, our biggest clients tend to be pension funds, insurance firms, bank-owned asset management groups, and government borrowers, including central banks.

Independent, international asset managers (e.g., BlackRock and Vanguard) have some exposure in Canada, but they trade based on pricing rather than loyalty.

The trading volume is also much lower – look at the size and daily volume of the iShares TSX 60 (XIU) and iShares S&P 500 (IVV) to see the difference.

Q: Thanks for that description.

Can you discuss compensation and the S&T career path?

A: When you start, the base salary is about the same as in IB: around $80K to $100K CAD, with a variable bonus that’s some percentage of the base salary.

The difference is that when you’re in the rotational program, the bonus tends to be lower than in other markets and investment banking because you’re on the HR payroll, not the payroll of a specific desk.

Even as you progress, there will still be a discount because Canadian banks’ market divisions are smaller and take less risk.

Canadian banks try to pay closer to market rates in offices such as New York and London, but you’re still likely to earn more at a large, global bank.

My very rough estimates for average total compensation would be:

Analyst and Associate: $100 – $200K CAD range

VP: $250 – $350K CAD range

Director: $400 – $600K CAD range

Managing Director: Just over $1 million CAD

These figures might seem similar to pay at U.S. banks, but these are in Canadian dollars, which are almost always worth less.

From a PPP perspective, you might come out ahead in Toronto because the cost of living is lower than in London or New York (even in our rapidly inflating real estate markets!)

But past a certain point, the lower bonuses may start to outweigh the lower cost of living.

If you work at a Canadian bank, you’ll earn less, but you’ll be in a friendlier environment and you’ll have better long-term job security, relative to S&T in other regions.

The career path and progression are similar to those in the U.S., and at the top, there are still “management” MDs and “sales/trading” MDs.

Turnover tends to be lower because fewer professionals at the mid and top levels leave voluntarily, so you may not be able to advance any faster in Canada.

Q: The Volcker Rule killed prop trading in the U.S., but it was never officially banned in Canada, right?

Couldn’t that make compensation higher?

A: In theory, yes, but in reality, most prop trading desks here have also shut down.

RBC still runs one, called “Global Arbitrage & Trading,” but that’s about it.

It is a very well-regarded group with dozens of professionals in Toronto and New York – but even that group is still running only because U.S. regulators rejected a plan to spin it off into a separate hedge fund.

There are no official regulations against prop trading in Canada, but banks still have to comply with international rules and regulations if they want clients and operations in other countries.

Also, even if prop trading did still exist, compensation formulas have become much murkier and are no longer as simple as “you earn X% of your P&L.”

Banks also factor in performance across other departments and the industry as a whole, and there are additional funding, compliance, and technology costs, meaning that each $1 on the P&L is split into more pieces.

Sales & Trading Exit Opportunities and Final Thoughts

Q: Thinking about everything we discussed, who would be a good fit for sales & trading in Canada? And who would not be a good fit?

A: I tend to agree with your conclusions in the sales & trading vs investment banking article: if you know you want to work in the public markets, you’re more quant-oriented, and you want to do it for the long term, S&T could make sense.

It can still be a lucrative career, even though it’s less appealing than it once was.

But if you’re not sure what you want to do long term and you want career flexibility, I’d recommend against it.

This advice is even truer in Canada because it’s harder to move around to other fields after working in sales & trading.

Q: Speaking of that, what are your options if you want to leave the field? And what are your own plans?

A: People tend to stay in sales & trading, go to an asset management firm, or join a pension fund’s trading team.

Besides those options, many of the Analysts and Associates from my class have switched to investment banking industry groups or markets-based groups like ECM or DCM, and some have moved into fintech, which is a booming industry in Toronto.

If you’re willing to take an initial pay cut in exchange for potential future upside, there’s a huge demand for people who know both finance and technology.

As for me, I still like the markets and trading, but I don’t think the long-term outlook for S&T is great, so I am thinking of moving to an asset management firm or pension fund eventually.

Q: Thanks for your time!

A: My pleasure.

The post Sales & Trading in Canada: Equally Attractive Public Markets Opportunity? appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/sales-trading-canada/

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mrjohnhthompson · 6 years

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Budget 2019: Your Budget FAQs Answered By Panel of Experts

Pakatan Harapan’s first national budget will be tabled on the November 2 2018, and we Malaysians cannot wait to hear what the new government has planned for us. Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng has already made sure that we don’t get our hopes up. Malaysians have been told that this will be a ‘sacrificial’ budget that will require us to tighten our belts. We’ve also been told that the country is engulfed in RM1 trillion debt. We invited a panel of experts to share their predictions and insights for the impending Budget 2019. The panel was made up of: 1) Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam, Asian Strategy & Leadership Institute (ASLI) Centre of Public Policy Studies Chairperson & Former Deputy Secretary-General, Ministry of Finance 2) Steve Chia Tax Partner, PwC Malaysia, and a member of the Public Finance Reform Lab under the Strategic Reform Initiatives championed by PEMANDU 3) Shahril Hamdan Deputy UMNO Youth Chief 4) Ali Salman CEO of The Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS)

Government is giving mixed signals

All indications show that this will be an austere budget, based on what the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister have said. The new government has given us the impression that they feel the need to reduce expenditure; even the numbers planned for public investment is set to be reduced. Shahril Hamdan, deputy UMNO Youth Chief, finds this to be quite troubling. “According to my belief and the ideology that I subscribe to, I think this is the moment to increase public expenditure,” commented Shahril. “This idea that you can reduce government expenditure hoping that private investments will go up - how are you expecting private investments to go up if you cancel contracts when they need it? How do you expect private consumption to also go up if you give mixed signals as to what you believe on cash transfer programs, like BR1M, assistance to farmers? The government has indicated its ambivalent stance to these policies. But finally, we are able to see what the economic ideology of Pakatan Harapan is. And it seems to be a neo-liberal, belt-tightening, reduce deficit kind of administration, as opposed to a balanced one - but we’ll see, come 2nd November,” he noted.

Don’t neglect the well-being of the rakyat

According to Steve Chia of PwC Malaysia, a household income goes to three things: housing, food and beverage, and transportation. Hence, some form of targeted financial assistance in these areas will help. There are also spoke about a monthly, discounted, transport card for the B40, as something the government should look into. Tan Sri Ramon added that Malaysia’s economic policies must be reviewed and extended to cover all income groups and based on needs. “Implement the policies and review it. Let the people be aware. And if the government doesn’t deliver, whichever government, we must call them out. The poor must be looked after. The B40 must also be cared for. Otherwise, we will keep having problems of brain drain, migration, capital outflow,” he iterated.

BR1M: To scrape or not to scrape?

Shahril says that abolishing BR1M is an overreaction. Tan Sri Ramon echoes his sentiments by saying it that government could have considered other alternatives. “I think we have to be very careful about scraping something if we don’t have an alternative. Scraping BR1M may not mean anything to us in the upper class, upper middle class, lower middle class. But for the poor, BR1M can be very important. There may have been some abuses, you hear about people getting BR1M and then they go out to celebrate. But if there are some schemes in place, where the handout is given in the form of vouchers for education, for clothes, or other essentials, that will help a great deal.” said the Former Deputy Secretary-General of the Ministry of Finance.

Is SST really better than GST? Not really.

According to iMoney’s Budget 2019 survey, 47% of Malaysians do not care about the GST or SST; on the other hand 35% are pro-SST. It’s common knowledge that GST is more progressive tax system, and Malaysia took a risky step by reverting from GST to SST. So what are some steps that can be taken to enhance the SST to make sure the government does not lose its revenue? “SST is a narrow tax system, as opposed to GST which is multi-staged and covers almost everything. If you look at the exemption for consumer goods, more than 5,000 goods are exempted under SST. So, theoretically, you should see price reductions,” said Steve Chia. “The real problem lies in the implementation of it. Are the savings actually flowing down to the rakyat? This is where anti-profiteering legislations should come in. MDTCA (Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs) recently did a study comparing prices of good from May and September 2018, trying to cuff out the tax holiday period. Apparently, 70% of prices of goods dropped after GST is abolished,” he noted. Shahril pointed out that there are two things missing from the GST/SST discussion; a) there’s a recent narrative that prices are not about taxation alone and b) the RM20 bil government revenue shortfall. Reverting to SST might actually incur losses for the government, so why this move? Perhaps the PH government would justify it by saying it was a manifesto promise, but there are a slew of other promises that they could have looked at. GST is a far more efficient tax system. Why ask people to ‘belt-tighten’ when they intentionally implemented a policy that reduces government revenue? Tan Sri Ramon agrees, saying that the GST need not be scraped, it could have been revised. The government could have easily scraped a whole lot of items from the GST list (essential items) to lessen the burden of the people. But scraping GST was a popular thing to say at the time, because no one likes paying taxes.

Not spending enough of education? Or not spending right?

The recent KRI study showed that Malaysia has only 9 years of actual education and 3.1 years of wasted education. This sounds like a massive disappointment, given that education takes up a huge chunk of the budget every year. “I wouldn’t say we’re not spending enough on education, the question is whether we’re spending the money in all the right areas,” Shahril said. “I think we have to start at the basic level. That means basic infrastructure concerns that still exists in many schools in rural areas. Do the basic level in ensuring there are enough supply of teachers. Aside from the basic stuff, you must also place certain bets on how do you ensure that a couple of clustered schools really become champion schools. This also relates to universities. In the last budget, there was a discussion to push UM to become one of the Top 100 universities in the world. But there’s always the socialist voice that will say it’s unfair to put maximum resources in one university, because everyone has got to rise together.” Shahril thinks it’s okay to allocate a certain amount of expenditure for building champions - like champion universities, champion school models that can set an example for future education policies. That’s better than being stuck in a conundrum where we’re always fragmented and always have uneven development. “When we try to make everyone happy, it’s sub-optimal. Everyone will be unhappy. Do the basic stuff, but also bet and invest in certain areas. This is not the 80s or 90s anymore where you can just do maximum input and get maximum output, we need to be bold and take risks with policies,” he added. Chia mentioned an interesting point that one of the areas that can use a bold step is TVET (Technical Vocational Education and Training), but there has been no concerted effort from the government to move it forward. But that’s also a mentality problem, because most Malaysian parents want their children to have a degree and to land a white collar job. There’s a lot of potential in TVET that we fail to see. “If you look at countries like Germany and Japan, they grew with the backbone of a TVET style education. I think that is something the government can address and as the link has been missing for a while,” Chia said.

What do the rakyat really want from Budget 2019?

Tan Sri Ramon notes that what the people want is very simple; they want less inflation and they want their basic needs covered. However, he knows that the government cannot get everything done in one budget. Which is why the long term five-year plan must have a structure that encourages competition. He thinks that a lot of the inflation comes from too much protection, crowding out the private sector with the GLCs. If the role of GLCs is to balance employment, there are other ways to do that too. He hopes the new government does not constrict the economy and get the private sector to play its role. Tan Sri Ramon added that the budget is an instrument that brings joy, happiness, and relief to the people. It must also have a sense of fairplay and equity. If one group of people start feeling like they’re not benefiting as much as others, then they will react against it. As a result, budgets and five-year plans will be unpopular. Shahril weighed in and said he hopes this budget will be a game changer. He’s hoping to see some bold moves by the PH government. He also said that we need to future-proof the economy which the previous government started. There will be a lot of pushback as Malaysia has only done things one way the last 30 years, but PH has to strike while the iron is hot. Shahril added that Pakatan now has immense political capital (trust, goodwill, and influence a politician has). It should seize the moment and make real changes instead of continuing with a populist centrist hodge-podge stance on managing the country and economy.

The post Budget 2019: Your Budget FAQs Answered By Panel of Experts appeared first on iMoney Malaysia.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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So what if you didn’t grow up immersed in the wizarding world of Harry Potter?

For plenty of Americans — especially millennials, who were children when the books first came to the US — that’s an almost unimaginable hypothetical. The books shaped the imagination of millions of children, who flocked to midnight release parties, dressed as Harry and Hermione and Ron for Halloween, watched the movies, and even now frame their understanding of real-world political events in terms of Hogwarts and He Who Must Not Be Named.

But a sizable chunk of the same age cohort didn’t read the books at all.

That wasn’t because they just weren’t into books, or because they didn’t know about Harry Potter. It was because in some religious communities — particularly among conservative evangelicals, but also some Catholics and Muslims — the Harry Potter series was viewed on a spectrum that ranged from suspicion to outright opposition.

To some, the reasons may be obvious; to others, that makes no sense. But the phenomenon of conservative Christian opposition to Harry Potter succinctly encapsulates many of the forces that were at play within that group two decades ago — and illuminates a whole group of young adults who felt excluded from the world around them.

