#outsource my external processing?? I guess???

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

placebo effect of lavender flavoring making me calmer

#like I know it isn't real lavender but something about it IS comforting nonetheless #if any of the knitting circle/mutuals I trust want deets hit me up I feel like I'm rambling too much at the same two people irl #outsource my external processing?? I guess??? #Lu rambles #shrimp emotions

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

You are not wrong for wanting to be loved. But you don't allow yourself to heal and to grow by focussing so very intensely on being loved by someone else. You are outsourcing a good portion of your healing process onto a non existent other person you are hoping for. I know what I am talking about because I was the same for a long time and very much in denial about that. It's good to allow yourself to be sad and to want love and a relationship. If you would repress that wish, it would just get bigger and worse. So I don't agree with people who criticise you for talking about it. In fact, I think letting it all out here is a good thing. But I am hoping that it isnt in your mind all the time in such an intensity because that would mean that you dont even want to try to take your own hand and take a little step forward. I think thats where many of other peoples comments are coming from. I know so many young women who lost themselves to trauma and dont want to build the strength to catch themselves because they are hoping for the strength of someone else. You dont need to hold that hope literally but it speaks out of the degree of intensity and desperation regarding that desire. And guess what, maybe you will find a relationship while still being stuck in your healing process. Maybe it will go right, maybe it will go wrong. It depends fully on luck because you are not at a point where you can navigate these things safely for yourself. But thats okay. I am wishing you the spark and then the strength to get to a point where you are able to take things into your own hands. And until then I wish you the best of luck.

I am not that desperate for a relationship anymore but I am still a failure in societal terms. No job, no drivers license, lots of trauma and sadly an illness thats currently kicking my butt and makes future plans even more impossible. But I have grown so much the past years and when I met a friend of mine recently (who has a job, house, boyfriend etc) I was shocked to see how little she had grown in "soul" (not believing in anything but you know what i mean) and mind. She in turn told me that she admires me for being so calm and gentle with myself. Thats when I realized how much I had grown, despite still being a failure from an external view. I think you are very well able to reach such a point.

Reading what you write I see a gentle and smart person. That just measures herself by standards that wont make her happy even when fulfilled. And thinks that those fulfilled standards are what would make her loveable.

I know that a lot of what I say and would say to you sounds cynical to you or wont fully reach you. I had people tell me all sorts of useful but ultimately useless things when I was in a similar position to yours. Hell, minus the desire for a relationship I am STILL very much in a similar position to yours and have them telling me stuff and advice I think is complete nonsense. But those things people tell you are like seeds and some will bloom someday, even years later. And some wont and thats fine.

There is one thing I would like to ask of you and please dont see this as an attack or something to dislike yourself for. You talk extremely harshly about yourself, which of course is your right to vent especially on a private blog. When you call yourself a failure or useless for not reaching certain societally expected goals you are calling other people the very same thing. To be extremely honest, that hurts to read (which isn't an accusation but a statement of fact). You do not only deem yourself a horrible person unworthy of good things, you deem those "failings" in themselves to be properties that make any person horrible and unworthy. Do you mean that? If yes, I will unfollow you with a heavy heart because I do not think of people like you or me as a failure or anything else destructive or hateful.

If no, and you only apply these things to yourself, I ask you to (if you like) try to see yourself a little bit through external eyes. Kind external eyes that is. Those with which you would look at someone else who tries really really hard but just doesnt get there yet, or maybe never. That this person is still doing a very fine job at being alive. I wish I could lend you my eyes for a minute and give you some time and space to breath

Anon, thank you so much for your kind heart and for taking the time to write this all out to me. It means so much 💕 I know it was down the bottom but it felt really important to me so I wanted to address it first ; I’m genuinely sorry from the bottom of my heart that my comments about myself leaked over into what you thought I might feel about other people. But it’s fully and 100% not how I feel about other people in similar situations. I’m just very angry at myself and frustrated over where my life is, so I use harsh words like that. I also do it because it tends to hurt less when others say them to me if I say it first. But never for a second have I thought that way about anyone else, and I’m sorry if it seemed like it did. I’ll try harder to refrain from phrasing things in a way that could group others into my feelings that are solely about myself. 💕

As for the first bit I think it is on my mind all the time. I have a very unhealthy and unrealistic , maybe not obsession, but desire to love someone and be loved. I can admit that I put too much into it. But I don’t really know how to stop. Like I can say I don’t care or try to not care as much but those feelings don’t go away. For me the most important thing in life is love, so not having that relationship is hard for me. I try to not priorities it so much, but genuinely don’t know how to stop those feelings because no matter what I do they are just there. I don’t necessarily want the strength from someone else. I just want someone to make it worth it. I’m not expecting anyone to fix me or save me or change me. I just want that person that I can look to and feel like putting in the effort for. I hate myself very much and my main thing is just trying hard to not cause trauma for other people. I don’t live for myself and I don’t know how to live for myself. But living for other people who are all off and happy with others in their own way is hard for me sometimes. Having that person who I love and who loves me and knowing I’m trying to get better for and do my best for so I can make her life the best it can be feels very comforting to me. But I also know there is a whole bunch of problems within that as well and isn’t healthy either. So I guess it’s a good thing I’m not in a relationship because that’s probably too much to put on someone. I just genuinely don’t know how to not feel that way. Maybe it’s something that pass as I get older, I don’t really know.

Also I’m so happy and proud of you!! I think that’s so incredible you’ve able to get yourself to that point and grow in that way 💕💕💕 it’s amazing!! And I hope you continue to do so. I don’t know you, but just from this I can tell you are an amazingly kind and wise person. This world is absolutely blessed to have you in it - as am I that you reached out to me, so thank you 💖🌸

I’m sorry again for how my comments about myself can come across. I do promise to work harder to make it seem that way. Because it certainly isn’t true 💕💕💕

Thank you again so much for reaching out and I hope you have an amazing and beautiful day 🌸🌸🌻💕💕💖

#asks #anon #answered

[funkymbtifiction]

That quote resonates with me because to me, it means we should make the most of the time we have. It reminds me of my grandma (ISFJ 9w1 sp/so) who is quite old and means the world to me, and I’m making it a point to enjoy every moment I spend with her because when the time comes, I just know I’m going to miss her so much. Also, you said I could be using Ti because of my ask about airport disasters, and I could see it. I do often try to pick things apart in abstract things like politics and religion. I do think I’m probably either Fi dom or Ti dom, but I wonder if my asks overall show stronger Fi or Ti because I guess these two functions are quite similar on the surface.

They are really not. The difference between someone who makes all their decisions through their feelings vs. someone who is totally out of touch with anyone's feelings is staggering. It's the distinction between Virginia Wolfe and Albert Einstein.

(Ti section)“I want to know the value, meaning, and purpose of whatever I encounter. This means constructing an internal system against which I test all incoming information.” Definitely relate to this. My internal system personally is Christianity + my political affiliation + my role models if that makes sense.

How else do you construct an internal system? Do you build it yourself? An ITP's Ti wants to invent its own theory of understanding based on what is logical, and is ruthlessly critical of anything that makes no sense. ITPs are the sort of people who take everything apart and deconstruct it, to understand every facet of it, then put it back together in new ways. That's why many INTPs are good inventors and why many ISTPs have a natural talent for mechanics. Their brains are hard-wired to understand systems, and they think of other people as another system to "hack."

“A logical truth needs to “click” in my mind. If that happens, my thoughts reconfigure to form a new mental trajectory.” Definitely relate to this, this is how I changed my stance on certain political and interpersonal issues

It's interesting how you are only talking about it in reference to your political beliefs or conflict. Is that the only place you can see it working?

“Don’t expect me to be aware of how invested you are in a conversation. I see what fascinates me, not your reactions to it … If I bore you by rambling, I didn’t notice your loss of interest.” I don’t relate to this though because I think I’m pretty good at catching onto these things.

How positive are you about this? Many people think they are good at things that they are not. ;)

“On my deathbed, I want to know I lived according to my beliefs. All my actions must synchronize with my sense of right or wrong. This means forming values against which I evaluate everything. I trust this inner process to decide what is best for me.” I do relate to this except rather than using an internal process, I outsource these things to my trusted sources (Christianity, political affiliation, personal role models).

I would say you are certainly on the Fe and Ti axis. You aren't basing a sense of right and wrong in what you feel, but what an external thing such as what your faith is telling you -- that's a form of extroverted feeling. Since there's no internal process related to it, it's not Fi.

So I would look at FJ or TP.

When I try to figure out what’s best for me, I look to these three things: “Let’s find out what they think and do and follow that.” With my role models, I tend to try to adopt their lingo and whatnot. (because I’m a 639 tritype?)

Yeah, that might be why. Also, the dominant 6 (I assume a social 6w5) is causing you to adhere strongly to "my religious beliefs (which keep me safe).

[prorevenge]

You try to cut my team in half so I outsourced your entire department.

This tale takes place over the course of many months and resulted in over 150 lay offs, all to save 22 IT Techs from losing their jobs.

I learned a long time ago that no one cares about the IT team at our company. They see us as "Those useless employees always complaining about rules."

We are a mortgage company, and those rules are the rules everyone follows to protect customer data privacy and to prevent theft. When your company suddenly loses 2 full payments for a house to some scammer in Nigeria and the FTC has questions for you, then it is time to change your policies.