I’m among the millennials who grew up not reading J.K. Rowling’s novels or watching the films for religious reasons. While writing this article, I’ve had hundreds of conversations through social media and in person with adults across the country who had the same experience.

For many of us, reading the novels wasn’t outright forbidden, at least not through some kind of household decree; it was just understood that it wasn’t something we did in our homes. (I’d fall into this category.) For others, the opposition was much more overt. Some people spoke to me about bringing home the novels and having them taken away. Others felt ashamed about times when their parents told their teachers that they wouldn’t be allowed to read the books along with the rest of the class.

A Harry Potter fan in Australia reading the last book in the series. Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

The variety of these experiences helps illuminate the complexity of opposition to Harry Potter’s world — something that’s been bolstered as I’ve talked to parents who once opposed the books and have changed their views, and others who still prefer not to let their children read them.

Many of us non-readers found that our parents’ opposition to Harry Potter dropped away as we got older, or as the series was completed and its overt Christian influences became clearer — and then were confirmed in 2007 by Rowling herself, who told MTV in an interview that she thought the Christian symbolism had been obvious. Still, others I’ve talked to say their parents continue to oppose the novels, even removing them from their adult children’s shelves if they move home.

To those who grew up with the books, that may seem slightly baffling. The stories of Hogwarts and the young wizards seem of a piece, in many ways, with the battles of good and evil contained in other classic works of fantasy, including some explicitly Christian-influenced ones such as C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. So what accounts for this opposition?

The answer has a lot to do with some of the voices that were especially influential in conservative Christian culture, and especially evangelical culture, in the late 1990s and 2000s, when Harry Potter was growing into a literary phenomenon.

The most often cited voice of opposition among those I talked to was Focus on the Family, an immensely popular and influential evangelical parachurch operation, and in particular the organization’s leader until 2003, author and psychologist James Dobson.

Dobson rose to prominence as a proponent of conservative social positions and relatively strict child-rearing practices. He founded his flagship organization, Focus on the Family, in 1977, and produced a daily radio show by the same name that at its height was reportedly heard every day by more than 220 million people in 164 countries and in a dozen languages.

Japanese Harry Potter fans pose with their newly purchased copies of the Japanese version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at Kinokuniya Bookstore on July 23, 2008, in Tokyo. Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images

Focus on the Family is especially influential in telling conservative evangelical parents how to navigate popular culture, which it does in two ways. It creates pop culture of its own, combining entertaining stories that teach biblical lessons with relatively high production values — the long-running fictional radio drama Adventures in Odyssey is an especially successful example — as an alternative to mainstream entertainment. And it produces a publication called Plugged In, which describes itself as “an entertainment guide full of the reviews you need to make wise personal and family-friendly decisions about movies, videos, music, TV, games and books.”

Plugged In is hardly the only publication that does this — Christianity Today, where I was chief film critic before joining Vox in 2016, has done it for years, as have far more conservative sites like MovieGuide — but it’s one of the longest-running and most popular in existence, partly due to its backing by Focus.

Plugged In reviews were a fixture of life for many children growing up in conservative evangelical churches, particularly in the 1990s. Unlike some more hardline Christian review sites, Plugged In reviewers often comment generously on the artistic and technical value of a pop artist’s debut album or the latest franchise blockbuster. But they also describe, in some detail, the moral content of the cultural object and make recommendations based on those matters, outlining everything from spiritual elements to violent content to drug and alcohol use.

The Plugged In review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is fairly typical of the site. It mentions among its positive elements Harry and Ron’s friendship, warnings against greed, and the sacrificial love of Harry’s parents. It points out the story’s use of rule-breaking and violent content, along with Hagrid’s taste for butterbeer. And it devotes three measured paragraphs to the “stereotypical” presentation of witchcraft and wizardry in the book, and suggests the way dark magic is portrayed does not make it seem desirable — all, on balance, good things, from a Plugged In perspective.

But the review also taps into what became the biggest opposition to the world of Hogwarts.

“On a cultural level, Rowling can be commended for steering young fans away from the so-called dark side,” the review adds parenthetically. “But from a spiritual perspective” — meaning, in the real world outside the books, according to the Bible — “it’s clear that there are not dark and light sides when it comes to witchcraft; it’s all as black as sin.”

In other words, though in the world of Harry Potter, magic can be used for good, in our world, governed by the rules of God and not fictional magic, all witchcraft is evil.

“The meaningless charms found in this book may not summon occult forces, but there are real charms that do,” the review suggests, and says that because the world of magic that Rowling has created is so much brighter and more interesting than the boring realm of Muggles, the books may hold an allure that is unhealthy for children. “Biblically speaking, to participate in the world of witchcraft brings death rather than a fuller life,” the review’s uncredited author writes.

In the end, while Plugged In praised the books in some modest respects, it also concluded that parents should “think long and hard before embarking on Harry Potter’s magic carpet ride.”

And that attitude of suspicion toward the Harry Potter books’ magic — and the worry that it would attract children to the occult — is perhaps the single most influential source of opposition to the series among conservative Christians.

Harry Potter fans wait for the stars to arrive at the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets world premiere on November 3, 2002, in London. Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most prominent voice in this opposition was James Dobson himself. He addressed the matter on his radio program and issued a lengthy response to an erroneous assertion in a 2007 Washington Post article that characterized him as having “praised” the series. A response posted to Focus on the Family’s website stated that “this is the exact opposite of Dr. Dobson’s opinion — in fact, he said a few years ago on his daily radio broadcast that ‘We have spoken out strongly against all of the Harry Potter products,’” and that the Post reporter had not just acknowledged but “apologized for” the error.

The statement also reiterated Dobson’s opposition to the series: “Given the trend toward witchcraft and New Age ideology in the larger culture, it’s difficult to ignore the effects such stories (albeit imaginary) might have on young, impressionable minds.”

Dobson was far from the only conservative Christian leader who sounded a warning about the books. Just a quick Google search turns up articles, books, websites, and other resources warning families away from the books and movies because of their connection to witchcraft. A Jack Chick tract called “The Nervous Witch,” about Wicca and witchcraft, even features a character who says she got into “the craft” through the Harry Potter books.

In several states, parents sought to have the books removed from schools, suggesting in some cases that they were connected to Wicca and thus their inclusion in school libraries violated the separation of church and state.

Others, however, were more measured than Dobson and those who suggested Christian families shun the books.

Chuck Colson, the former Nixon administration official who became an evangelical leader, initially praised the books on his own radio broadcast in 1999. “If your kids do develop a taste for Harry Potter and his wizard friends,” Colson said, “this interest might just open them up to an appreciation for other fantasy books with a distinctly Christian worldview.”

But seven years later, he had changed his mind without going so far as to outright decry them; he said that while he didn’t personally recommend the books or movies to Christian families, they were a good opportunity to teach children to exercise discernment — that is, to examine them critically through the lens of their faith.

The conservative newsmagazine World, which regularly published reviews of the books and the movies as they were released, took a similar tone. In a piece titled “More Clay Than Potter,” published in 1999, World’s book critic Susan Olasky and Anne McCain, a director of children’s education at a Presbyterian church in Virginia, examined how the newly popular books “can give Bible-conscious parents an enjoyable opportunity to teach older children how to think critically.”

“Truths sprinkled throughout the books are ‘trail markers’ that can be used to point to God,” Olasky and McCain wrote, pointing to the books’ emphasis on wise counsel and the difference between good and evil as positive — while also noting that the books may put “a smiling mask on evil” and draw readers into the real world of witchcraft, though the Hogwarts world of wizardry bore little resemblance to the world of Wicca.

A young Harry Potter fan in July 2005. Stephen Chernin/Getty Images

World’s reviews of the books and movies continued to be mixed through the end of the series, often noting the increasingly dark tone and the ways the moral order in Harry’s world may confuse children about the moral order in our own.

When I spoke with Olasky about World’s take on the series, she pointed to the magazine’s often mixed opinions on the books and movies, saying that their main concerns had a lot to do with simply not knowing where the series was going — especially since they dealt so powerfully with good and evil.

“It was a world that kids were drawn to,” she said. “But you didn’t really know [at first] what the rules were. … A thing would appear to be this, and then it would turn into that.”

That was also of concern to the parents who read World, and to those inclined to carefully watch over what their children experienced. “I still think Christians should think about that,” she said. “Should anything capture our imaginations like that?’

To Olasky and other critics who saw the series from her perspective, the world of Harry Potter wasn’t necessarily dangerous because it was a throughput to witchcraft, Satanism, and the occult. They were more concerned with the ideas that impressionable children might absorb from the immensely popular book, ideas that might conflict with biblical ideas about good, evil, light, darkness, obedience, and other matters. And they were concerned with reminding parents not to allow their children to uncritically accept stories just because they were popular — especially without knowing where the series was headed.

That perspective, which sought to protect children’s developing imaginations from particular content, seemed obviously false to others. YA author Judy Blume, for instance, wrote a dismissive op-ed titled “Is Harry Potter Evil?” in the New York Times in 1999, linking opposition to the books to efforts to ban books ranging from Madeleine L’Engle’s overtly Christian A Wrinkle in Time series to Blume’s own novels from school libraries. Blume praised “subversive” books for the ways they developed her imagination.

But to more protective parents, it made sense. And even those who might not take a hardline view against the books might have been inclined to avoid them, hearing the voice of alarm. That’s how communities that form around shared values, like religious or other beliefs, often work: In concert, they form practices and boundaries, and then support one another in maintaining those boundaries.

Children dressed as Harry Potter characters with their just-purchased copies of the German-language edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on November 8, 2003, in Berlin. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

There were also plenty of conservative Christian critics and leaders who leaned positive or outright supportive of the series from the start. One such Christian writer, John Granger — who was described in Time in 2009 as the “dean of Harry Potter scholars” — has written extensively about the series’ connection to Christian teachings in books such as Hidden Key to Harry Potter (now titled How Harry Cast His Spell) and Looking for God in Harry Potter. He also maintains the “Hogwarts Professor” blog.

Granger wrote his books in response to anti-Potter books, such as Richard Abanes’s Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magic and Connie Neal’s What’s a Christian to Do About Harry Potter.

“The Christian content and continuity with English literature traditions were missing from both books,” Granger wrote to me by email. “I thought … that this symbolism interweaved in the storytelling was largely responsible for the series’ success.” Granger points to links present in the very first book: “A unicorn, a phoenix, a red lion, a Philosopher’s Stone, and a hero rising from the dead after a sacrificial death are all in the first book. All are traditional symbols of Christ.”

When I asked Granger why he thought conservative Christians opposed the book, he said the series’ use of magic suggested to some that there had to be some kind of conflict between the books and faith. “I received some dismissive and patronizing criticism,” he wrote, but “Christian critics largely left me alone because, unlike Abanes and Neal, I argued from English literature and formalist analysis rather than through a biblical filter.”

“Fortunately, all my ideas and understanding were confirmed by the last three books, especially Deathly Hallows,” Granger said.

A copy of a Harry Potter book burns in a bonfire during a protest outside the Christ Community Church December 30, 2001, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Neil Jacobs/Getty Images

Granger, and many others like him, came out in favor of the books. Christianity Today, which has often been considered the flagship publication of the American evangelical movement, published articles on both sides of the issue but generally took a more positive stance. Some saw the stories — particularly after its conclusion, in which Harry seems to be cast fairly obviously as a Christ figure — as reflecting the biblical story.

Still, the reasons for criticizing the series among those conservative Christians boiled down to two main camps. There were those who condemned the books as conduits to witchcraft, and there were those who viewed them skeptically as being influenced by secularism, potentially undermining Christian values.

There were good reasons both of those camps were so influential, even among those who didn’t read the books themselves, and they have a lot to do with the timing of The Sorcerer’s Stone’s US release, 20 years ago.

In my discussions with those who weren’t allowed to read the books, or who didn’t allow their children to read the books, the idea that the books’ use of magic was tied to the real-world occult seemed strange to many in retrospect, for one big reason: Many of those same children were allowed, even encouraged, to read C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series as well as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series. (Some people who grew up in very fundamentalist communities said that even those were off limits, but that seems to be a minority.)

And yet there are a few cultural reasons this particular criticism caught on so powerfully. Most would require a whole book to thoroughly unpack, but two in particular are notable.

First of all, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released in the US in 1998 — right on the heels of the Satanic panic.

A rash of false allegations of Satanic ritual abuse of children by cults, made mostly against day care centers during the 1980s, were already being debunked during the ’90s. But the memory of those accusations was still fresh in the minds of many, especially since it continued to be a pop cultural plot point in TV shows and movies.

The lingering sense that some of it could have been true stuck around for years, subconsciously lending plausibility to the idea that Harry Potter and his friends were a subtle attempt to induct children into Satan-worshipping cults or witchcraft-practicing covens. (The common conflation of Satanic worship, the Church of Satan, pagan religions, the occult, witchcraft, and other systems of practice and belief was likely part of this.) The Jack Chick tract referenced above — published in 2002! — is a good example of how the ideas behind the Satanic panic were still alive in some of Christianity’s more fundamentalist wings.

Another reason that Satanic panic-adjacent ideas still held currency by the end of the 1990s may be a pair of popular novels by Christian author Frank Peretti that sold millions of copies: This Present Darkness (1986) and Piercing the Darkness (1989). Both novels told stories of spiritual warfare in which angels and demons were literal characters struggling for the souls of ordinary Americans in a small town.

The books paid particular attention to New Age spiritual practices: Meditation was portrayed as a way for people to become possessed by demons, insidiously pushed upon people by a powerful New Age group that engaged in practices that seem drawn from accounts of Satanic groups. And their special target was children.

It would be a stretch to say that Peretti’s novels were responsible in some way for people’s suspicions of the Harry Potter books. But given their enduring popularity — I checked them out of my own church’s library and read them as a young teen in the mid- to late ’90s — their suggestion that children’s susceptible minds were targets for New Age groups covering for demonic forces certainly supported the idea that a series of fantasy novels for children had the potential to harm those children.

Church members sing as they circle a bonfire burning Harry Potter books outside the Christ Community Church on December 30, 2001, in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Neil Jacobs/Getty Images

And even setting aside the more literalist takes on the occult contained in Peretti’s novels, there’s another factor; books like This Present Darkness, Piercing the Darkness, and the 1992 follow-up Prophet (in which a TV news anchor becomes embroiled in a controversial investigation of a local abortion clinic) spiritualized the culture war that evangelicals in particular were attuned to in the 1980s and ’90s.

That culture war — a battle to shape the values of young Americans through the things they see and experience in culture — has often been a source of fear and frustration for people across the religious and ideological spectrum over the past few decades. But conservative Christians are especially attuned to it, and Peretti’s novels (and others like them) gave the sense that the things you might watch on TV may not just change minds about “hot button” topics — sexuality, gender, abortion, and so on — but also be actual, literal battlegrounds between the forces of good and evil.

Even for parents who didn’t take this quite so literally, a more metaphorical notion of spiritual warfare exerted considerable influence over their decision about what to allow into their children’s lives.

I spoke about this with Nancy Gibson, a conservative evangelical mother who began homeschooling her children in the 2000s. Gibson’s older children didn’t read the Harry Potter novels as they were coming out — the family didn’t outright ban them, she said, but the communities they were part of discouraged people from reading them, mostly under the influence of Focus on the Family. But Gibson’s daughter read the series during the summer after her first year at a Christian college, and her younger daughter, now a teenager, has been reading them, with her parents’ approval.

Gibson told me that it was often simply difficult to know, as a parent in a community that was suspicious of popular culture, what was wise to allow their children to read. Resources like those provided by Plugged In helped navigate that challenge, particularly for those parents who didn’t have time to read the books for themselves.

Gibson’s experience seems aligned with those of many other parents, for whom navigating popular culture is difficult no matter what their religious convictions are. Some parents are more permissive, or are engaged with pop culture in a way that lets them experience it alongside their own children.

But conservative Christians and evangelicals in particular have for decades tended to view mainstream popular culture with suspicion. And in the throes of the late Satanic panic, raging culture wars, and the sense that — even aside from these forces — children were likely being targeted by people opposed to their own values, warnings against Harry Potter presented themselves as a good enough reason to stay away. There was, after all, always Narnia.

I’ve been reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the first time while working on this article. I know how the story goes, because by the time the movie series was reaching its conclusion, I was an adult and a working film critic, and I watched them all. (The third one, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, is the best of the bunch.)

But I’d never gotten around to the books, so now I’ve read the first in the series. News flash: It’s pretty delightful. I was surprised by the wit and by the clever characterizations, and I like the careful attention given to building out the world of both Muggles and wizards. I wouldn’t say I’m very invested in it, but it’s fun.

Would I have liked them if I’d read them when they first came out? Probably. In 1998 I was 15, a hopeless bookworm who didn’t watch many movies or TV shows but did read books like This Present Darkness. I had read and reread the Narnia series since I was in third or fourth grade, and I loved the movie versions that sometimes aired on PBS. I wasn’t into fantasy all that much, but Harry’s world feels enough like my own that I would have enjoyed them. And as a conservative Christian teenager, I probably would have found a lot to praise in them — just like many others did.

A customer holds Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at a bookstore after its release at 1:01 am on July 21, 2007, in Berlin. Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

But I didn’t read them. And to my recollection, I never asked my parents to let me, either. Unlike some of my peers, for whom being excluded from Harry’s world meant being excluded from our age cohort’s most important obsession, I don’t really mind. For me, my never having read Harry Potter has always been a point of curiosity more than frustration, much like the fact that, until recently, I’d never seen Titanic. (There’s nudity and a sex scene!)

Many American millennials who grew up in conservative Christian families share plenty of these touchstones, things in pop culture we knew we shouldn’t watch or read or do, or things we thought we should engage with. The Simpsons was bad. A Walk to Remember was good. We kissed dating goodbye. Dungeons & Dragons, the Smurfs, and the Care Bears were bad, as were Cabbage Patch dolls (the rumor was that they were possessed by demons), but we probably read Left Behind. Plenty of young people got rid of their secular music and replaced it with Christian versions. A lot of us spent our evenings every October 31 at a church “harvest party” instead of trick-or-treating. Rejecting a lot of mainstream pop culture was part of who we were.

That speaks strongly, in many ways, to what it meant in the ’90s and 2000s to be a Christian kid or teenager. Many of our associations with our youth — particularly for those of us who grew up evangelical — are more tightly linked to the things in mainstream pop culture we weren’t allowed to experience than to religious experience itself. In banning things like Harry Potter or “secular” music, evangelicals often tried to create alternate cultural products to fill the void.

That tendency hasn’t died off, although there seems to be a higher tolerance among evangelicals and other conservative Christians today for engagement with mainstream secular culture, less about the Plugged In style of tabulating objectionable content and more about analyzing and thinking critically about it.

Even so, a generation of conservative Christian millennials like me arrived at adulthood without having had the same pop culture experiences as many of our peers. Maybe that’s just a symptom of an increasingly niche-driven, fragmented popular culture. But for many I’ve talked to, it’s also a source of sorrow. They miss having had a basis for talking to their peers about something everyone enjoyed — and in the case of Harry Potter, for many, it seems that the thing they were barred from might have, in the end, been one of the most Christian stories produced by mainstream culture in a long time.

Original Source -> I didn’t read Harry Potter when I was growing up. And I wasn’t alone.

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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dawnajaynes32 · 6 years

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The Write Stuff: Boost Your Brand by Blogging

EARLY BIRD DEADLINE: AUGUST 13, 2018

Churning out one design after another isn’t the only way to prove to your current clients & prospective clients that you know what you’re doing. Writing can be a boon to business. But where should you start? How much should you write? And most importantly, what’s stopping you from writing right now? There’s nothing to be afraid of.

Write Away

A bevy of platforms exist for you to hit the ground running and share your writing quickly and easily. WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Squarespace, Wix, and other content management systems have built-in blogging tools. Medium is another option. Lea Alcantara, partner and lead designer at Bright Umbrella, suggests independent systems such as Statamic and Craft CMS for blogging. “Both of them are made for people who focus on branding, design, and user experience. Instead of designing for the platform, the platform conforms to your design. This avoids cookie-cutter designs for your site—which, as a designer, you prioritize, right?”

If it all seems daunting and you don’t know where to start, then begin anywhere. Matthew Manos, founder and managing director of verynice and author of How to Give Half of Your Work Away for Free and Toward a Preemptive Social Enterprise, sees writing as valuable, no matter where you choose to share your words. “By taking the time to write our ideas and motivations down in the form of various books, toolkits, articles, tweets, etc., my team and I have been able to clarify our own purpose while also motivating others along the way to figure out their own.” Yes, tweets count too, and Manos says that “the forced brevity” can help any designer with their communication skills. “I’d challenge them to explain each of their projects in the form of a tweet.”

You can push your words out there through tweets, a.k.a. microblogging, and you can also write short- or long-form articles online, a.k.a. blogging. Manos sees blogging as a relevant practice, but to him the blog environment is not relevant. “I say this because the place in which online readers spend their time is becoming much harder to control in regard to how/when/where your content is being read. Also, there are a lot more people fighting for the same users now than ever before. Put simply, if you go and launch a new blog today, you essentially are in competition with Facebook because the amount of time people have on the Internet is limited! As a result, I’d say that a good blog is responsive to multiple reading environments, is platform-agnostic, has a strong understanding of its users, and is (obviously) well-written!” In short, promotion matters. You’ve got to push your writing out there. Your stories, ideas, and concepts can be great, but if they are not reaching people, as Bright Umbrella’s Alcantara says, then “all that is moot.”

Write Now

Eric Karjaluoto, smashLAB creative director, has been writing and publishing through his own blog over the years. Prior to erickarjaluoto.com, he published at ideasonideas.com. “I write because I love the practice of it. Writing helps me think through arguments and form stronger opinions. It also gives me a way to connect with others (which is nice, because I’m an introvert).” Since he began writing, Karjaluoto says that he’s learned three lessons:

Know your purpose. I used to just start writing, without choosing what I wanted to say. This resulted in meandering articles. In time, I learned to use outlines to focus my writing. Now, I first write a TL;DR, which keeps me on topic. Say one thing; save the rest for another time.

Use plain language. In the past, I used a lot of big words. I’m embarrassed when I re-read those articles. I only wrote that way to seem smarter than I was. Doing so was a mistake. Writing isn’t about the writer’s ego. It’s about conveying information. Be clear and succinct.

Tell your own stories. When I try to write like someone else, it falls flat. (I’d love to tell stories like Malcolm Gladwell does, but I’m not him.) That said, I have stories to tell, and my own unique way of telling them. Readers often reach out, noting that they found these articles useful. There’s only one of you; use this to your advantage.

Not only does Karjaluoto write because it’s enjoyable, but writing has proven to be beneficial for his day-to-day studio work because it’s “a persuasive means of communication,” he says. “For example, if I write a good design brief, the client tends to be more receptive to the visual solution I later present.” When asked about publishing, and actually getting your writing out there, Karjaluoto has some words of encouragement and caution. “It isn’t important for designers to publish. (For many, it’s a distraction.) That said, all designers should write, and practice writing. Doing so will help you explain your reasoning—and get buy-in on projects.”

Write-Minded

Writing can improve the way you work with and communicate with existing clients. But what about landing new clients? “Blogging can be a path to establishing yourself as an expert in your field,” says Emily Lewis, partner and lead developer at Bright Umbrella. Her blog led to her first book deal, and then her first speaking engagement. Her colleague Lea Alcantara, says that blogging led to her first paid speaking event in New York—even though she lived in Alberta, Canada at the time. “Blogging has the potential not only to establish yourself as an expert, but to erase borders,” says Alcantara.

BOLTGROUP’s How Do You Transform a Brand? Start Here.

When you’re an expert in your field, you have to stay current, always learning, and always sharing your knowledge. Writing and publishing is a great way to share that knowledge, something that founders of BOLTGROUP, a Charlotte-based brand, product, and experience design studio, have been doing for years. Jamey Boiter, principal of brand strategy, design and experience, has written for Fast Company, and his colleague Monty Montague, principal of product design and innovation, has written for IDSA. When BOLTGROUP redesigned their website two years ago, they included a blogging platform to share articles. Content strategy and promotion are instrumental to the success of their Brand Insights and Product Insights. The work seeds the ground according to Boiter, and it’s even resulted in new business because of something someone read there.

Ideate, embody, articulate—the key ingredients to product innovation success. Learn more in the insights section of boltgroup.com! #BOLTblogs #BOLTproduct . . . https://boltgroup.com/ideate-embody-articulate #productinnovation #customillustration #contentwriting #strategy #designlife #charlotte #charlottesgotalot #nc #clt #cltnc #ideate #embody #articulate

A post shared by BOLTGROUP (@boltgroup) on Jul 20, 2017 at 9:11am PDT

BOLTGROUP promotes their Brand Insights and Product Insights through social media, posting artwork on Instagram, with links to the articles and hashtags to augment the post. And they also maintain an email list, pushing out a digest twice a month to subscribers—promotion that pays off. Bree Basham, vice president of creative at BOLTGROUP, says that some older clients have come back to them because of an Insights email they received. “Emails are a reminder that we’re still here.” Creating one new post after another also has the added benefit of showing Google that they’re still here, constantly updating their site. This positively impacts search engine optimization (SEO), according to Basham, which in turn, helps them get found via Google searches. In fact, if you want to learn more about SEO, they have an Insight about that.