This meant cutting legacy access, revoking unnecessary access, and correctly coding job titles in active directory to prevent people from granting their own access.

What this boiled down to was a meeting that I phoned into a year ago. This was one of those meetings where I did not need to be there. Budget meetings.

In this meeting the VP over the accounting department played a recording showing times when someone in the IT Tech team provided "sup par service." She tried using this as reason to fire half of the tech team.

The trouble was, that all of the people she played recordings of were already fired for giving terrible customer service. These people were replaced by 5 star techs who know what they are doing and give excellent customer service.

This started the whole chain of events that led to last week.

Since this meeting was every 2 months, VP has tried to use her position and influence to grow her team while shrinking ours.

Every budget meeting, I would show up and VP, who shall hence be referred to as Karen, would target my team. I would pull out the numbers, and pull out the logs showing how my team received a little over 3/4s of that team's call volume.

I show how my team of 22 techs personally receive more phone calls than every other inbound call employee by more than double the number.

I show how with the call volume we receive we still maintain a 98 percent satisfaction rating.

At the 3rd budget meeting the COO had been tired of "hearing the same excuses" and wanted hard data. He had a point. I was merely throwing out basic numbers without providing real data.

Our company was in the middle of a budget crisis and someone needed to be cut. These budget meetings were basically a way to defend our own department from the chopping block. Karen believed that the best defense was a good offence. She was right, but not in the way she thought.

When it became clear that the IT support team was on the chopping block, Karen starts to have her employees call into the tech center and have them make requests that she knows we can not assist with as that is handled by another company entirely. We are not able to transfer calls to an external line so the only thing we can do is give the number to call and hang up.

The negative CSAT's start to flood in after this. Every single call from that team regarding a vendor's password reset gets a negative csat. Our approval rating tanked to 72 percent in one day. I instantly took action.

First I contact a few of the users, on recorded calls, and ask them why they called the IT Tech team when they know we are not capable of resetting the vendor's password. She replied that she was told it was policy to do that now. I asked why she left a negative satisfaction rating and she said that those no longer count against the employee. That those are only used for macro metrics.

I walked over to Karen's office and walked in. "Karen, why are you having your team call mine to reset vendor's password?" Karen looked confused and stated that she did no such thing. She said she would talk to her team and make sure that they call the correct number in the future.

The calls did not stop. Now a few of her team were calling in with personal machines that were not an asset of our company. They were wanting things done which would violate license agreements with microsoft or dell. Each of these were refused and each of these were leaving negative CSAT.

It became clear that Karen was trying to tank our stats before the next budget meeting.

I let my boss know and he just gives me a sly smile. "The leash is off. Sick her." This is an inside joke between us as I am someone who is very detail oriented when I am focused. When you try and get my team fired because you want to grow your useless team, I am very focused on you now.

The first thing I do is enable call recording for every corporate employee as to not arouse her suspicions. Her team did not have call recording enabled because her team "handles CDP" on a daily basis.

I pull a live call and listen in.

"This is Employee with our company may I have your account number or your name?" The customer gives the name. "OK I have your account pulled up, are you wanting to make a payment?" Customer says yes. "Are you authorizing me to go ahead and make the withdraw from the bank account we have on file?" Customer agrees. "OK payment is processing. You will be notified in X days when it is complete. Your next due date is this date." The customer thanks her and he hangs up.

Entire phone call was 1:22. Short phone call so I listen to another. Similar situation. I listen to another and get the same thing. I start seeing a pattern here so I go through the rapidly building log and see that all of the phone calls are usually less than 1 minute and 20 seconds long. It takes well over an hour before an anomaly occurs and I see a 5 minute phone call.

The customer needed an extension and the employee was authorized to give her a 30 day extension to avoid a late fee if she would make a double payment next month. The person on the phone agreed.

At this point I also turn on the CSAT for her team only. I expected a largely similar rating as my team. I was not prepared for the nearly instant 50 percent rating that steadily dropped.

My boss comes over to my desk as he was getting the email notifications for the sub 75 percent csat rating and was flabbergasted at the sheer volume of negative reports.

Its now clear that there is no choice but to examine this further. I assign 4 people to review the negative calls from the other team and have them all. The amount of employees being downright rude to customers, not other employees but paying customers, over the phone was shocking. The negative tones in their voice, the unwillingness to fully answer questions, the extreme lack of empathy, and the shocking lack of mute button use was too much.

Then came another shocker. The number of customer facing employees was ridiculous. 152 employees to handle roughly 30 percent more calls than my team of 22.

I call the CIO.

$CIO - What you got for me?

$ME - I have something for you. Its incredibly evil, depressingly accurate, and can probably save the company a ridiculous amount of money.

$CIO - You know this is the second time you have said those exact words to me right?

$ME - Yup. But there is something I need to know first. I am not currently authorized to know it and I need to request it in a way that would not set off any red flags.

$CIO - What is that?

$ME - The starting pay scale for all account employees.

$CIO - Tell me your plan.

The next budget meeting was not a budget meeting. It was a IT Tech defend yourself meeting. The COO directed it and let Karen speak first.

Karen pulled out the same stuff as before. Calls upon calls to our group that were cherry picked as well as listing off dead zone times when we had people working but no one calling in. Then went on about how they could cut our group in half and hire more Account employees to reduce the workflow.

Instead of defending myself or my department, I played 4 of the short call recordings from Karen's department. I then pulled up the excel sheet that was color coded showing how many phone calls each account rep received and the length of time they were on. each call, and the customer satisfaction rating.

I explained the lack of high csat with my own little recording I liked to call a failtage. Its a montage of fail and her team were the stars. Before you ask, I did put music to it.

The recording starts off with an employee saying. "Yeah I guess I can take your payment." Then goes straight into one where a customer accidentally gave the wrong bank account info and said don't use that one. The rep responded with "Christ. What is the actual account number?" It only got worse from there.

This group was unmanaged for so long they were filled with rude and useless employees.

I then showed them a side by side comparison of each tech who received a call. I showed how my techs were receiving more than 4 times the number of calls, per rep, than her team was getting per day. I showed how we all were on the phone for well over 7 times the amount of time her team was on the phone for, and I demonstrated how each tech had double or tripple the satisfaction rating over all of her group.

Half the room that was uninterested in the conversation were suddenly interested when I closed out my presentation.

"In short, I saw no reason to defend the IT team today as I have successfully done so in every prior meeting. Since the last meeting, however, Karen has crossed the line and has had her team call mine in regards to things we have no access to."

I played the recording of me calling her minion. "As you can see here, she directed her team to call mine and to leave bad satisfaction ratings on my guys because of it. I have since deleted those CSAT's as they served no purpose whatsoever. " I then pulled out my next flowchart.

"This is the monthly expense, taken from the last 9 meetings, that our company spends on IT and Servicing departments." I look at the COO who was looking at me intently. "Before today I was on the defensive as I saw no reason to attack another group. But it is clear to me now that my team has a target on its back. That is why I now show you this."

It was a graph showing the starting pay scale for each IT and Servicing employee code as well as their average daily workflow. There was one glaring anomaly on this list. Account department had the highest starting pay scale with the least amount of work.

"So basically in laymen's terms, the Account department can reduced to one tenth of its current size, and we can reduce the pay scale to a little over one half as this department requires very little in the way of problem solving and critical thinking." I saw a few raised eye brows as well as one impressed smile from the CIO.

The COO ushers everyone out of the room except for me, my direct supervisor, and the CIO. He looked at me and said "Continue."

"Further, we can cut this department entirely and outsource THEM instead of IT. Since this group merely takes payments and sometimes allows extensions, we do not have to worry too much about technical ability. Outside of simply using windows we can hire high schoolers if we wanted to." This got a laugh from the CIO. Karen was staring through the window with this smug grin on her face the entire time.

"Now for my final bit for this meeting, I am going to play two cherry picked phone calls. These are the two most technical phone calls I could find from the last month for both departments."

I play a call where a payment fails to process and the rep realizes she typed in the wrong number.

I then play a call where it starts out with a user stating that her customer submitted a payment to the wrong CD. The tech breaks out into our procedure to prevent wire fraud. Thanks to the quick action of this tech we were able to reverse the CD and save this customer from losing their down payment.

The final masterful stroke was playing my final card. "As you all know, Karen has been coming after my team for months. She has been grinding her axe against us because she, like everyone else, has made the mistake that we are incompetent, inept, and useless to the company. What she did not know was that I have all of the logs showing the truth. The smoke she has been blowing for years is so thick that its ridiculous. Her team is highly replaceable and we both know my team would require extensive training and effort to replace."

The CIO spoke up. "With just 30 people, we can outsource her entire department and save the company millions a year. The next time we have a major IT issue, you will be regretting outsourcing us." He then pointed to the graphs and flow charts brought by both myself and Karen. "Her team is useless."

The next day I watched in pure joy as a term request came in for Karen. It came in with the double ** indicator at the beginning meaning this was a stealth term. To be done and coordinated with the person who will inform her of the termination. (Its not actually ** I changed that for here to protect identities.)

Over the next two months, the account team was shuttered. First they came for anyone with disciplinary issues or attendance issues. Then they laid off anyone who had been there a really long time. Then the newest employees.

The smart ones applied for other positions in the company or left before getting laid off. All the while the calls for payments were slowly shunted to the call center in India.

By the end of last week we only have 4 domestic accounts people who take escalations that the India call center is not authorized to take.