Just Write

Content strategy, marketing, promotion, and SEO are definitely important when it comes to getting your writing out there, especially if you house it at your personal, studio, or company website. But if those technical matters are outside of your wheelhouse—or outside of your interest—then don’t fret. Write anywhere, about anything. Write about what you know, what you enjoy, and what keeps you invested. Or write about something that’s a lot of fun, which is what RIT assistant professor of design Mitch Goldstein did when he was Angry Paul Rand on Twitter. He created—or inhabited—a personality that, to this day, many designers still talk about. Angry Paul Rand is gone, but Goldstein is still on Twitter. “While I do think there are many, many caveats to using Twitter as a place for real discourse, it does provide a framework for me to distill my ideas down into clearly written chunks that help me understand what I am thinking about.” In terms of long-form writing, Goldstein recently launched The First Five Years at 99u, a monthly column about transitioning from design school into the design profession.

Fellow academic Amy Papaelias, associate professor of graphic design at SUNY New Paltz, is also a prolific writer and co-founder of Alphabettes.org. ”Writing has always been important to me. I was writing/designing/producing my own zine in high school way before I knew that an actual profession existed where people get paid to design publications. Writing about design allows me to process the process, to articulate the reason something looks or performs the way it does. It’s flexing the part of my brain that is always asking why.” Alphabettes.org, which Papaelias started with Indra Kupferschmid, has done extremely well and is still going strong. New voices are always welcome, she says, and you can submit online. “We’re always thrilled when someone reaches out with an article idea. Writing and publishing as a collective is a lot of work, but the goal has always been to maintain a space that is supportive and welcoming to new contributors.” When you’re ready to write, keep the words of Amy Papaelias in mind, “Everyone has something interesting to say.”

Write On

As soon as you have something to say, you’ve just got to get started. But so many publishing platforms exist that it might be intimidating. For some advice, consider what Bright Umbrella’s Emily Lewis shared in Choosing a CMS? Don’t Skip These Conversations! If you’re considering WordPress as a blogging CMS, read Emily’s We Don’t Build WordPress Sites before committing to it. And remember, you don’t necessarily have to build it all yourself—launching your own blog, laying out the CMS—you can submit and pitch to existing blogs, including but not limited to trade publications, professional organizations, and other online media.

You have something to say, but can’t get started? Afraid of writing? Pshaw! Did that fear originate in school, when you were told by a teacher that You can’t write or You write dreadfully? You didn’t earn the grades you wanted on your essays, research papers, poems, or haikus? Put those memories behind you. Just dive in. But don’t expect perfection, which can also lead to fear, preventing you from starting or finishing. Face it, you might not get your written work 100% right, nor 100% the way you want it. Truth is: you probably won’t get it right—that’s what rewrites are for.

IDEATE, EMBODY, ARTICULATE feature image courtesy of BOLTGROUP.

The post The Write Stuff: Boost Your Brand by Blogging appeared first on HOW Design.

The Write Stuff: Boost Your Brand by Blogging syndicated post

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sassyhottubstrawberry-blog · 6 years

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Detroit Michigan Cheap car insurance quotes zip 48216

"Detroit Michigan Cheap car insurance quotes zip 48216

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I was looking at Dodge Stealths but I am afraid it would cost to much money to insure being I am 17. I'm not talking about the Twin turbo version, I mean the base (which has about 125hp), the ES (about 222hp), or the R/T(same as ES but also has a turbo charger). The car weighs about 2500lbs i believe (if that even matters), also I would not be getting any upgraded body kits for it. Please don't just say a lot or something to that extent. Thank you for your time.""

What does Mercury Auto Insurance Cover? (Bumper to Bumper)?

Okay I currently have mercury car insurance and have the bumper to bumper.. I have a few things to do to my car but wanted to know exactly what parts are covered for example are the Shocks covered?

Drivers permit and insurance help?

If I get my drivers permit would my moms car insurance go up? If so, what are average rates? Thanks for the time to read this, and thanks in advance for a reply.""

Can you change health insurance before surgery?

I have an Anthem individual health plan. It's kind of expensive but I haven't been working and really wanted to have health insurance. I just started a full-time job that offers health insurance benefits. They offer Anthem insurance similar to what I already have just at a much cheaper cost to me but I'll probably have to get a new policy number. I'm having breast reduction the 2nd week of August and I've already received approval from my insurance company for them to pay. However I want to get insurance with my job but I only have 30 days from the start of employment to enroll in their plan. I'll be calling Anthem next week to see how this will affect my surgery but what do you all think? Is it possible to change policies before a surgery that's already been approved? I don't want to miss the open enrollment with my company but I also don't want to risk having to cancel my surgery. Thanks!

Why would any sane young adult pay thousands in health insurance premiums to subsidize old baby boomers?

They could pay nothing and get 95 dollars less on their tax refund next year. They could use that money now to pay down credit cards, etc. Under the new rules, individuals choosing not to carry insurance are subject to a penalty of $95 per person each year, or 1% of household income, whichever is greater, beginning in 2014. Over time, the penalty increases, so that by 2016 the penalty is $695 per person, or 2.5% of household income. Even the increase in the penalty is miniscule when compared to the premium prices. So again, WHY would any sane young adult get pay thousands of dollars in premiums?""

How much is motorcycle insurance ?

How much is it if your 18 and have no accidents or tickets. Any cheap insurance companies? And it's not a sport bike or anything, just a normal starter bike that only goes about 100mph.""

Renters insurance?

what exactly is renters insurance all about? is it pretty important or a waste of money?

What are some cheap Home/Fire insurance offers for a house in Southern California?

ABSOLUTELY NO SPAM REPLIES PLEASE!!!

""I am looking for affordable health insurance for myself, age 47 female who smokes.?""

I am looking for affordable health insurance for myself, age 47 female who smokes.?""

Can you have a 'black mark' against you for car insurance?

I'm 20 years old, and because of the stupidly hiked insurance prices I got into riding motorbikes as a way of getting around. I now commute around 20,000 miles a year and the weather is really getting to me. I love riding but forced riding is different. Last year I was insured on a cbr 600 (2000 model) for 1200 a year TPFT, and this year part ex'd it for a Suzuki Bandit (2008) which is around 700 a year. Both bikes are 0 no claims as I've never kept a bike long enough to accumulate any. Now I understand cars are bigger and cause more damage etc, but bikes are quick, really quick, but how can insurers justify the stupidly high priced insurance for me on a car? Minimum 2500 a year!? My brother has a ford fiesta, an old old G red model, hes 2 years younger than me, and has always wanted to drive so he's spent ages saving and working towards getting a car. Come his insurace quote, and they're asking for 1200 a year TPFT. The EXACT same details, address etc, just with my name, age, and job (electronics technician) I'm looking at around 3000 a year, same company, no change. Its really getting to me now. I have to convictions, no speeding penalties, nothing. I've lead life so far getting involved in zero trouble, I do things by the book. So I'm beginning to wonder what's up. My insurance prices are always double or more that of my families and friends cars, and coming up to winter, I really don't want to risk loosing my job a second year running because its too dangerous to venture out in the snow by bike (hourly paid, high staff turnover.) I'd really appreciate any tips or advice anyone has, I've tried independent companies (phoning or internet), comparison websites, I've tried many many different models of cars, from boy racer cars, to a Diahatsu, I've gone through the ABI database looking at the exact insurance group for a car and then trying it. I've exhausted almost every option I can think of. I really really want to drive a car.""

Detroit Michigan Cheap car insurance quotes zip 48216

How much is it going to cost me a year for car insurance?

i will be 16 in august my car is a chevy cavalier im not sure of the year does anyone know how much it would cost a year for car insurance ?

Will car insurance be cheaper if I drive my mum's car?

I'm learning to drive, but my mum won't allow me to practice in her Fiat 500 or drive it once I've passed the test. This means I can either buy myself a car or drive my Dad's car, which is a much larger Jeep. I don't particularly want to drive it though because its an automatic whereas I'm learning manual (I know automatic is easier, but as a new driver I won't be able to practice for the test and I'm worried I might forget manual if I drive it for too long) and I imagine insurance is likely to be higher. I was wondering, which of these options are likely to work out cheapest? Is it worth trying to persuade my mum to let me drive her car?""

""An insurance company will insure a $260,000 home for its total value for an annual premium of $590. If the com?""

An insurance company will insure a $260,000 home for its total value for an annual premium of $590. If the company spends $30 per year to service such a policy, the probability of total loss for such a home in a given year is 0.001 and you assume either total loss or no loss will occur, what is the company's expected annual gain (or profit) on each such policy? I think maybe 300$?""

""Can I drive without insurance, if the car itself is insured?""

It's my dad's car. The car is insured but i am not, as in. I use to be on the same policy as my dad, but now i am off of it due to money problems. But the car I drive is insured under my dad. Is it legal to drive it? (CA)""

Does the colour of a car affect the price of Car Insurance ?

Thanks for all answers in advance :-)

Learners Permit and Insurance!?

Can I have insurance while having my learners permit? (I currently live in Orlando, FL)""

How much would car insurance cost for a 17 year old female? More info provided?

I will be 17 yrs old when I get my intermediate license, which I will then have for 1 yr before I can get my full license. I'm looking for a general insurance quote for a 17 year old female in Iowa (does this have any bearing on the amt my parents pay). Also, I have about B average, but I'm taking AP classes if that makes a difference. I don't have a job but I will have an unpaid internship this summer (does this make a difference?). Both my mom and dad have one ticket each, but that's about it, they're both very careful drivers. I will also have taken a drivers ed course (reqd in my state). I'm also looking at purchasing either a 1998 BMW 528I or a 1998 BMW 740IL as both are under $5000 w/o taxes but if anyone can give me an estimate as to the total cost of both of these cars (after taxes, gas, insurance, etc) that would be fantastic. If any more info is needed let me know.""

Best car with cheapest car insurance?

I have passed my driving test in the uk. I am 17 year old male. I wanted to find out what is the best car to get that offers low car insurabce. Thank you

Is car insurance required when getting a car or license?

I going to work on getting a driver license and i want to know if insurance is required for driving or owning a car?

Any suggestions on best Health Insurance for a diabetic?

My son is in his late twenties, without health insurance and was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, requiring him to take insulin daily. We are trying to help him with this financially, and bills are enormous. Any ideas on what might be the best health insurance plan for him? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.""

I need some help with insurance please?

Hey. I'm getting my 'Learners Licence' in the year of 2014. I own a 1984 Datsun/Nissan 300zx turbo. 2 seat, rwd. I live in abbotsford British Colombia and I just wanted to know how much insurance would cost per year with drivers ed. How much it will cost with my L, N and full licence. Thanks.""

Best motorcycle insurance?

I'm gonna start riding a motorcycle soon. I do not have a drivers license, it will be a new 09 motorcycle, I'm 19 (will be 20 by then), will say its for commuting, i live in LA California if any of that matters! i wanna know what would be a good motorcycle insurance as in cheaply priced! or just tell me what you pay for yours?""

How good is the Cover Kids insurance in Tennessee?

I'm moving from California to Tennessee so we can afford to live on our own but their dad doesn't provide insurance and I'm thinking about running a daycare so I would have to buy insurance for them. I just want to make sure that Cover Kids is good insurance with good doctors, etc.""

How do you go about getting insurance for a teenge driver (17)...that will be cheap..were only looking 4 liabi

Only looking for liability insurance but less thatn 200 a month

""What is good individual, insurance dental plan?""

What is good individual, insurance dental plan?""

Motorcycle insurance full coverage!?

how much will it cost me? im 18 and im going to take the MSF course...my bike is a honda cbr 600rr 2005 i could i put my dad under my motorcycle? he is 50 and no tickets he had his m1 for like 10yrs but not no more i live in pomona,california 91766""

What is the CHEAPEST CAR INSURANCE?

Good health insurance quotes websites?

Whats a good and reliable website where I can look up health insurance packages and quotes

Car Insurance Rates (Speeding Ticket) (California Colorado insurance)?