Do I feel guilty about being integral for 148 people being laid off? Yes quite. But I know it was necessary to keep my job and my health insurance. Without my health insurance I am a dead man.

The entire reason why this happened though, was because a division was slated to be cut and sent to India from the outset. Thanks to the actions of myself and my direct supervisor, we prevented it from being a sure thing that our team was going to get cut.

On top of that we cut out a festering wound in the company that was slowing it down and costing it money.

My team has not been brought up in the budgetary meetings since.

(source) story by (/u/TheLightningCount1)

#prorevenge #by /u/TheLightningCount1 #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

[theclothingtookyears]

Interview with Berlin Art Link 2017

Penny Rafferty: Has your practice always been linked to textiles?

Isaac Penn: I started making clothing when I was in high school because I couldn’t afford the garments I wanted. Making clothes was fun and simple, but it didn’t take very long, manually. There was far more prototyping and sketching than actual physical “making”. After a year of menswear tailoring in college, I figured I wanted to slow down the process of making clothing. How could I make one full look, instead of a full collection, in the same amount of time? I started developing and manipulating my own materials. I gained a library of techniques from embroidery (embellishment), surface design, weaving, knitting, crochet, knotting, dyeing and digitally-enhanced structures.

PR: So, for you, it grew out of a necessity to slow down rather than the fashion industry’s demand for acceleration season after season?

IP: The history of textile processes is over 5000 years old, far longer than fashion. I felt empowered to be part of something so historically saturated. Now, objects are being produced more frequently than ever before in history. Materials now need to diversify and enhance the objects we consume and experience in our daily and external environments; this is how the market keeps growing.

PR: How do you see your role today, then?

IP: As a textile designer, I’m interested in the foundational and basic design elements; finding practical solutions through process and practice. Attention to details, assessing one’s real needs and requirements, leads to decision making through very simple gestures. Common sense drives the discovery, curiosity and experimentation, process. I try to see the poetics and semantics of production.

PR: During our initial conversation, you likened your use of the Jacquard Weaving technique to the first computer, can you go a little more into this?

IP: The Jacquard loom has had a huge influence on computing technology. The mechanical loom was one invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804. The loom uses physical punched cards to develop pixel-based patterns such as brocades, damasks and matelassé fabric. Its ability to change the loom’s pattern by simply changing punch cards was a conceptual precursor for the future of data entry, as we know it today. Pixels are basic and foundational and easy to control; all one’s mistakes can be fixed and altered, which gives the creator full control of their own processes.

PR: The images you use seem to have been filtered through Photoshop. They have a pixelated quality to them.

IP: The Jacquard weavings come from photographs I’ve taken and altered in postproduction. These images need to be reduced to a simple value/tonal range so that I can assign different woven structure to different values. It isn’t so much that technology affects my work, but I need to work with it, to come out with something successful. By successful I mean pictorial: something that should be woven instead of painted. That is the biggest discussion: is this medium or technique appropriate for this subject matter and for the end goal? Jacquard looms are very expensive; weavings require a lot of time and a large material (production) cost. I’m always asking myself, does this make sense for me to create it or am I just making more stuff for my own ego and hedonism? It’s pretty hedonistic to just make things with no intention.

Isaac Penn: ‘Draped Shirt Jacquard’, 2015 // Courtesy of the artist

PR: The digital and material also seem to be in flux through your weaves. Is this a way to navigate both sectors of your life?

IP: I gravitate more to analog work. I like being able to fix my own mistakes and be more in control of my process. The material is in constant flux and each material has its own behavioural patterns that lead to a variety of results. Although the programming for digital application in textiles is quite standard, the combination with natural materials that have their own dispositions is an engaging dialogue. Some people fight with their materials and others try to allow the materials to behave naturally. The variation in results is what keeps people making, I guess.

PR: We are moving more and more into slick and smooth devices as far as our home or tech wares go. Do you think textiles as sensory space are in danger of becoming detrimental to our home life?

IP: No, people like to feel things. Also, print and pattern have played such a heavy role in society over the last couple of decades, from textural elements to contemporary design. DIY culture has also led people into a place of understanding how things are made and new ideologies have grown out of this. Take upcycling: people have become the new designers, wanting to make their own clothes, furniture and objects. With this development, people are starting to see the true price of goods and the ethics behind mass production. This moves people away from buying the t-shirt that costs $10 and allowing more sensitivity to the contemporary consumer and the makers themselves.

People wanted things cheap for a while and they got disappointed with the results. Now people want things they can alter or make their own: money isn’t too much of an issue. Look at a pair of Vetements jeans, for example. It’s about the unique space of the textile in society.

PR: The infamous Vetements DHL t-shirt is an interesting twist in this production, though, right? Original retailing at £185, knock-off online for £10, almost impossible to tell the real from the fake to the untrained eye.

IP: Vetements will just keep on getting more right! I don’t mean better or good, but their work is the most appropriate in contemporary fashion design. The variety of looks from the last show was such an iconic approach. They showed the fashion industry that people want to make their own looks now. When you look at a group of kids on the street, everyone has their own style, it’s not like a group of punks, skins, goths: there is a goth, a club kid, a streetwear enthusiast, a classic bad-boy Yohji Yamamoto silhouette. Vetements hits all the notes. Making clothing for a range of personalities is a way to speak to a broader audience. Making clothing that you can and are encouraged to make yourself is also a new way that brands like Vetements are identifying with their consumers lust for control and individuality.

PR: Would you say DIY-making, for you, is part of a political platform of self-sustaining production, then?

IP: Yes and I galvanise it. If people make their own textiles they understand how things are actually made. It brings awareness to the supply chain and how much things cost. The best way to see the price and difficulty of making something is doing it yourself. It’s also a good way for people to find their own sense of expression in a heightened state of neoliberalism. It’s also a way of making things on a limited and more controlled scale rather than outsourcing t-shirts, for example, where a minimum order is over $1000.

PR: You spoke about hedonism and ego via materialization before and now we have slipped into couture fashion. What are your final thoughts?

IP: I think making things is a luxury. It feels good; you are absorbed in something and can alienate yourself. The processes are so repetitive that you have time to think. Slowing down: this is also a luxury. On the other hand, we don’t need any more things and especially not laborious handmade things. But allowing a strong sense of individuality and expression is exactly what we do need, from the foundations of textiles to the clothes we wear on our backs.

[insuranceoutsourcing]

How does COVID-19 Outbreak Affect the Insurance Industry Operationally & Economically?

From the day COVID-19 pandemic was declared a global health emergency, the entire world has been dealing with countless difficulties, out of which many are still unresolved. It has significantly disrupted economies and public healthcare systems worldwide.

The crisis can be seen hitting the insurance sector more because millions of insured people are seeking testing and treatment coverage, while due to lockdown in many locations and social distancing practice, people avoid coming out and buying insurable products such as vehicles, appliances, etc. leading to less demand, less revenue.

Meanwhile, for many reasons, the insurance industry (similar to other sectors) is going through staff shortage, making it challenging to process claims on time. For this, many insurers are choosing to get external help/support or outsourcing insurance claims processing.

No doubt, there are several such challenges that the insurance industry is currently facing, let’s read what industry experts say about the effects of COVID-19 on the insurance industry operationally and economically.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Operations & Financial Performance of Insurance Businesses

5. Go virtual

David Duford, Owner of Duford Insurance Group

The unfortunate “good news” with the pandemic is interest in insurance products has measurably increased. Most insurance is purchased in accordance with life events like marriage, buying a new home, new vehicle, etcetera.

COVID-19 falls into this category. People who never thought about purchasing life insurance or second-guessed whether or not they were adequately insured are now giving serious consideration towards purchasing.

This is why demand has increased. However, due to stay-in-home orders and fear of face-to-face meetings, agents have had to alter their sales strategy to virtual sales using the telephone and conference call software.

While most agents are accustomed to selling face-to-face with their insurance prospects, the pandemic has encouraged prospects, otherwise used to meeting agents face-to-face, to accept virtual meetings instead.

How COVID-19 affects supply of providers?

COVID-19 will cause long-term economic peril for many industries nationally for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, talented people will lose their jobs due to furloughs and layoffs.

This provides an opportunity for insurance agencies to recruit and enlarge their agencies with new hires that can leverage the increased demand for insurance. Economic downturns are usually good opportunities for many insurance agencies to build their sales force, introducing skilled salespeople to their industry.

Personally, I came into the insurance sales business in 2011 during the Great Recession out of pure desperation. No one was hiring, and my former business was failing fast.

My thoughts are many people will experience a similar scenario as I had faced and find themselves entering the insurance sales business due to little job options.

Click to Read More Experts Opinion Original Source: https://www.cogneesol.com/blog/covid-19-affecting-insurance-industry-operations-finances

#insurance #outsourcing #business #broker #wholesalers #agencies #COVID-19 #finance #operations

[crcfo123-blog]

Entrepreneurs Don’t Think Enough. Here’s What You Can Do About It …

Every so often I find myself caught up in a really hectic 3-4 week schedule where it seems like I float endlessly between meetings. Pitches. Intros. Board Meetings. Conferences.

And I get flooded with legal docs, end-of-quarter financial administration, recruiting, whatever.

I get sucked up in the “Do” mode.

Startups Are for Doers

Now, I’m pretty on the record that being an entrepreneur is about being great at The Do. With an emphasis on the “D” in JFDI.

But getting caught up in the doing can often leave you directionless.

You need to take time out to Think.

I know it sounds obvious. And from experience, I know that saying something so simple will bring the trolls out. And I have a penchant for feeding the trolls.

But trust me when I say that my observations across many startups (and other companies, frankly) is that not enough time goes into thinking.

Some of my biggest breakthroughs have come in what seems like a lazy time. Every so often after a few weeks of go-go-go, I work from home from a day. I walk down from my bedroom and stay at my computer un-showered and in a hat for 10 straight hours. Or I will get some good time at a hotel just zoning out and thinking.for more visits Part-time CFO and accounting services

I have my best creative break-throughs this way. I like to think with blank pieces of paper and a pen. I’ve talked in the past about how I manage my own creative process. If you struggle to find moments of creativity you might read that post.

I also have huge creative spurts when I run. I zone out and think about how things could be different. And I often will get out a pen and paper afterward. Every now and again I like to drive from LA to San Francisco (6 hours) instead of flying. It gives me tons of zone out time with visual stimulation to get the brain going.

If you’re not taking this zone-out downtime I’ll bet you’re not having enough strategic reflection on your job, your company, your strategy.

Startups are filled with the stresses of the here and now and it’s hard to break out of this mold of focusing two feet in front of you. Frankly, I think venture capital is that way, too. How do VCs break out of groupthink when they are shuttling from one board meeting to the next, from one conference to the other and talking with all the same people?

I was at the Lobby Conference a few weeks ago in Mexico. My wife and I went down 3 days early and had some chill-out time. I had one of the biggest mental breakthroughs about what I want to do differently at GRP Partners in 2013. I want to make sure that my sixth year as a VC doesn’t just become an automatic continuation of what I’ve done in my first 5 years. I don’t want to be on autopilot. I woke up super early one morning and wrote out my manifesto. I know, I’m weird.For more visits Temporary CFO and Accounting Services

I am inspired by the constant innovation in our industry by First Round Capital like the Dorm Room Fund, their expansion to Philadelphia (I hope they also have a secret plot to replace Andy Reid while there),  the exchange fund and other initiatives.  And I don’t want to be complacent.

How does this changing world affect me? My fund? How can I raise the bar? How does the world in Los Angeles intersect differently with venture capital? How can I play to my strengths? Think.

I can’t make a big leap forwards in Do mode.

Do you find yourself too much in email mode? I regularly shut down my email so that I don’t get pop-up alerts when I’m working. I turn off my phone so it won’t ring. I close my Twitter tab. These small dopamine-soaked distractions will cut into your Think time. Trust me. Think.

Sometimes somebody in my office will ask if “they can just get 5 quick minutes” and they will see a zombie look on my face as I rush through my office. I can feel a spinning in my head when I know that I have something I need to get down on paper. I can feel the ideas needing to come out and I know if I get distracted I will lose them. I beeline for my office, give off my zombie vibe, shout out, “not now, maybe later” and I head for my desk. I need to think.

Undistracted. No music. Concentrate. Think.

This is one of the positive signs of ADD that nobody ever talks about. I do get these extreme moments of clarity and the need to shut down all of the bullshit I’m working on (or usually it’s a meeting that I randomly need to leave because it’s driving me totally fucking nuts and I need to be alone) and I need to get something out. I learned about this behavior and how to channel it from my favorite book about ADD, Delivered from Distraction. Don’t let anybody tell you ADD is only a weakness. For more visits Outsourced Non-Profit CFO Services

And What About the Opposite?

And I know that it sounds almost silly to say that some people Think too much and don’t do enough. But that’s exactly what happens to many people.

The number of times I’ve had people come to me and say they want to blog more. They think it would be good for them.  Think not. Do.

Or people who think all sorts of ideas about how they want to quit their job and try a startup. Or quit their startup to do something different. Or they want to travel more. See the world. Visit China.

The world is filled with over-Thinkers. For sure.

And then there is the missing link. It’s what connects Thinking and Doing. And that’s Planning.

For me, the best way to put Thinking into action is to creatively brainstorm a plan of action. I literally will sit down in a brainstorming session and draw up a list of actions that would have to take place in order to make my goals a reality. Since I think visually I often do this in the form group lists with inter-dependencies or in the form of a GANTT chart.

Without dedicating time to Planning you will never optimally turn your ideas into reality. You will never connect your Think and Do.

We each have strengths & weaknesses in these areas.

I have written about the need for entrepreneurs to take inventory in themselves before deciding whom to hire as the rest of the team. For more visit Outsourced High tech CFO services

The Three Buckets of People

There is a sort of rhythm to people’s personality types that often slot them into one of three buckets.

1. I think the best leaders are Thinkers. They often need teams of people to help them plan how to turn their ideas into realities. They are “shapers” not “completer/finishers.” The best leaders know this about themselves and surround themselves with people who compliment them. Without c/f’s I’d be hosed. Just ask my wife.

2. The best managers are Planners. They are really good at creating lists of actions and monitoring the performance of those actions. The manager isn’t a bad word. They are the absolute lifeblood of any organization. If this is you, you know the drill. You’re very organized. You keep meticulous notes. You are very good at getting things done and make sure others do as well. You keep the trains running on time. You’re not quite as creative in “breaking out of the box” and doing daring new things. That’s ok. You know that about yourself. And you’re comfortable having that crazy CEO around you. Secretly, you love that you know she couldn’t do her job effective without you.

3. And the best individual contributors are Doers. This can be your star Chief Architect who loves to code but hates having to handle the admin like testing, documentation, recruiting, etc. It can also be your star salesperson who doesn’t want to have to manage a team because he simply wants to earn his paycheck and get on with his life. I’ve written about these sales mavericks before.

A great team needs all types. And you need to identify your own strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur and how to surround yourself with people who compliment you.

If you are a startup entrepreneur already my guess is that you have a heavy bias towards the Do that comes with the territory. For more visits Outsourced Bookkeeping Services

Make sure you take some lazy time to zone out and Think. Don’t put pressure on yourself to fill out every last minute of the day. And do your best after a good Think session to put your ideas onto paper and see if you can’t turn it into a Plan. Even if you have to ask for help from others to turn the Think into Do.

About the Author

CRCFO is a technical accounting and financial consulting firm utilizing a flexible and scalable team approach. Our technical team is led by highly experienced former Big 4 partners. To support your business strategy, we collaborate with your stakeholders to navigate your important transactions – IPOs, M&As, revenue arrangements - and other complex accounting, systems, process and business issues. CRCFO employs a risk-based approach to help you minimize transaction risk which maximizes stakeholder value by anticipating matters that can derail your business, transactions, financing, and external audits.

#Outsourced High tech CFO services #Finance and Accounting Outsourcing #Part-time CFO and accounting services #Interim CFO and Accounting Services #Temporary CFO and Accounting Services #Fractional CFO and Accounting Services #Outsourced Bookkeeping Services #Interim CFO and Outsourced Tax Service

[theparaminds]

For Yuki, this is the shifting moment. This is the moment where the gear teeth align in his favor. It comes after the passing wave of his 18th birthday, a time of solidified adulthood, as well as after an enlighting collaborative experience. In many ways, you could say he’s beaten the final boss to the video game that was his adolescence. But then again, most successful games have a sequel. 

Being a New Zealand based producer, it was quite the culture shock to be called towards Los Angeles to work with Jaden on his new album ERYS. He admits it being a slight drowning sensation, one where he could’ve gone under at any moment. His few moments with his head above water were life-altering, no doubt, but it was still a deep end without an eventual bottom. 

But he survived. He swam. He succeeded. 

And thus he stands now 18 and fearless. If someone else’s deep end cannot swallow him, then his own never will. He stands upon the horizon of a new album, one that explores the sinking sensation, but also the beauty within our head emerging periodically to smell the air of enlightenment. 

And while he would’ve never told himself to do so, he is encouraging all to jump into their own deep ends, whatever it may be. He only does so because he knows that we will learn to swim before we drown. He knows we can break our environmental and mental shackles. He knows we can all be free. 

                                                        -

Our first question as always, how’s your day going and how have you been lately?

My day today has been uneventful in a good way. Right now I’m very busy but very stagnant. There's a lot going on in preparation for big things but I feel like I’m not moving at all. It’s the busiest I've ever been while simultaneously having the most free time in my life.

And what does stagnation mean to you and what does it mean in your life currently?

The things I’m working towards aren’t within reach yet. I’m working towards a visa and it's a very slow process, I feel like all this crazy stuff is happening but it's not affecting my life directly right now. The great things aren't able to materialize yet.

What do you think, right now, is your most overwhelming and intense feeling within daily life? The one that hits most constantly.

If there was a couple, I’d say the feeling of being disconnected because I left LA and I feel left out from what's going on there. And a nervous excitement, a positive anxious feeling.

Do you feel emotionally whole within yourself or is there something you feel you're still looking for?

I think I'm pretty content with myself but I’m trying to be better at being me. I want to be able to learn to let things go and grow up. I’m in the last quarter of growing up. I feel I grew up very early and now I'm just learning all the little things, hence the album title. I honestly think once that’s done a lot will fall into place.

Well, let's talk about that album while you mention it. You’ve been working on it for a good minute now, but when did you realize you needed to start upon it and when did you feel it important to put yourself towards the turbulent process of an album?