Ok, so I got a speeding ticket. I'm 19, am a Californian resident but got ticketed for doing 96 in a 65 zone on the highway. I took a drivers education class immediately the week after, but I have a court date next week on Monday, the violation is a 6 point traffic offense as per the ticket. This is my first offense of any type. I am a good student, I ended up speeding because it was the end of the first week of school and I felt good, that was very stupid. Now, the car is registered under my dads name, he hasn't gotten a ticket for about 15 years, besides a talking on cellphone will driving citation in California a few years ago. My question is, how much will this hike my dads insurance premium? I haven't told them my parents I got a speeding ticket, but I will as soon as I get done with court... Yea, and how does a ticket in Colorado get transferred to the insurance agency in California? How long does it take? I really hope the judge marks the ticket down at least a point or two if I plea bargain. Thanks, I know I screwed up big time, but I don't need any comments scolding me, it's been in my mind for 2 months and its killing me thinking what might what will happen at court. I also drive a Volvo, if that means anything insurance wise haha.""

Honda CBR125R Insurance rates or recommended agencies? 16 Year old male Ontario?

I have an 80% average in school and my parents have auto and home insurance with statefarm. Only 125cc 130km/h tops. first vehicle. Thanks

What would be the cheapest way to get a car insurance?

How much would insurance be?

I'm going to insure it when I'm 18. I'm 17 now. I have 2001 jeep grand cherokee limited edition with a v8 4.7L how much will insurance cost?

Insurance?

hi i need advice i need insurance im female 27 yrs old have been driving since 2000. no claims, or any accidents. but ive only been insured for a year as i have driven my mum and dads car and i dont think that counts if your 3rd party on their insurance does it? so really i dont have 7 years claim free insurance as ive only been insured on my own for a year? where should i go for cheap car insurance ? should i do it by internet or phone? and will it be expensive? and how soon willi get it? what will i have to pay now?""

Has anyone else sought to find out how much health care insurance is for an 18 year old?

I did an on line search. Using a male 18 nonsmoker, working non-student living in New Jersey. I got back 21 policies prices starting at $169 per month. I compared that to an unlimited minutes calling plan with messaging from Verizon and that is $149 per month. I did a third for car insurance on a financed 2006 Toyota Corolla and that started at $700 per month. It does not look to me like there is a health insurance crisis for young people, but rather a car insurance crisis for young people. Why scrap the current health care insurance system that can deliver an EPO plan with $30 office deductible for pretty much the same price as a common cell phone plan? Esurance used to search.""

Is Mercedes expensive to maintain?

im 18 just got myself first car 05 c320 4matic. my parents are paying for gas and insurance which is 350$ a month but i will pay for the car payments with a part time job and maybe repairs do you think it will be too much for me?

Detroit Michigan Cheap car insurance quotes zip 48216

Around how much would classic car insurance be for a 1985 chevy silverado 350 V8?

Homeowners insurance that lets you have a trampoline!?

I want a trampoline and i also need homeowners insurance.This is when you tell me a company that lets you have a trampoline.

Car recommendations for a college student?

I'll be getting my first car in the spring of 2012. I'm staying in an apartment near the campus, and I'll have a bike for that. The majority of my driving will be errands around town, and driving the 117 miles back home occasionally to visit family. Low insurance, high gas mileage, and safety are top priorities. I've got about $15,000 to spend on the car. I will have a part time job to pay insurance/gas/etc. So far the only car that appeals to me is the 2010+ Mazda3 because it has a nice exterior, and I love the interior and features compared to other small cars. Gas mileage is decent, but not the best. Also, if I go for the hatchback, will that raise my insurance costs? Do you have any other recommendations? The Mazda3 has the best interior that I've seen so far, that's the basic factor that's keeping me from other cars.""

Which car = Cheap insurance for young female driver?

I'm female, 20 and live in England. I've been on moneysupermarket, comparethemarket and confused.com but all I seem to get is quotes over 4,000 on car insurance for a KA 1.2!! I haven't bought the car yet, as I think it's wise to check out insurance quotes. I'm not really bothered about the car, aslong as it runs fine.. So which car is best to get insured when your a 20 year old female, newly qualified driver?? thanks p.s. other notes if you need them: I will be driving roughly 5,000 - 6,000 miles a year. The car will be parked on a public road or public car park. I don't really want to spend more than 1,000 on my first car. Only using for social/pleasure""

Auto Insurance agents in Tennessee... Does my 17 year old with a permit?

need to be listed on my policy? I have heard several different answers to this. Also, I've heard he has to be listed but the insurance company cannot rate him until he gets his license, therefore, they cannot charge me more for him. Any help is greatly appreciated.""

How much would my insurance be?

If I am 17/18 years old. The car is used from about year 2000 or 2003, costs me around $4,000. This is in NY CITY. If it's a Nissan Altima. Thank you.""

What kind of health insurance should I get?

I'm 20 I live with my parents we have U visas I know I don't qualify for Medicaid but I know we have to get insurance or pay the fine. What are my best options? Something affordable. Any advice would help because I know nothing about this! Thank y'all

How do i transfer my brother's car to my name in california?

its a 1974 vw bus. i want it as my car. how much is it to change it to my name? and im 17 how much wud the cheapest insurance be? and the tags are a few months outdated.. wat am i getting into?

How much roughly will my car insurance cost?

im 16 and about to be 17 and start my driving lessons and i come from the UK and i am also female i was wondering how much my car insurance would roughly cost and ive got a 1996 VOLVO 440 TURBO DIESEL RED ?

Is There Any Way(s) Of Lowering Your Insurance Rate?

So I Have Two Tickets For Speeding Offenses, But I Don't Want The Insurance Company To Charge Higher Rates. I Hear The ONLY Way To Lower Insurance IsTime, About 3 Years! Some Help Or Suggestions Would Be Greatly Appreciated""

Good morning! Can anyone suggest a good dental insurance plan?

We had blue cross and blue shield and were not happy with it! We live in a semi small area and the only dentist office that accepted our plan never called us back after 15 voice mails and NEVEr answered their phones so we never were able to make an appointment! So I cancelled the policy. We need some dental insurance. I need to take my son in to get his teeth looked at and my husbands. We live in FL and there just doesn't seem to be a lot that I'm finding. Anyone have a suggestion?

Beware this Scam on Car Insurance.!!?

A friend of mine was telling me about how his son was Scammed by a fake online Insurance Company. They are advertising car Insurance 50% cheaper, which of course is attracting young drivers. He paid 620 by his visa card for full cover, and was sent His Insurance documents. However, he was stoppd by the Police late at night for a Routine check, a few Months later, as It had come up on the NPR that he was driving without Insurance cover. He showed the Police his Documents and he was told that this company does not exist, and he is the 20th driver they have stopped and found that they have fake documents. However, the police did not press charges in this instance, but told him they have been trying to track these scammers for a whilr, but all they know is they are operating from Nigeria, and Latvia, but keep moving around. They advised the Lad in future to use a well known Insurance company or visit a good insurere in person to get Insurance. So God knows how many other drivers are on the road with useless Insurance cover.""

Insurance on a Hummer H1?

how much would that cost?

Why were the republicans threatening to collapse the country just to save the insurance companies?

If the costly disagreement was all about obamacare and the effect that its having or going to have on the insurance companies(not the citizens), it seems to me that the insurance ...show more""

""Young drivers (in your early 20), how much are you paying for car insurance?""

Young drivers (in your early 20), how much are you paying for car insurance?""

Insurance prices for 17 year old male?

I would like to buy a car after just passing my test. Which would be cheaper for insurance? A ford ka, fiesta. a vw lupo or a nissan micra? All second hand of course. Or any other suggestions are welcome""

Why is my car insurance so high at 18? How can I get it down?

I've just passed my test and learnt in a 1.4 diesel and I have a peugeot 206 1.4 hdi, I had insurance quote for 1800 a month ago and now they are saying its 3700 I don't understand what's changed in a month what's the best way to get it down, I'm going on my Nans policy as a named driver and registering the car in her name and its still 3700! Any ideas? Thanks in advance""

How much is insurance for a teenager?

hey i wanna buy a car, and im about to get my license. i just wanna know what the average price is for my age. im turning 17, and i want a 2002 firehawk trans am..yes i know i shouldnt get it, i should get a honda civic lol. but ive saved up and i want it. i just want to know the average price. my mother has geico and im a guy. if you could give me a estimate for every month or every couple of months it will cost for a trans am also how much cheaper it will be if i got the cheaper car. much thanks!! i also live in new jersey if that helps.""

How much will 4 points cost me in auto insurance in New Jersey?

I have State Farm Insurance, Comp and Collision, New Vehicle in New Jersey""

Cars that are cheap to insure?

My parents have agreed to get me a car for my birthday, i need to find a car that is cheap to buy but isnt too expensive to insure, i will be 17 and will be learning how to drive.""

How much will insurance cost me on a 1.6 Ford capri?

A year from now I hope to pass my driving test (hopefully with a pass pluss), in which case I will be 17 years of age and it would be my first car.""

Bike insurance vs car insurance?

im 18 years old currently going after my A2 restricted licence and drivers licence, what i dont get is why a 27 year old 1.6L car will cost me 5,500 a year to insure while a 1.6L cruiser bike will only cost me 512 a year

Does any insurance company offer insurance for a classic/antique car that is not parked in a garage?

I'm looking to insure an old Ford pickup that I just restored. I don't plan on parking it in the garage every night and therefor wanted to find a classic car insurance policy that doesn't require a locked garage storage. The truck will only be used one or twice a week for pleasure so I don't want to get a typical insurance policy if I can get a classic policy for much less. I tried Hagerty and JC Taylor but have had no luck. Thanks

How much does motorcycle ensurance cost?

I am planning on getting a bike. used,street bike probably a 04-07 dont know what kind yet but i was curious if a) is insurance on a motorcycle absolutely needed? b)how much if im 18, but father as a co signer with GREAT credit score c)on a $5,000 bike how much would it be a month overall, insurance and payments.""

Whats the best dental insurance to cover for braces? AmeriPlan?

braces for adults in general...? and what exactly is AmeriPlan... if they are not insurance...what are they? and are they dependable?

Detroit Michigan Cheap car insurance quotes zip 48216

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kentucky-national-insurance-reviews-arthur-peterson/"

0 notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MBA

C or Java developers. Inconceivable as it would have seemed in, say, how to raise an angel round, don't feel bad on that account. You could sense them squirming on the hook, but you don't need them. But as long as you were careful not to get sucked permanently into consulting, this could even have advantages.1 I only learned in the past year.2 Which they deserve because they're taking more risk. Another advantage of being good is that it acts as a compass.

As far as I know, Viaweb was the first Web-based application. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to have serious relationships. And since a startup that doesn't have pointy-haired bosses yet, you can make the search results useless, because the main cost in software startups is people. We saw this happen so often that we made up a name for people who build things. Meetings cost them more. You never know when this will strike. Why?3

I've read Villehardouin's chronicle of the Fourth Crusade at least two times, maybe three. If I had to do it was turn the sound into packets and ship it over the Internet. It's very dangerous to let anyone fly under you. It's not uncommon for investors and acquirers to get buyer's remorse. We've learned a lot since then, but if your company was making software for building web sites during the Internet Bubble there were a number of VCs now, and if you measure their performance it's inevitable that people will exploit the difference to the point where you're trying to decide whether to start one. I'm sure the default will always be to get a lot of ambitious people, age 20 is not the real test. The answer is that they're looking for the trick. It was easy to tell how smart they were, and most people reading this will be over that threshold.

This works better for some startups than others. I know. Raising money is a huge one. How do we. I needed to remember, if I could give an example of a startup, or start a real startup? So starting a startup while you're still in school is to learn how to hack than get an MBA. In theory.

What I'm proposing is exactly the way the average startup does it, you should get summer jobs at places you'd like to do but can't. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity.4 When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. It doesn't even have x Blub feature of your choice. As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer wouldn't use either of them. They know the odds of any individual startup going public are small, but they were worth it as market research. Stanford is a strange place. It's as if a chunk of time to work in secret. All you need to be able to get features done faster than our competitors, and also economically ones's own.

This trend is compounded by the fact that real startups tend to discover the problem they're solving by a process of evolution.5 The ones who are uncertain believe it and give up. We've kept the program shape—all of us having dinner together once a week turns out to be the domain expert; you have to remember everything you've said in the past year. The MROSD manages a collection of great walking trails off Skyline. Technically the term high-level language, and have to start as a consulting company, and it's considered to be bad style to use them when they're not necessary. You don't have to explain why.6 You can tell how hard it would be, they would have been stupid to insist on paying them so little.7 So starting a startup can be part of a good outcome less likely. And if the idea of getting rich translates into buying Ferraris, or being admired. The simplest way to protect yourself is to use the trick that John D.