When I went to LA I started working on an EP. I put a lot of my time into that over a few months and it didn't really stick with me so I scrapped it. I felt I hadn’t made a project in a long time so I was more excited to make music than ever. And especially working on ERYS was a whole other break of not being able to fully just do my work. So, I was bursting at the seams to express what I felt. It was the right time to focus on this project as I had so much to say. It is so draining to start an album because once you're in you can't stop unless you give up, which I hate doing.

Through the work what is that you needed to express and say and even currently what are you trying to externalize?

I think perspective is a big thing. I feel like all though this crazy stuff is happening a lot of it doesn't matter. I feel like a lot of artists feel very hopeless. Growing up is obviously a huge theme. Letting go of things and moving on from mistakes. Figuring out who you are. The album is pretty much just growing up, I think.

Let's compare honesty then, how much more honest do you feel is in this project more so than your last and do you think that's something you've gotten better at?

I think I'm definitely more honest in this project just due to being older. I got thrown in the deep end a bit with the whole LA thing. I think I was forced to adapt very quickly because I dropped out of school at 17 and then started living on my own in a whole new city with a new way of life. People drove on different sides of the road. People talked differently. I had to grow up to mentally survive. I feel like I’ve been the same mentally from 14 to 17, I’ve been the same since I became a teenager. But since becoming 18m and being an adult, it's the right time to express something completely new on this album.

Did you feel like 18 was a number that resonated with you as a sort of shifting moment in realizing this is the beginning of something more legitimate?

Definitely, I always used to say I wanted to be 17 forever because then if I kept getting better at music, I can be the gimmick artist who’s young and talented. But there's so much I don't know about life that I actually now want to grow up and learn about it. 18 was the moment that I can stop giving myself excuses about being immature and I can finally force myself to grow up. After years of finding yourself, 18 is a year where you can finally start to implement it to make your life the best it can be.

Well what does that implementation look like for you and what are the ways you've done so?

I think to make mistakes and coming back from them. Trying to move on and focus on myself more. I'm trying to take time out of my day to make me happy more and to not be focused on negative energy. I've learned that while music makes me so happy, I have to give myself the time to do nothing or watch a movie, collect magazines or buy some stupidly expensive candle.

Then is happiness what matters to you above all right now? Or is there another goal and milestone to grab as well?

Happiness and being sane through the ups and downs, no matter what’s thrown my way.

In your project right now, what are the technical changes you've made and the developments you’ve made into your sound and actual technical ability?

Going into the professional aspect of music with Jaden seriously opened my eyes up to new techniques and work ethics. I think I can flesh out my ideas ten times more than I could before. The production is better and my song ideas are better. This album is experimental, I fit so much into a song without making it feel crowded and it feels much longer as a song than the actual runtime. Pushing things sonically to where I'm overloaded but then refining it later. I feel I looked at this project like my Cherry Bomb, which is my favorite project, and asked myself how could I do my own “Cherry Bomb” album, relative to my discography. Taking the idea of going wherever I wanted but making it easy to listen to.

Well, the interesting thing with Cherry Bomb is that it’s an album where if you took all of Tyler's discography and laid it out in a line you can point at that as the shifting moment. So how do you feel you want everything to look after this shifting moment for you and what do you want it to lead towards?

I think there's a lot of music that sounds the same in the whole DIY bedroom artist scene and I feel like there's a stigma that comes with that. There’s the assumption that nobody has the resources to execute anything “professional” sounding or cleanly executed. so there's a stigma where it’s ok if it sounds like shit because it’s an independently released “bedroom pop” song. I want to make the cheapest but also the most luxurious album. I’m taking care to set up my mics and instruments properly, organize my files better and plan more. I’m also not mixing the album myself. Even just outsourcing work is something that a lot of independent musicians won’t do because they want to rep the “I did it all myself” title, shout outs to James Rim, my mentor, and engineer for this album, he’s so talented and amazing at overseeing things and being a huge enabler for me. . I want this to be a shift for me and others where we don't have to have a label budget but we can still push it to another level of musical expression. I want it to be a point where I’m serious about making the best music possible from my bedroom without the limitations.

You've been talking about growing up and youth but that's very familiar in the subgenres you're saying you want to break out of. Do you feel there are themes beyond those you want to touch on but maybe haven’t fully experienced yet?

I think I don't even know yet. I tend to talk about what's happened lately and it's an album about recent ideas like my stress from LA and social anxiety, but that I'll grow out of. I guess we'll just have to see. Every six months for me is a new phase.

Do you break your life into eras and phases?

100 percent, yes.

What’s this era called then?

The ‘be free’ era. All my friends are working towards their own projects and are stressed and happy and sad but we’re all very focused.

So what does it mean to be free to you, you've also called it in the past ‘being free like Paris Hilton’. What is that concept in your mind?

The ‘be free’ side is being the most stressed you've ever been and getting to the point of breakdown but then releasing something beautiful or having something happen in your life and to just move forward. And the Paris Hilton side of it comes from the second version of Nikes off Blonde where this rapper raps in Japanese and says be free like Paris Hilton. I interpreted it is that she's this figure that embodies Hollywood and has embraced it and loves the red carpet, but she talks about feeling lonely and lost and not having a purpose and that she's missing out.

It's almost like Jim Carey said he wants everyone to be rich and famous so they can learn it’s not the answer to their problems.

Exactly and that's the Hollywood thing where there's dark Hollywood and the glamourous Hollywood coexisting.

You did spend a good amount of time in LA and for anyone who didn't know you worked closely with Jaden and worked heavily on ERYS, and you said it opened your eyes to the technical side and that it was a turbulent time, but what was the biggest lesson from the time working on the project as a whole?

I think the biggest lesson I learned was, as corny as it sounds, to believe in yourself. It's about telling yourself that you're special and knowing it and being proud of ourselves. I went into the studio as an underdog with these amazing producers, I had to use that energy to perform and succeed.

Does that mean to you that this journey in music is not about self-validation but more about fulfillment and building yourself and finding personal answers?

I think the thing for me is to achieve my goals and its above all being able to be in a happy state and constantly create.

Of the last year as a whole, what memory means the most to you and is one that stands out the most?

I was going to go on a tourist visa to LA to meet people but on the way, I went to Vancouver and I met Seungjin, the best human being on planet earth. I was so happy and I had shit going before I left but it really cleaned my whole palette. When I got back to LA I was feeling pretty hopeless and I was so close to giving up, but last minute I met Jaden and it all just steamrolled from there. Shit gets bad in life but how bad is it actually? I have a roof over my head, friends, supportive parents, clothes and food and water. Once you break it down and realize all the small stressful shit in your life means nothing, you start to appreciate the stuff that matters

So it was happiness instead in the mundane in life and the simplicities of daily existence?

Exactly, it was realizing that shit sucks in the moment but we always get over it. It always moves on.

On top of Seungjin and that friendship, this ERYS project was a lot of collaboration and you also work with a lot of other talented artists in your scenes, but what does it mean to you to be collaborative and how did you put yourself into that space?

I think it's about removing the selfish side of it, we all want to make something sick and be successful, but realizing we’re not here to just make a beat and then have our name on it but instead to help someone else shine, to help Jaden shine in this case.

What artists right now do you think you would be able to accentuate the best?

Lil Uzi Vert because when he gets a producer that makes him shine it's not even fair how good it is. I want to get on some K-Pop shit as well.

In your career and most of all through creation as a whole, what is that you’re trying to achieve as an overarching mantra?

I want to inspire people like I was inspired by people like Tyler and Earl and Mac Miller. I want to be the next generation' inspiration so I can create hope, even if it’s small.

So is part of it trying to create a wave?

Not even a wave, even just one kid stuck in their hometown having my songs give them the confidence is all I want. I want their lives to be lived to the fullest. There's a generation of genius kids stuck in the grinder, I want someone to make the decision about what they want to be and not what their parents want.

In your eyes, what does it mean then to be a hero or is that a concept that is overdone in art and music?

No, I think it can exist through both of those, I think as long as it’s positive. If you try to be a hero, super hard, you'll never be one. If your motives are pure and authentic you can harness that and you can teach and inspire others. Tyler’s focus was never to change LA, he was just being himself and the rest came. People will come when they come, the money will come when it comes.

How do you feel that right now your music is impacting others and how do you notice it daily?

It's crazy because looking back I’d never thought anything would ever happen. It's back to that sense of hope, even when things are slow, realizing that what you're doing means something to someone out there whether you know it or not. It's so crazy to even think about.

Going into the rest of this year and beyond, what’s your biggest goal and necessary milestones?

To release my album, and on top of that, my goals are literal such as getting my visa and living in LA. But above all I want to be free, that’s what it’s all about.

Do you have anyone to shoutout or promote? The floor is yours.

All of my friends: Maxwell, Luke, Tom. James Thorington, he’s crazy. And Seungjin. Seungjin is the man. The amazing producer, engineer, and mentor: James Rim.

                                                         -

Follow Yuki on Instagram and Twitter

Listen on Spotify and Apple Music

                                                         -

Words and interview by Guy Mizrahi

[sprinkles-us]

HW 9

The observer effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDmi8SnxURM

The first few minute have nothing to do with anything so skip ahead. Once the speaker decides to breach the actual topic he talks about how the act of observing something changes it. He talks about how in experimentation, when a scientist expects to find something they usually do. For everything that happens to us we assign a positive or negative value to the event. This seems a lot like the power of positive thinking to me. Also I know from past research that a random number counter can be affected by the act of observing it. There is also Young’s double slit experiment. In my opinion this guy has only began to understand the topic of the observer affect. Dude does not know what linear means. He says linear and then proceeds to draw a zig zagged line. Talks about the advantage principle but does not define it or go into great detail. A watched pot will not boil is an idiom that comes to mind in relation to this phenomenon.

This was a terrible video. 

 The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQKELOE9eY4

You can never simultaneously know the exact position and exact speed of an object. the act of measuring an object changes its speed and vice versa. happens because everything acts as a particle and a wave at the same time. Particle exist in a single space at a single time. waves are disturbances in space. wavelength is related to its velocity. short wavelength = fast. 

This was a good video that contained a lot of good information. 

 Quantum Tunneling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTodS8hkSDg

First talks about the conservation of energy. an object rolled down a hill cannot go any higher up the other side than the height it was originally dropped from. the video talks about how the rules of the conservation of energy change at the quantum level. This is an analogy not an explanation. 

Bad video. Does not actually explain anything about what quantum tunneling is. 

 The Butterfly Effect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JsD5Mz9eQY

Small causes can have large effects. a butterfly flapping its wings could create a tornado on the other side of the world say the speaker. Was initially applied to the weather, economics… a small change at one place can result in large differences in a different state. talks about sensitive dependence. a way of describing the accumulate effect over time of very small actions in complex systems. Talks about the sound of thunder book. The limitations of predicting systems. Talks about time travel and the affect the butterfly affect could have on the future. Talks about Adolph hitler and how things would be different if he had been accepted into art school. The affect takes time. 

In my opinion this was a good video. using back to the future instead of the movie as an example of the butterfly effect nagged me a little. Too easy I guess. 

  External perturbations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALk1jLooZro

This is the closet video I could find on the topic. 

Talks about Keplar and how planets move around the sun. the deviations from the perfectly elliptical pathways are called perturbations. Was used to form the causal laws. Also called newtons synthesis. Talks about the three laws of motion. The planets pull each other towards each other when they come too close to each other when going around the sun. The attraction causes a deviation in the planets perfectly eleptical path called a perturbation. 

I thought this was a informative video.

 Existentialism 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_tgqj9MU8M

Grabbed my attention right off the bat by using a phrase I have heard many times but never rely knew what it meant, the quintessential existentialist. Talks about 2 scientist whos names I cannot pronounce. existence precedes essence. we have to create our own lives and self. God does not exist and neither does destiny. we are condemned to be free. we have an absolute responsibility to ourselves. asking why we are living is an existential crisis. we struggle to find genuine meaning for our existence. we are free but the world is absurd. There is no purpose to life. Living is the purpose of life. it is the responsibility to make the right choices for ourselves. 

I liked this video. 

 The care horizon

 I cannot find a vido on this or even a definition. 

2.

I do not think the observer effect can be applied to the colonization of the moon. I guess one could argue that the act of actively observing people trying to colonize the moon could change the results. I'm just not sure how. Maybe if enough people were observing the effort then it would come to fruition more quickly. 

I guess the hisenburg uncertainty principle can be applied to the rockets flying to the moon. They have a position and a speed but according to the heisenburg uncertainty principle you can only know one of them. 

I am not sure how one would apply quantum tunneling to the colonization of the moon. From what I understand the only way to “view” the phenomena of quantum tunneling is to be working with subatomic particles. The colonization of the moon will mostly deal with objects larger than an atom. 

The butterfly effect can be applied to the colonization of the moon. The act of colonizing the moon will most definitely have huge affects on the world as a whole. For starters other countries might not like the idea of a single county or even a group of them controlling the moon. The act of colonizing the moon could start a conflict or even a war. 

I guess you could apply external perturbations to the colonization of the moon. Seeing as how we will probably have to put satellites into the moons orbit before the colonization process can begin, we will have to calculate any changes in our satalites orbit, or perturbations, in order to not crash or be released from our satalite position. 

I guess Existentialism can be applied to the colonization of the moon. if we our solely responsable for our own existence than it is our duty to push the limits of that existance. We are limited by our perception of the world around us. 

3.

Topic = the colonization of earths moon. 

5 years from todays date = we are beginning to discuss the idea of colonizing the moon. 

10 years from todays date = We have formed alliances with other countries to form the foundation of the new moon colony. 

20 years from todays date = Setbacks occur we go to war with another country. or a disease breaks out that stalls us out. 

50 years from todays date = we have overcome the setbacks and are once again looking to colonize the moon. 

100 years from todays date = we have successfully put into orbit a set of space stations that will be used as the staging ground for the moons colonization. 

200 years from todays date = we have built permanent structures beneath the moons surface and are close to unlocking the secrets of artificial gravity. 

1000 years from todays date = we now understand how to make artificial gravity and the moon is a fabulous new society full of happy colonist. 

10000 years from todays date = The human race has been in a war with lifeforms from another star who want to stop the human race from expanding its borders. 

1 million years from todays date = I would like to believe that by this point we will have become at least a type 3 civilization and have spread out among the stars. But I know in my heart this will never come to pass. More likely our race will have fizzled out long before this point. 

4.

Link did not work but I found one on youtube. 

Link = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zMAiGcDHG8

Talks about how the singularity could replace consciousness. Talks about the humans rise above the other animals. Humans ponder the meaning of life. Humans are not the tool making animal but the animal who can spread its cognitive ability to the outside world, like reading and writing. Cognitive outsourcing. I believe what this man is alluding to is the day in which human kind merges with machines and in turn begin to share their consciousness with one another. When enough people merge together a singularity is formed. One conscious many bodies. All becomes one. And one become all. 

5.

It is my opinion that the colonization of the moon will cause a great upheaval across the world. Maybe not at first but it will definitely come to be. The temptation to use the moon as a base for military operations will be great. In fact, the very idea that one country or a group of countries being able to achieve this goal is probably enough to cause mass paranoia and strife. I would like to believe that as a race we would come together in order to quell this strife, but alas experience leads me to doubt. We will have to create an entire new system of governess in order to achieve our dream of colonizing the moon. Or we will have to fight for the right to colonize the moon. But before that can happen there will be a lot of work to do. We must first either learn how to create artificial gravity or we have to learn how to remove our brains from our body to be installed into one more suitable for space travel. If that proves to be too difficult, we could construct humanoid avatars, controlled by humans back on earth, that can withstand the harsh conditions of space. These avatars can then be used to colonize celestial bodies other than our own. Perhaps even prep them for our habitation. In the end we will either have to make the moon, or at least our moon base, more human friendly, or we will have to make our bodies more resistant to spaces wrath. 

6.

Will begin by talking about our previous adventures into space as well as the moon.

then I will discuss the geography of the moon. 

Next I will talk about the political restraints keeping us from colonizing the moon. 

Then I will talk about the physical condition of outer space as well as one the moon. 

Next I will discuss the human body and how it functions on earth vs in space. 

then I will talk about adapting the human body to space. 

I will next discuss the limitations of transporting items to the moon. 

Next I will discuss what will we will need to take with us to survive. 

then I will discuss how we will get water and food on the moon. 

Will discuss how we will have to harvest building materials from the moon. 

Will begin to discuss possible solutions to the problems preventing us from colonizing the moon. 

Next I will talk about how the moon can be used as a weapon. 

Then I will talk about how technology will work in low gravity. 

I will discuss what types of foods they will take with them. 

I will then discuss basic human nutritional requirements. 

I will discuss how the colonist will defend themselves from the harsh conditions of space. 

I will discuss dison spheres and type 1-3 civilizations. 

Next we will talk about potential challenges. 

Then I will talk about how the colonization of the moon will affect the earth. 

I will conclude with my thoughts on whether or not colonizing the moon is actually feasible. 

[hasansonsuzceliktas]

What Happens During Reiki Attunements?