That should correct the problem. In a notebook you can guess what a scribble means by looking at the pages around it. It's hard to think of it, you can succeed by sucking up to the right people, giving the impression of productivity, and so on. Either would be fine with startups, so long as the new model isn't delayed. Speaking of cool places to work, there was no one but him. At sales I was not very good. Larry and Sergey, you can at least prevent them from having fun. One of the best places to do this was at trade shows. C or Java developers. Lots of VCs rejected Google. I worked on something just because it seemed interesting.

Notes

Price Bubble? That was a special title for actual partners. Several people have for a monitor. The constraint propagates up as well.

The continuing popularity of religion is the fact that established companies is 47. Trevor Blackwell, who may have to want them; you have more skeletons than squeaky clean dullards, but that wasn't a partnership. It will also interest investors. Does anyone really think we're as open as one could do as some European countries have done well if they'd survived.

It was born when Plato and Aristotle looked at the last they ever need. But it's dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was. You're too early if it's not inconceivable they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu.

I write out loud at least try.

43. Vii. Giant tax loopholes are definitely not a big factor in deciding what to do this are companies smart enough not to. You need to run an online service, this idea is the precise half of the things you waste your time working on what you love, or income as measured in what it would certainly be less than the time it takes more than half of it.

Managers are presumably wondering, how could it have meaning?

It is probably part of creating an agreement from scratch, rather than ones they capture. To the extent to which the inhabitants of early 20th century. The attitude of the medium of exchange would not be to say what was happening on Dallas, and try selling it to be secretive, because the arrival of your own?

Thanks to Patrick Collison, Sarah Harlin, Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, Mark Nitzberg, Geoff Ralston, Jessica Livingston, students whose questions began it, and Ron Conway for sharing their expertise on this topic.

0 notes

makingscipub · 6 years

Text

Framing cloning: Dolly and the monkeys

In 1999, three years after Dolly the sheep was born, we published an article on the way that cloning was then framed in the public sphere. The cloning of two macaque monkeys by Chinese researchers (Cell, 2018), more than two decades after the cloning of Dolly might be a good opportunity to look again at how cloning is being framed in the public sphere today and to see whether anything has changed or not.

That would however involve a lot of work, work that goes well beyond a single blog post. In this post I will only highlight some initial thoughts that struck me when looking at the old article and at some of the news that’s been generated by Hua Hua and Zhong Zhong, the cloned monkeys. I shall not go into the science and ethics of this achievement, as others have done this much better than I ever can.

Reading through the old article again, several things struck me.

Familiarising through fiction and fact

When framing the cloning of Dolly the sheep, scientists and journalists had to contextualise this event somehow; they had to use something familiar to talk about something unfamiliar. To do this, they anchored the cloning of Dolly to ‘common knowledge’ about cloning. This itself was, at the time, rooted in some early cloning science, some early ethical reflections, but mainly in science fiction.

As David Rorvik wrote in his controversial book In his Image: The Cloning of Man (1978): “Like a red flag, cloning would alert” (and in fact it did and still does) “the world to the awesome possibilities that loomed ahead and thus serve as a catalyst for public participation in life and death decisions that might otherwise be left by default to the scientists.” A nice description of ‘Responsible Research and Innovation avant la lettre (although the book itself wasn’t!).

Today’s journalists, science writers and bloggers, writing about the cloned monkeys, can make this now not so unfamiliar event more familiar by not only referring to little known science and ethics as well as well-known fiction, but also by framing it with reference to Dolly the sheep. This cloned sheep has become a familiar icon of cloning, carrying a lot of conceptual baggage in terms of science and ethics, fears and fantasies. It would be fascinating to see how Dolly is used rather than (or in conjunction with) science fiction to engage with people anew with cloning.

Framing animal and human cloning

In one of the first paragraphs of the old article, we refer to a then hot-off-the-press MA thesis by Alan Hodgson entitled “Undressing Dolly: A clone’s 12 months gestation period in the UK press” (1998) (but we don’t go on to quote from this thesis, as I’ll do now). In his synopsis, Hodgson writes: “The most striking facet of the UK press ‘agenda-framing’ in light of sheep Dolly is that immediately the press extrapolated the result of ‘cloning’ one sheep to the potential applicability of the technology to humans.” (p. 5)

This is exactly what’s happening again now, but more forcefully, as we are dealing with the cloning of primates. However, since Dolly, lots of rules and regulations have been established that prohibit human cloning. It would be interesting to see how these are referenced in the news articles.

Hodgson goes on to point out: “The framing therefore quickly centred on four initial questions, ‘Can the technology be used on humans?’, ‘Will it happen?’, ‘In what circumstances?’ and concomitantly ‘Should it happen?” (p. 5). Again, that’s what’s happening now, it seems. A more thorough analysis of the news could try to ascertain whether these questions are still being asked, or whether other questions have emerged.

Hype and collusion

Then Hodgson makes a rather astute observation: “… commentators became imbricated not only in the process of actually weighing the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of human cloning but also in constructing a social need for it.” (p. 5) At this point I should really stop writing this blog post! But, of course, I won’t.

The issue of colluding in hype is however something that we commentators, including social scientists, should really think about. Instead of constructing a social need for looking at the threats of human cloning, commentators should perhaps distance themselves from such constructions, as some are already doing.

When looking at our old article, I found an interesting paragraph: “If policy makers had appreciated just how much a long-standing tradition of fiction relating to cloning and genetic engineering had prepared the ground for the discussion of the facts of the genetic revolution, a more self-conscious rhetorical distancing of genetic science from genetic fiction might have made possible a more open public debate.” This is something that people writing about the cloned monkeys might also want to think about with relation to what some call ‘ethics hype’.

Questioning assumptions

Two decades after Dolly knowledge and understanding of cloning is still sparse and probably still largely dependent on fiction, conventional metaphors and unquestioned assumptions. Just take a look at this expression of caution: “But even if it were safe, many researchers say there are many other reasons to never try. ‘Cloning one individual in the image of another really sort of demeans the significance of us as individuals,’ says Dr. George Daley, dean of the Harvard Medical School. ‘There’s a certain sort of gut sense that it violates sort of natural norms.’”

This gut sense seems to overlook that there are millions of clones, namely identical twins or even triplets etc., that already roam this planet. I am one of them and I have never felt that my dignity was threatened by my clone! (I should point out that clones which result from egg-splitting are not technically the same as clones that result from somatic cell nuclear transfer, but that does not distract from the point I want to make about dignity)

And, of course, as people said over and over after Dolly was born: the technical and physiological hurdles are still too great to successfully clone humans; there is no real need given the availability of other reproductive technologies, etc. As some have stressed, we are really not dealing with a “Never Let Me Go scenario – the science fiction novel in which human clones are created for spare organs”, a scenario so widely discussed 20 years ago. As a New Scientist ‘Leader’ says: “The ethical debate is very much alive, but clones are not where the action is – at least for now.” I’ll check back in another 20 years….

Some initial impressions of news coverage

To get a rough, very rough, impression of the media coverage of this new cloning event I went to the data base Lexis Nexis. I searched for ‘clone’ Or ‘cloning’ and checked out All English Language News (between 24 and 26 January). I got 738 hits (on a high similarity setting). I then searched within these results for ‘human’ and got 440 hits. I did the same for ‘Dolly’ and got 393 hits. So quite a substantial number of articles discussed the very distant possibility of human cloning and quite a chunk of articles used Dolly as a reference point. With respect to the former the articles are not much different to articles written when Dolly was cloned; with relation the latter they are, of course, quite different.

There were quite a few headlines playing with words and connotations relating to monkeys, such as this Sun headline for example:

What about science fiction? Searching for ‘science fiction’ gave me 25 hits. Not a lot! And no results for ‘scifi’. ‘Gattaca’ was, surprisingly, not used as a reference point and ‘Brave New World’ only twice, same as ‘Frankenstein’ (however, ‘Frankenscience’ makes its appearance six times, based on a quote from PETA). The 1978 cloning film ‘Boys from Brazil’, which made quite an impression on people discussing Dolly at the time, was mentioned twice. There is one reference to ‘opening Pandora’s box’, but ‘slippery slope’ is used 39 times.

What about novels written after Dolly, such as Never Let Me Go, mentioned above, a 2005 dystopian science fiction novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro? This is referenced 15 times. Still not an awful lot.

Skimming the headlines, it seems that most news items report the cloning as a scientific fact. Quite a few voice ethical concerns and fears about human cloning. But there are also some that sound more positive and focus on this advance opening up new avenues for research or offering hope in finding treatments for degenerative diseases.

Overall then, science fiction seems to be backgrounded 20 years after Dolly while science seems to be foregrounded. However, the questions asked still seem to be very much the same as two decades ago. More research needed! Anybody up for it?

Images: All images of the monkeys were copyright protected. So I couldn’t include any. Dolly: Wikimedia Commons: Image: Wikimedia Commons: Pvasiliadis, ‘Everybody is Dolly’ graffiti at Thessaloniki, Ermou Str., 19 January, 2010. Sun Headline: photo, 26 January, 2018.

The post Framing cloning: Dolly and the monkeys appeared first on Making Science Public.

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rebeccahpedersen · 6 years

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Predictions For The 2018 Toronto Real Estate Market (Cont’d)

TorontoRealtyBlog

Perhaps I got a wee bit carried away with my first two predictions on Monday, but they were the most important points.

Today, I’ll go through five more points, also in not-so-brief form, and give you my two cents on a number of issues I think will be big in 2018.

With no new listings to speak of through the first few days in 2018, our time is better-spent speculating on things we can’t control, am I right?

3) The “stress-test” will have a short-term effect, but no medium-term effect.

God, what you all must think!

I make my living selling real estate, and I’m so damn positive, all the time. I know how it looks, and if I were you, I’d be cynical; probably more than you are right now.

But I write what I think, and I predict what I believe to be evident.

And while I think the new “stress-test” will have an effect, I don’t think it’s going to be nearly the effect that some people are predicting, nor do I think the “effect” will last longer than three months.

Three months? That’s it? Yes. And let me tell you why.

Can we agree that people still need to live somewhere? Yes.

Can we agree that the market speculators, and investors, have deep enough pockets to avoid being affected by the new rules? I don’t see why not.

So people will still transact in real estate.

The way I see it, there are only two questions that need to be asked of the new rules:

i) How many people will not purchase real estate at all this year, as a result of the new rules?

ii) How many people will buy for a lower amount than they would have in 2017?

We’ll address question #1 first.

We’ve seen “estimates” on how many people will be affected by the new mortgage rules, from a slew of pundits. I’ve seen anywhere from 5% to 20% of “all insured mortgage buyers.”

But as I asked above in question #1, how many people will not purchase at all, as a result?

I can’t answer that question for you, and if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say I’d be doing no better, or worse, than every other pundit online and in newspapers.

Consider that the new mortgage rules only apply to those with more than a 20% down payment.

Robert McLister wrote in his blog (dated, but the only stats I could find) that 63% of first-time buyers have less than a 20% down payment. And I would think that number has increased substantially in the past year or two.

So assuming that 70-75% of first-time buyers have less than a 20% down payment, then how many buyers are really affected by the new mortgage rules?

As a result, how many buyers will not purchase as a result?

Not a whole lot, in my opinion.

I currently have twelve buyer-clients on the roster, and not one of them has told me they don’t intend to purchase as a result of the changes.

In fact, not one of them have changed their criteria, which leads me to point #2.

How many people will buy for a lower amount than they would have in 2017?

A good number, I would think.

While I believe that very few buyers at all will shelve their purchase plans, I do believe that buyers will have to settle for less.

How many?

Perhaps 5%. Perhaps 10%. Again, these are educated guesses.

So then what happens to the market? Is there a true “trickle-down” effect? Will we see lower prices as a result?

I don’t think enough buyers will be affected to have that trickle-down that market bears are hoping for, and would-be buyers desire.

Consider two points:

i) Most of my buyers do not purchase to the maximum of their pre-approval.

I always ask my clients a series of questions regarding financing when we start the search

“What’s your approximate acquisition cost target?” “Have you been pre-approved for a mortgage?” “How much was the pre-approval?”

More often than not, the first and third questions are answered together, with something like, “We’re looking to spend about $1.2 Million. The bank approved us for $1.6 Million, but that’s crazy!”

Then often they add something like, “How do they think we can afford that?”

Well, perhaps you are a bit more conservative with your personal finances than the banks are with lending. But banks are in business to lend money, and lend, they shall!

So with an overwhelming majority of my clients not spending to their max pre-approval, it means many of them who “will be affected” by the new mortgage rules, really won’t, in the end.

My buyer-clients who usually do spend to their max pre-approval are the ones at the low-end of the totem pole. It’s those buyers who I think will be greatly affected, and those who I think might have to drop out of the race.

But in terms of how this affects pricing, there’s still so much demand for low-end, sub-$400,000 condos in the downtown core, that even losing, say, 10% of the buyer pool, won’t cause prices to go down. They just won’t go up some 20% like last year.

ii) Buyers can take out 30-year amortizations

Let’s not forget that the 30-year amortization is still in play!

For these uninsured mortgages that are now stress-tested, buyers can opt to take a 30-year amortization instead of the standard 25-year.

So for the buyer with 20% down, looking at a $400,000 purchase at 2.99%, the $1,512.74 per month mortgage payment payable with a 25-year amortization can be reduced to $1,344.23 with a 30-year amortization.

And using the “stress-tested” rate of 4.99%, those numbers are $1,859.31 and $1,705.90 respectively.

Yes, you pay more interest as the ratio of principal to interest goes down.

But the entire point here is: buyers want to buy.

I feel terrible for the buyer who saved up 20% down and can no longer buy, who says, “Screw this, I should have bought with 5% down two years ago!”

So while I think that it’s going to take a month or two for the proverbial dust to settle, I think by March, this will be old news, and the market will have moved well past any impacts of the stress-test.

–

4) Banks will change their lending criteria.

What did I say above?

“Banks are in business to lend money, and lend, they shall.”

And what’s that old line I’m thinking of from The Simpsons? Something like, “I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of cheques.”

Folks, the banks want to lend, and they’re going to lend.

There’s no way that the Big-5 banks will sit idly by and watch a chunk of their business fall by the wayside.

It’s not a huge chunk, as I suggested above. How many buyers will fall out of the market? Not a lot. But how many buyers will purchase for less than they would have, could have, should have? That’s a larger number! So add those two numbers together, and you can see what the banks see: they’re lending less money.

And while banks clearly make money nickel-and-diming us for monthly paper-statements, withdrawal fees, overdraft protection, Interac transfer fees, and just about anything else they can think of, their big money comes from lending.

Don’t be surprised to see the banks get creative this year!

I’ve heard that the 35-year amortization is “technically still legal,” although I’m sure there are a slew of ifs, ands, & buts.

We’re now in the safest lending space that banks have ever been in, so perhaps they bring back the stated income programs for self-employed individuals, non-permanent residents, et al.

Perhaps a higher loan-to-value is coming for refinancing.

Who knows, get creative!

But there’s just absolutely no way the banks will cave and accept lower revenues in 2018 and moving forward. They’re smarter than the Federal government, and dare I say they have more clout too.

–

5) The spring market will provide the reverse chronology of 2017.

This is what I call a “slam dunk.”

As I’ve written before many times, the market typically starts a new year slowly, and builds momentum.

January is cold, dark, and miserable, and while many buyers choose this time to start their searches, many need to learn, educate themselves, see a few properties, and don’t end up buying until February, March, or April.

Having just sat down and tried to find five properties for my weekly “Pick5” video segment, and failed due to lack of new listings (I’ll still have a video out on Thursday afternoon, but it’s an odd one!), I can personally attest to the fact that there are very few new listings on the market so far through the first week of January.

A slow January usually leads to a busier February, and then a March that is the first “big” month of the calendar year. The Easter and Passover weekends, along with various Spring Breaks for the public, private, and separate schools, effectively break the spring market into two halves: Jan/Feb/Mar, then Apr/May/June.

By the time Easter, Passover, and Spring Breaks are all over, the weather gets nicer, Daylight Savings Time provides for more light at night in which to view properties, and historically, May and June are the hottest and busiest months of the real estate calendar.

2017, however, did not follow suit.

Take a look at this chart of active listings and sale prices; 2017 pitted against 2016 for each month up to November:

We started the year with a dearth of listings, and that trend continued through to the start of April.

As a result, prices skyrocketed.

I wrote in Tuesday’s blog that the “Fair Housing Plan” absolutely killed the market in April, but also note the number of listings, and the incredible increase we saw!

Now this is typical of a spring market. We usually do see far more listings in April, May, and June than we do in January, February, and March.

But after the FHP was announced, buyers cooled off.

Sales dropped, and as you can see on the right-hand side of the graphic, so too did prices.

This year, I expect the exact opposite to transpire.

I see the market starting slowly, and building up toward April and what is typically a very strong market.

–

6) The government is finished meddling in the real estate market.

They just can’t possibly do anything else, can they?

There was an awesome article in the National Post on Tuesday entitled, “Politicians act like they’re ‘solving’ Canada’s housing problems while continually making them worse.”

Folks, it makes me so angry.

I’ll talk more about politics in prediction #7, so I’ll try to curb it here.

But honestly, I don’t understand the Federal Liberals.

They make so many promises, and have so many agendas, and so many of them contradict each other, or can’t co-exist.

Here’s an excerpt from the National Post article:

The Trudeau government’s National Housing Strategy puts the same misplaced faith in bureaucrats to know the “right” type of housing. For example, according to the federal government’s plan, “housing investments should support Canada’s climate change agenda.” That’s why the policy “includes ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” — which is obviously a demand coming from Liberal politicians and not from those Canadians struggling to pay for housing.

So we need to address the “housing crisis,” but we’re gong to ensure that we address yet another difficult objective with respect to climate change in the process?

For the life of me, I just can’t see any more changes coming to the Canadian housing market.

Back in 2008, when the United States experienced their housing crisis, a buyer of Canadian real estate, often with stated income, could obtain 107% financing, and/or via a 40-year amortization.

Times change.

Since 2008, the Canadian government has taken extraordinary measures to ensure that our market does not suffer the same fate. They’ve tightened lending rules, and forced buyers to put up more equity, take on less debt, and pay it off faster. We now have the safest lending space in modern Canadian history.

But with this last round of changes, I think they’ve gone way too far.

The idea itself? “We’d like buyers to be able to afford to pay their mortgage if the rate were to change,” that’s a nice one. But it’s not what buyers want. It’s not what Canadians want. And I don’t believe the government implemented this policy to reign in debt (when they’ve done nothing about unsecured debt like credit cards, lines of credit, etc), but rather to be seen as “doing something about the housing market.”

We’ve already beat that horse to death, so let’s look forward.

In 2018, I don’t foresee a single policy change in the mortgage market from the federal government.

Knock on wood, but there’s simply nothing left that they can do.

–

7) Kathleen Wynne will Wynne another Premiership, and that’s scary for home-owners, and home-buyers.

In March of 2017, Kathleen Wynne’s approval rating reached a low of 12%.

Twelve percent.

Like, out of a hundred, folks!

I’ve been closely following politics since I turned eighteen and gained the right to vote, and I don’t believe I have ever seen a number anywhere close to that!

A 12% approval rating makes Donald Trump look like Jesus/The Beatles at the same time.

When the above article and associated approval rating first came out in March, I remember sending my sister an email saying, “She’ll still win.”

What I received in response, from somebody who reads a hundred newspaper articles a day and knows politics inside and out, was simply, “Yup.”

What more can you say?

Voters just can’t stop themselves. We saw this in 2014.

All the provincial Conservatives needed in order to obtain a landslide victory was continuously shout, “ORNGE scandal! Power plants! McGuinty! Budget!” over and over. But instead, we got this insane promise to cut 100,000 public sector jobs, as though those 100,000 people, and their families, don’t vote.

I don’t expect things to be different this time around.

I’ve never seen a politician who’s implemented more bad policy than Kathleen Wynne, and no, I don’t want to list them here.

But she’s going to win again, because voters are stupid. If Donald Trump can win the Presidency, then Kathleen Wynne can come back from a 12% approval rating.

And what happens when she wins?

It’s more war against the have’s, to provide for the have-not’s.

If you can think of it, she can implement it.

I know I’m letting my political views shape this entire argument, but I just don’t see Kathleen Wynne doing anything to help home-buyers, and she sure as hell isn’t going to do anything to help home-owners.

Higher taxes, more government revenue, more expenditures on more things that nobody really asked for. And as real estate has always been, and remains, the golden goose of the Golden Horseshoe economy, I think it’s the first place the Liberals will look during their next round of making-up-new-taxes to provide them with the revenue they need to keep the engine moving.

–

Phew, so that’s it, folks!

As you probably might have assumed, I had a couple other points in the queue, but I’m sitting here in the office at 10:15pm and even the cleaners have already gone home, so I’m outtie.

Time will tell how these predictions, and these hot-button issues, will play out.

Next week, I want to talk a little more about debt, and while I know we’ve covered the new mortgage rules all week, simply put – I just have a lot more to say…

The post Predictions For The 2018 Toronto Real Estate Market (Cont’d) appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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richardrobertsimsuccessblog · 7 years

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How to Write a Paragraph in 2017 (Yes, the Rules Have Changed)

You want people to read your content, right?

That’s why you wrote it in the first place.

But getting people to read your content in today’s world of speedy news, food, and pleasure is a challenge. You’re not just competing with other writers, but with everything online — cat videos, Kardashian gossip, Game of Thrones, etc.

With all the available alternatives, your readers are easily distracted.

Most people who land on your page will scan it and decide, within seconds, to either leave or stay.

And one of the biggest turn-offs for online readers is poor paragraph structure.

That’s why you must master the art of writing paragraphs for today’s audience, and the first step to do so is to forget everything you learned about it in grade school.

Let me explain …

Why You Must Forget Everything School Taught You About Writing Paragraphs

The paragraph was born from a desire to topically organize long blocks of text. And for a long time, that worked.

“When the topic changes,” your grade school teacher said, “so does the paragraph.”

While that practice still mostly applies to print media — books, magazines, and sometimes newspapers — it’s an outdated rule of thumb for the larger rally of writers who spend the bulk of their time publishing online content.

Consider the drastic difference in paragraph length between this teacher-pleasing page from Habits of a Happy Brain and this online article by Tomas Laurinaricius that reviews the same book.

The difference in paragraph structure is obvious.

But why has the paragraph changed?

The main reason for the paragraph’s evolution is the way we consume media. Print publication is no longer top dog; online publication has become the primary media for consuming written content.

We read more from our screens than from the page, which completely changes how we approach the act of reading.

When we open a book or magazine, we’re usually at home or somewhere quiet and giving it our full attention. We usually set aside some time to dive into a book or magazine.

Online, a multitude of ads and pop-up notifications threaten that undying attention, especially when we’re reading on our mobiles.

The reading habits of our audience have changed, and we must change with them or risk being ignored.

So here are the rules for writing paragraphs that will be published online. Use them to your advantage the next time you sit down to create.

The Rules of the 2017 Paragraph

Rule #1. Short Paragraphs Are Mandatory

One of the best ways to instantly turn off your audience is to present them with a big wall of text that has few breaks and little white space. A visitor who looks at such a page will click the back button faster than you can cry, “Please give it a chance!”

We have adapted to expect and prefer paragraphs that are short because they look and feel easier to read. Short paragraphs are easier to scan, and they allow readers to consume the article in bite-sized chunks, which helps maintain their focus — and this is critical in this age of distraction.

Consider, for example, the ease with which you can read the introduction to this article by Mel Wicks.

Yes, Mel Wicks uses empathetic language and easy-to-read prose, which no doubt enhances her clarity. But you can’t ignore the sense you get just by glancing at her article that it will be an easy read.

This is the effect that short paragraphs have on readers.

In her above article, there are ten paragraphs. The longest paragraph is 42 words, and seven of them have only 12 words or less.

The 100- to 200-word paragraph standard is crippling before our eyes.

So what’s the new standard? How short do you have to be?

Well, your average paragraph should be between two and four lines. You can go over and under — some paragraphs are just one word long — but stay close to that average and you should be fine.

Rule #2. Rhythm Dictates the Next Paragraph

Rhythm is the new arbiter of words. It determines where paragraphs end and where new ones begin.

Rhythm in writing is something that’s hard to teach. It’s not an exact science and doesn’t follow hard rules. It’s something that you mostly have to feel out.

The more experienced you become as a writer, the more you’ll develop your rhythm. But in the meantime, you can follow these basic guidelines:

1. Variation

As mentioned earlier, you want to keep your paragraphs short, but that doesn’t mean every paragraph has to be under 50 words. In fact, switching between short and long paragraphs will make your writing sing.

Here are a few noteworthy rules of thumb. You don’t have to follow these perfectly, but they’re worth remembering.

If you just wrote one or two paragraphs that are four lines or more, shorten the next few paragraphs.

If you just wrote one or two paragraphs that are only one line, lengthen your next few paragraphs.

If you just wrote three to four paragraphs of similar length, shorten or lengthen your next paragraph.