The most mysterious part of the system of Reiki is the attunements. Knowing few Reiki Masters confused about some of the new systems of Reiki and especially about the attunements; I felt like I need to share how I see and practice attunements with the purpose of empowering any confused Reiki Masters to feel confident in the way they practice attunements. So, here I put a disclaimer that, everything I’ll write here solely reflects my truth and my own understanding (with my limited human mind) filtered from my own experiences, tendency and inclinations. These are accumulated knowledge from my studies with my teacher Frans Stiene and how I see and practice Reiki. My last intention is to offend anyone or create polarity in community. Please take whatever resonates with you and trash the rest. Always remember that Reiki is like the Sun and it just shines on. It’s us humans who put labels on it and make it our own. Reiki doesn’t mind. Having said that, attunement is the most crucial element of the system of Reiki. You can read books on Reiki, you can practice precepts, you can learn meditations but attunement awakens our energetic connection to Reiki. I always think attunement as a remembering process, remembering who we really are. Someone (in this case the Reiki Master) who already has a connection to the Great Bright Light, shows you, exposes you or shares this Light with you. Attunement is that initial experience with Great Bright Light that you can cultivate and nurture, until you yourself become that Light. Here comes a choice for Reiki practitioners during both their practice and attunements: either to see Reiki as an external energy frequency and channel it or internalize it by reaching deep down to our innate bright light, nurture it and expand it. For me the purpose of the system of Reiki is to “be” Reiki, to “be” the Great Bright Light. What it means to “be” Reiki, is to live in a state of mind of non-duality, non-attachment, loving kindness and compassion. Regardless to say, precepts point out this state of mind, step by step by working on our anger, worry, fear, living in the moment by being grateful, by bringing our true potential to earth and being kind and compassionate to all living beings. The symbols and mantras of the system of Reiki point us in this direction too. With time and practice, our true self, our clear bright light shines through and Voila: We become the Great Bright Light. Let’s get back to the Attunement. How does the Reiki Master show/share this Great Bright Light to the student? One thing I find common in all attunement rituals is the mutual Intent of the Reiki Master and the student. It’s the intent of the Reiki Master that the student will receive the attunement (or have an initial experience of the Great Bright Light) and it’s the intent of the student to be open to receive it. When there is this mutual intent between a Reiki Master and student, the attunement works regardless. The ritual of performing the attunement is just a tool. Even though the attunement ritual is just a tool, the way I practice attunements, I see the steps in the attunement ritual as steps to bring the Reiki Master (myself) to the right state of mind to be the Great Bight Light. Obviously it’s not easy to get to that right state of mind right away. That’s why we have rituals because rituals help us to get to the right state of mind. Since our body and mind are connected, the physical act of ritual makes the mind act in a certain way. We rock the babies to sleep, we light a candle or chant a prayer before meditation, etc. With the physical act, we prepare our minds to be in a certain way. Reiki attunement ritual is not different. The purpose of the ritual is to bring the Reiki Master to the DKM space, or Great Bright Light, so that Master can be Reiki and share it with the student. The more the Reiki Master can be Reiki and reflect this Light, the more the student can be exposed to. I believe the higher the Reiki Master’s frequency, the higher the frequency student is exposed to. How much the student can get (or raise his/her vibration) depends on how open and empty the student is. At the end, it will work anyway but how much you get will depend on how much the Reiki Master can share and how much the student can receive. That’s why they repeat the attunements every week in Japan. Every time you receive an attunement, especially if you continue to working on yourself, you can get a little more out of it and raise your own vibration. At first Mikao Usui didn’t have a formal attunement process. His students would be attuned by just simply being at his presence. According to his early students, he’d sit across from the students and that was enough for the students to be attuned. However, most of his early students were spiritual practitioners, mostly monks or nuns. They were open to receive and they didn’t need rituals to be performed on them. As Mikao Usui started to have more lay students, he developed Reiju, Spritual Blessing, so that the students would get the implication that they were acted upon and that they were receiving something. Reiju is still the ritual performed by the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai in Japan and absolutely my favorite ritual. There are no symbols and mantras in this ritual or no levels, students take as much energy as they need/can at that point in their lives, attunements repeated frequently and each attunement deepens student’s energetic connection. Reiju is performed in a state of mindfulness, with compassion, unconditionally, without any attachment to any given outcome. There is no giving or receiving. Master and students simply share the non-dual state of Great Bright Light and just allow it to happen. Allow what to happen? Whatever the students needs at that time. The ritual mostly followed in West developed by Hayashi, a student of Mikao Usui. Hayashi took Reiju and added symbols and mantras. He also had slightly different rituals for different levels of Reiki. Hayashi also thought slightly different attunements to his students as well as to Mrs. Takata. My first Reiki teacher, William Rand, created the Usui/Tibetan attunements with Tibetan symbols and has recently changed it to another new system of Reiki, with another new symbol. In my opinion and experience so far, there is no right or wrong ritual for as long as you have the right Intent. Having said that, I personally like to stay closer to the original, but that’s my personal choice. Honestly, I look with suspicion when people start to add new symbols or channel information but again that’s because how I choose to practice Reiki. After all, this diversity of systems of Reiki gives me more motivation to stick to what resonates with me and I think everyone should be comfortable with what/how they practice Reiki. However, there is one thing constant in all the different Reiki attunement rituals I’ve learned: The Intent. I practiced William Rand’s attunement for years. Now I practice another ritual coming from Hayashi/Tatsumi lineage. My favorite is the original Reiju and I share it abundantly when I share Reiki blessings. However when I pass attunements, I fall back to the Hayashi/Tatsumi ritual. I think they are all beautiful and we’re so lucky to have these tools. Obviously you can sit across from the students and expand to be the Great Bright Light. Some of the most powerful attunement experiences I had, happened without the physical interaction or ritual, by just simply sitting across from my teacher. However if the students are new to this field, they might need to feel the physical touch or some ritual taking place in order to convince themselves something is really going on. A milestone in my Reiki teaching journey was the decision I made to use the ritual for my own spiritual practice. Do we all need to do it this way? Of course, not. Believe me when I first started to teach Reiki, I passed attunements, following the ritual, almost mechanically, and guess what? It worked, because I had the right Intent. Also, I was told that there were Reiki guides/ spirit guides who help us with the attunements and that all we need to do is to tell them our intent and say which level’s attunement and boom, it was done. I used this method and I “outsourced” the attunement process to my guides. I must tell you they did a great job because all my early students reported great results with their practice. However, at some point I realized that, the attunements can be an excellent opportunity for me to become the Great Bright Light. (I must give all the credit to my teacher Frans Stiene for this realization). One day, I asked my guides to step aside but I still asked them to be present in the room and correct if I do something wrong. Gradually, I asked them not to interfere and I took the whole responsibility myself. Did I do a better job? Probably not, at least not in the beginning, but it was worth the risk. I guess what I’m trying to say is that; just Relax! the attunements will work if you simply follow the ritual you’ve learned from your own Reiki master and keep a clear Intent. Yet we, Reiki masters, have an option to use Reiki attunements as a tool for our own spiritual development. Knowing that they’ll work either way, we can decide if we want to consciously practice being the Great Bright Light during this sacred time we spend with our students and attunement after attunement repeatedly merge in that space, become one, eventually take it outside the attunements to our daily lives, live in the DKM space until eventually one day we realize our Divine self, the Great Bright Light. Read the full article

#healing #health #healthy #reiki

[dorothydelgadillo]

Why You Should Own Your Own Content Creation?

Whether you have been trying to produce content in-house or have been outsourcing for years, chances are, you may feel like your content isn’t really getting you anywhere.

As a client success manager on IMPACT’s new business team, I hear from prospects struggling with content production on a daily basis.

Most commonly, if a prospect is producing content in-house, I often hear, there’s never enough time to dedicate to producing quality content -- or they don’t know how to convert blog posts into revenue.

If a prospect has been outsourcing their content, I often hear complaints of timeline delays or outsourced writers simply not understanding the intricacies of their business or worse, their customers.

As a former HubSpot employee who worked exclusively with Agency Partners, I can tell you from experience, that outsourcing content isn’t a great long-term strategy.

Why Outsourcing Content Is Bad Long Term

Back at HubSpot, when I consulted agencies on how to develop their services, I’d advise that writing on behalf of a client was advantageous.

At the time, when an agency wrote content for a client, it seemed that they had more control.

That control would ideally allow an agency to meet timelines and, in turn, their client’s ROI would increase.

But that model didn’t work.

Hiccups in client’s delivering content almost always happened. Agencies would set deadlines and clients wouldn’t meet them. Then, engagements would end because clients didn’t see a return on their content investment.

Now that I am at an agency that historically implemented content writing services and acted as an outsourced writer for hundreds of clients, I can tell you that this is the least effective way to produce impactful content.

Why, you ask?

Quality 

You and only you know your industry, product, and services best. You are experts at what you do.

The topics you should be writing about come from your organization’s daily conversations with prospects and customers; these are not things an outsider could truly know or understand.

By outsourcing content, you are sacrificing the validity and quality of your work.

Think about it.

If you insource content, you can ensure that your content is a true reflection of your expertise and quality. The content owner would live in your industry/business and learn it. They would have built rapport with subject matter experts in house, so that they can interview those employees and produce meaningful content.

If you’re outsourcing, chances are, that writer doesn’t live in your industry day-to-day, leaving a major knowledge gap. While they can still produce quality content, it will never be as good as it can be from a value perspective. Nothing tops a first-hand or inside account.

Brand Consistency

Another challenge with outsourcing is brand consistency.

Unless you have a writer that knows the intricacies of your brand or a template that clearly defines your organization’s tone and voice, your brand identity is at risk.

Keeping content in house will help ensure that all content is spoken in the same language.

Let’s say you want to write about an edgy topic. Something that could generate a lot of buzz around a controversial question in the sales process.

As a thought leader, why would you leave provocative insights to the interpretation of an outsider?

You’re opening the door to possible misinterpretation by allowing someone external to speak on your behalf.

Cost: Time & Resources

The last piece of the puzzle is cost. It is inevitably more expensive to outsource content than it is to insource.

While we will get into the meat of a cost analysis in an upcoming article, let’s do some quick math for comparison sake.

The average cost of one blog post to an outsourced writer is about $300 per article.

This assumes you are leveraging a solid writer, but also assumes you have to provide everything to that writer to make the article work including an outline, research, sometimes an interview or blurbs.

For that cost, you’re also editing and publishing the article. Not to mention the time cost associated with finding a good writer.

On the opposite spectrum, if you would like an agency to aid in all of the aforementioned services plus copywriting, you’re looking at anywhere between $1000-$1500 per article.

This may not include keyword research or an editorial calendar as that is traditional handled at the onset of an agency engagement.

If we assume that three blog articles per week is a necessary cadence to see results, the approximate cost of outsourcing for one year could range anywhere from ~$46,000 for just copywriting to well over $200,000 for full copywriting, editing, publishing, interviewing, etc.