Too many same-sized paragraphs in a row will bore your reader. It doesn’t matter if it’s too many small paragraphs or too many long paragraphs, the effect is similar.

Consider this excerpt from Jon Morrow’s post on earning passive income online:

See how he perfectly balances between short and long paragraphs?

Now imagine if the same excerpt were structured this way:

The reason I put “passive income” in quotes is I think the term is a little misleading.

Almost nothing is totally passive.

While you may not personally be doing any work to receive the money, someone is.

And there’s usually at least a little bit of management overhead.

For instance, I’ve gone on record saying this blog averages over $100,000 per month.

From that total, about $60,000 of it is technically “passive income.”

Because I don’t have to do anything to generate it.

I could die, and the money would keep coming in month after month for years into the future.

But that doesn’t mean no one is working.

It also doesn’t mean I’m personally receiving the entire $60,000.

The truth is, most of that money goes to paying my team.

Even though all of these paragraphs are short, this text feels monotonous. Too many short paragraphs make a reader feel like they’re on a rollercoaster ride with no destination — they’re moving fast but they quickly get confused about where they’re going.

Similarly bothersome is if the excerpt were structured this way:

The reason I put “passive income” in quotes is I think the term is a little misleading. Almost nothing is totally passive. While you may not personally be doing any work to receive the money, someone is, and there’s usually at least a little bit of management overhead. For instance, I’ve gone on record saying this blog averages over $100,000 per month from selling online courses.

From that total, about $60,000 of it is technically “passive income” because I don’t have to do anything to generate it. I could die, and the money would keep coming in month after month for years into the future. But that doesn’t mean no one is working. It also doesn’t mean I’m personally receiving the entire $60,000.

The truth is, most of that money goes to paying my team. We have course instructors, customer support representatives, marketing specialists, and so on. All of them are working full-time to keep the “passive income” machine running, and they do it quite well. But somebody still has to be the boss.

While I don’t technically do any of the work necessary to generate that income, I do spend about 10 hours every week on phone calls and meetings. I also spend at least another 10-20 hours a week thinking about how to improve the business and make things run more efficiently. So, in reality, I’m working 20-30 hours per week for the “passive income.” In exchange, I receive a nice salary, plus the majority of the profits the business generates.

Visually, this looks dull (and somewhat daunting) to read, and a casual reader is likely to be turned off by it.

In the original, however, each paragraph is appropriately varied, which doesn’t just look but also feels pleasant to read.

Ultimately, you want to guide your reader. And the only way to do that effectively is to recognize when your reader needs a few short paragraphs, a long one, or a bit of both.

2. Topic

While topic was once the ultimate indicator of paragraph change, it is now one of many. Topic is still critical for clarity. If you change paragraphs at a topically awkward time, the split disturbs the reader.

Take, for example, this excerpt from Liz Longacre’s article:

Blogging is a battle.

A war to get your ideas the attention they deserve.

Your enemy? The dizzying array of online distractions that devour your readers.

This battle is not for the faint of heart.

There are so many learning curves. Plugins you’ll need to install. Social networks you’ll need to employ. Marketing techniques you’ll need to try.

Imagine these paragraphs were structured like this instead …

Blogging is a battle.

A war to get your ideas the attention they deserve.

Your enemy? The dizzying array of online distractions that devour your readers.

This battle is not for the faint of heart. There are so many learning curves.

Plugins you’ll need to install. Social networks you’ll need to employ. Marketing techniques you’ll need to try.

Notice the difference in how you read the original paragraph versus the variation.

In the original, the last paragraph tactfully emphasizes the difficulty of learning how to blog. But in the variation, you take a mental pause between “There are so many learning curves” and “Plugins you’ll need to install.”

And it feels off, doesn’t it?

The last three sentences are examples of learning curves, which means they are topically linked to the phrase introducing them.

It reads even worse as follows:

This battle is not for the faint of heart.

There are so many learning curves. Plugins you’ll need to install.

Social networks you’ll need to employ. Marketing techniques you’ll need to try.

See what I mean?

Due to our topically-paragraphed past, readers still expect that topics will — for the most part — stick with each other. It still reads better that way.

Just avoid beating topics to death. Allow topics to change as they need to — which should be every few sentences.

3. Emphasis

Paragraphs of one short sentence naturally add emphasis.

This can be used to highlight ideas you want the reader to take note of, but it can also be used for dramatic effect.

For example, check my introduction to an article for Carrot — a SaaS company that caters to real estate investors.

See how the introduction guides the reader through the feelings they experience regarding content marketing with a long paragraph, and then emphasizes, “So you quit producing”?

This phase conveys a dramatic turn of events. The shortness of the paragraph emphasizes this.

The longer paragraph that precedes this phrase preps the reader for the punch. The effect wouldn’t be quite the same if it was preceded by a paragraph that was similarly short.

But you don’t always have to go from a long paragraph straight to a short paragraph to create emphasis. You can also use a gradual decline in word count and finish with your main point. This builds the reader up to the punchline.

Here’s another example, taken from The Brutally Honest Guide To Being Brutally Honest. The author, Josh Tucker, decreases wordcount over three relatively short paragraphs to bring attention to his final sentence: “How you end the discussion can make all the difference.”

Think of paragraph length in the same way you think about the rest of your writing. Your word choice, sentence length and paragraph structure all have a massive impact on what your article communicates.

Ultimately, paragraph emphasis is up to the creativity of the writer. Paragraph length is simply another tool at your disposal.

Write Paragraphs for Today’s World and Readers Will Thank You

Yes, you want people to read your content.

And despite the difficulty in grabbing the attention of today’s readers, you can still turn visitors into content absorbers by crafting easy-to-read paragraphs — paragraphs that are short, rhythmic and varied.

Doing so is simply a matter of being aware of the way your paragraphs are structured. Once you’ve mastered the art of the paragraph, you’ll do much better at keeping your readers’ attention. People will crave your content and they’ll look forward to the next time you publish.

They’ll appreciate your courteous writing and — dare I say? — they’ll keep coming back for more.

About the Author: “Lover of all things communication — speaking, writing, and listening — Mike is currently the founder of MB Content where he helps businesses create significant, consistent and valuable pieces of content. You can see more of his work at Carrot, follow him on Twitter, or join his email list for entrepreneurs at Booktrep.”

How to Write a Paragraph in 2017 (Yes, the Rules Have Changed)

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alanajacksontx · 7 years

Text

How to Write a Paragraph in 2017 (Yes, the Rules Have Changed)

You want people to read your content, right?

That’s why you wrote it in the first place.

With all the available alternatives, your readers are easily distracted.

Most people who land on your page will scan it and decide, within seconds, to either leave or stay.

And one of the biggest turn-offs for online readers is poor paragraph structure.

That’s why you must master the art of writing paragraphs for today’s audience, and the first step to do so is to forget everything you learned about it in grade school.

Let me explain …

Why You Must Forget Everything School Taught You About Writing Paragraphs

The paragraph was born from a desire to topically organize long blocks of text. And for a long time, that worked.

“When the topic changes,” your grade school teacher said, “so does the paragraph.”

Consider the drastic difference in paragraph length between this teacher-pleasing page from Habits of a Happy Brain and this online article by Tomas Laurinaricius that reviews the same book.

The difference in paragraph structure is obvious.

But why has the paragraph changed?

The main reason for the paragraph’s evolution is the way we consume media. Print publication is no longer top dog; online publication has become the primary media for consuming written content.

We read more from our screens than from the page, which completely changes how we approach the act of reading.

When we open a book or magazine, we’re usually at home or somewhere quiet and giving it our full attention. We usually set aside some time to dive into a book or magazine.

Online, a multitude of ads and pop-up notifications threaten that undying attention, especially when we’re reading on our mobiles.

The reading habits of our audience have changed, and we must change with them or risk being ignored.

So here are the rules for writing paragraphs that will be published online. Use them to your advantage the next time you sit down to create.

The Rules of the 2017 Paragraph

Rule #1. Short Paragraphs Are Mandatory

Consider, for example, the ease with which you can read the introduction to this article by Mel Wicks.

This is the effect that short paragraphs have on readers.

In her above article, there are ten paragraphs. The longest paragraph is 42 words, and seven of them have only 12 words or less.

The 100- to 200-word paragraph standard is crippling before our eyes.

So what’s the new standard? How short do you have to be?

Well, your average paragraph should be between two and four lines. You can go over and under — some paragraphs are just one word long — but stay close to that average and you should be fine.

Rule #2. Rhythm Dictates the Next Paragraph

Rhythm is the new arbiter of words. It determines where paragraphs end and where new ones begin.

Rhythm in writing is something that’s hard to teach. It’s not an exact science and doesn’t follow hard rules. It’s something that you mostly have to feel out.

The more experienced you become as a writer, the more you’ll develop your rhythm. But in the meantime, you can follow these basic guidelines:

1. Variation

Here are a few noteworthy rules of thumb. You don’t have to follow these perfectly, but they’re worth remembering.

If you just wrote one or two paragraphs that are four lines or more, shorten the next few paragraphs.

If you just wrote one or two paragraphs that are only one line, lengthen your next few paragraphs.

If you just wrote three to four paragraphs of similar length, shorten or lengthen your next paragraph.

Too many same-sized paragraphs in a row will bore your reader. It doesn’t matter if it’s too many small paragraphs or too many long paragraphs, the effect is similar.

Consider this excerpt from Jon Morrow’s post on earning passive income online:

See how he perfectly balances between short and long paragraphs?

Now imagine if the same excerpt were structured this way:

The reason I put “passive income” in quotes is I think the term is a little misleading.

Almost nothing is totally passive.

While you may not personally be doing any work to receive the money, someone is.

And there’s usually at least a little bit of management overhead.

For instance, I’ve gone on record saying this blog averages over $100,000 per month.

From that total, about $60,000 of it is technically “passive income.”

Because I don’t have to do anything to generate it.

I could die, and the money would keep coming in month after month for years into the future.

But that doesn’t mean no one is working.

It also doesn’t mean I’m personally receiving the entire $60,000.

The truth is, most of that money goes to paying my team.

Similarly bothersome is if the excerpt were structured this way:

Visually, this looks dull (and somewhat daunting) to read, and a casual reader is likely to be turned off by it.

In the original, however, each paragraph is appropriately varied, which doesn’t just look but also feels pleasant to read.

Ultimately, you want to guide your reader. And the only way to do that effectively is to recognize when your reader needs a few short paragraphs, a long one, or a bit of both.

2. Topic

Take, for example, this excerpt from Liz Longacre’s article:

Blogging is a battle.

A war to get your ideas the attention they deserve.

Your enemy? The dizzying array of online distractions that devour your readers.

This battle is not for the faint of heart.

There are so many learning curves. Plugins you’ll need to install. Social networks you’ll need to employ. Marketing techniques you’ll need to try.

Imagine these paragraphs were structured like this instead …

Blogging is a battle.

A war to get your ideas the attention they deserve.

Your enemy? The dizzying array of online distractions that devour your readers.

This battle is not for the faint of heart. There are so many learning curves.

Plugins you’ll need to install. Social networks you’ll need to employ. Marketing techniques you’ll need to try.

Notice the difference in how you read the original paragraph versus the variation.

And it feels off, doesn’t it?

The last three sentences are examples of learning curves, which means they are topically linked to the phrase introducing them.

It reads even worse as follows:

This battle is not for the faint of heart.

There are so many learning curves. Plugins you’ll need to install.

Social networks you’ll need to employ. Marketing techniques you’ll need to try.

See what I mean?

Due to our topically-paragraphed past, readers still expect that topics will — for the most part — stick with each other. It still reads better that way.

Just avoid beating topics to death. Allow topics to change as they need to — which should be every few sentences.

3. Emphasis

Paragraphs of one short sentence naturally add emphasis.

This can be used to highlight ideas you want the reader to take note of, but it can also be used for dramatic effect.

For example, check my introduction to an article for Carrot — a SaaS company that caters to real estate investors.

See how the introduction guides the reader through the feelings they experience regarding content marketing with a long paragraph, and then emphasizes, “So you quit producing”?

This phase conveys a dramatic turn of events. The shortness of the paragraph emphasizes this.

The longer paragraph that precedes this phrase preps the reader for the punch. The effect wouldn’t be quite the same if it was preceded by a paragraph that was similarly short.

Ultimately, paragraph emphasis is up to the creativity of the writer. Paragraph length is simply another tool at your disposal.

Write Paragraphs for Today’s World and Readers Will Thank You

Yes, you want people to read your content.

They’ll appreciate your courteous writing and — dare I say? — they’ll keep coming back for more.

from Internet Marketing Tips https://smartblogger.com/how-to-write-a-paragraph/

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