If we live in the median of that range, you can surely find a content manager for much less than $100,000 annually including benefits.

This content manager will not only write content, but own and manage all content, subject matter expert interviews, ensure tone and branding guidelines are met and most importantly, produce better quality content!

No One Knows Your Business Better Than You

Rachel Palmeeter, a colleague and Account Executive at IMPACT, speaks to the value of insourcing content as: “It's the difference between someone talking about a brand, and a brand talking about itself."

While we recognize that insourcing content is a major time investment, the biggest advantage to writing your own content is building trust with prospective clients.

Sharing your personal knowledge and expertise with your industry builds major credibility.

Increasing trust with your prospects and customers by clearly answering common questions is the key to content that converts.  If you obsess over your customers’ questions and answer them online, you’ll be seen as not only a business, but a helpful educator.

If you’re reading this and you’re still on the fence of who should own content creation, please read this fun and informative article from my colleague, Liz Murphy.

Liz discusses not only the value of keeping content creation in-house, but also the critical nature behind having one person dedicated to managing content.

In upcoming articles we will not only be discussing a cost analysis of in-sourcing versus outsourcing, but we will also address how we at IMPACT consult our clients on how to effectively produce content in house.

Because as you’ve probably guessed, we no longer produce content for our clients.

In the interim, take a peak at clients such as Mazzella and Yale Appliance who have grown their revenue substantially by taking control and insourcing their content creation and placing one person in charge of content management.

If you take anything away from this article, remember this: Prospects are smart.

They want to hear from you.

They can tell when something is ghost-written by a blog writing service versus written by someone who works day-in, day-out in your business … can’t you?

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/why-you-should-own-your-own-content-creation

[teritcrawfordca]

The Top 5 Things You HAVE to Do Before You Hire a Salesperson

As a business owner, my guess is that you spend too much time working in the business and not doing the strategic, thoughtful, meaningful things you thought you would do when you started your business. Maybe you’ve outsourced small things: hired an assistant to help with the day-to-day, hired someone to help with social media, and hired an accountant to help with the books. It seems as if the last thing you should delegate is sales. You get overwhelmed with what that might look like, how you’d go about finding the right person, and what you’d teach them, so you decide to outsource other things and continue being the only salesperson for your business.

Here is the problem with that: the business needs you to grow. It doesn’t need you to sell—it needs you to drive the ship. It needs you to make strategic decisions, to be the visionary, and to champion the story internally and externally. In order to do that, you need to hire a sales team.

Before you run out the door to hire your first salesperson, there are a few things you want to be really clear on. These things are important for two reasons. First, if you hire a salesperson, but don’t give them any clear direction, they will fail and, in turn, cost you money rather than helping you generate more revenue. Secondly, good salespeople aren’t known for being detail oriented. They need to be told what to do, how to do it, and whom to talk to about it. If you can give them these tools, the likelihood of success will be much higher.

Here are the 5 Things you HAVE to do before You Hire a Salesperson (in no particular order).

5 Things to Do Before You Hire a Sales Person

1. Know Your Value Proposition

What problem do you solve? Who do you solve it for? Why are you different? Why do people do business with you today? What are their pain points? Why are they buying from you? You have to be able to tell your new salesperson each one of these things, specifically, with as much detail as possible.

2. Know Your Pricing Structure

As the business owner, you might make up the pricing as you go. You might even figure out your rates in your head over a cup of coffee. That won’t fly for a salesperson. You will need clear-cut rates and packages for them to work with.

3. Fine Tune Your Sales Process

If you’re doing most of the selling, it’s likely that you don’t have a defined sales process. You need one. You have to be able to tell your new salesperson where to start, where to go next, and where to go after that before they can bring on new clients. It’s likely you’re following a sales process, but you just don’t have it written down.

4. Know Your Onboarding Process for New Clients

What exactly happens when you bring on a new client? What are the steps you take to collect payment, set up invoicing, and onboard them? Again, this process probably exists, and this is your opportunity to fine tune it. Your new salesperson will need to know what happens when they bring on a new client.

5. Develop a 30-60-90 Day Plan for Your New Sales Person

This is an exercise for you and for your new hire. You need to be realistic about what this person can accomplish and in what time frame. Your new salesperson also needs to know what is expected of them. I suggest sharing a 30-60-90 day plan as part of your job offer. This way, your new hire knows exactly what is expected of them in their first 90 days on the job.

When you hire a salesperson, keep in mind that this person isn’t you! They don’t know your business inside and out. They haven’t been living in it like you have. Their learning curve is likely to be longer than you think. The good news is that if your business is growing, you probably have many of these things in place, just not formally. Now is your time to make it formal, put together a plan, and find a salesperson that believes in what you’re doing almost as much as you do.

About the author: Ryann Dowdy is a 15-year veteran of the advertising sales industry. She is passionate about supporting women in business overcome their negative mindset around sales and grow their business. Her company is www.uncensoredconsulting.com

The post The Top 5 Things You HAVE to Do Before You Hire a Salesperson appeared first on Succeed As Your Own Boss.

from Teri Crawford Business Tips https://succeedasyourownboss.com/the-top-5-things-you-have-to-do-before-you-hire-a-salesperson/

[theclothingtookyears]

Penny Rafferty: Has your practice always been linked to textiles?

Isaac Penn: I started making clothing when I was in high school because I couldn’t afford the garments I wanted. Making clothes was fun and simple, but it didn’t take very long, manually. There was far more prototyping and sketching than actual physical “making”. After a year of menswear tailoring in college, I figured I wanted to slow down the process of making clothing. How could I make one full look, instead of a full collection, in the same amount of time? I started developing and manipulating my own materials. I gained a library of techniques from embroidery (embellishment), surface design, weaving, knitting, crochet, knotting, dyeing and digitally-enhanced structures.

PR: So, for you, it grew out of a necessity to slow down rather than the fashion industry’s demand for acceleration season after season?

IP: The history of textile processes is over 5000 years old, far longer than fashion. I felt empowered to be part of something so historically saturated. Now, objects are being produced more frequently than ever before in history. Materials now need to diversify and enhance the objects we consume and experience in our daily and external environments; this is how the market keeps growing.

PR: How do you see your role today, then?

IP: As a textile designer, I’m interested in the foundational and basic design elements; finding practical solutions through process and practice. Attention to details, assessing one’s real needs and requirements, leads to decision making through very simple gestures. Common sense drives the discovery, curiosity and experimentation, process. I try to see the poetics and semantics of production.

PR: During our initial conversation, you likened your use of the Jacquard Weaving technique to the first computer, can you go a little more into this?

IP: The Jacquard loom has had a huge influence on computing technology. The mechanical loom was one invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804. The loom uses physical punched cards to develop pixel-based patterns such as brocades, damasks and matelassé fabric. Its ability to change the loom’s pattern by simply changing punch cards was a conceptual precursor for the future of data entry, as we know it today. Pixels are basic and foundational and easy to control; all one’s mistakes can be fixed and altered, which gives the creator full control of their own processes.

PR: The images you use seem to have been filtered through Photoshop. They have a pixelated quality to them.

IP: The Jacquard weavings come from photographs I’ve taken and altered in postproduction. These images need to be reduced to a simple value/tonal range so that I can assign different woven structure to different values. It isn’t so much that technology affects my work, but I need to work with it, to come out with something successful. By successful I mean pictorial: something that should be woven instead of painted. That is the biggest discussion: is this medium or technique appropriate for this subject matter and for the end goal? Jacquard looms are very expensive; weavings require a lot of time and a large material (production) cost. I’m always asking myself, does this make sense for me to create it or am I just making more stuff for my own ego and hedonism? It’s pretty hedonistic to just make things with no intention.

PR: The digital and material also seem to be in flux through your weaves. Is this a way to navigate both sectors of your life?

IP: I gravitate more to analog work. I like being able to fix my own mistakes and be more in control of my process. The material is in constant flux and each material has its own behavioural patterns that lead to a variety of results. Although the programming for digital application in textiles is quite standard, the combination with natural materials that have their own dispositions is an engaging dialogue. Some people fight with their materials and others try to allow the materials to behave naturally. The variation in results is what keeps people making, I guess.

PR: We are moving more and more into slick and smooth devices as far as our home or tech wares go. Do you think textiles as sensory space are in danger of becoming detrimental to our home life?

IP: No, people like to feel things. Also, print and pattern have played such a heavy role in society over the last couple of decades, from textural elements to contemporary design. DIY culture has also led people into a place of understanding how things are made and new ideologies have grown out of this. Take upcycling: people have become the new designers, wanting to make their own clothes, furniture and objects. With this development, people are starting to see the true price of goods and the ethics behind mass production. This moves people away from buying the t-shirt that costs $10 and allowing more sensitivity to the contemporary consumer and the makers themselves.

People wanted things cheap for a while and they got disappointed with the results. Now people want things they can alter or make their own: money isn’t too much of an issue. Look at a pair of Vetements jeans, for example. It’s about the unique space of the textile in society.

PR: The infamous Vetements DHL t-shirt is an interesting twist in this production, though, right? Original retailing at £185, knock-off online for £10, almost impossible to tell the real from the fake to the untrained eye.

IP: Vetements will just keep on getting more right! I don’t mean better or good, but their work is the most appropriate in contemporary fashion design. The variety of looks from the last show was such an iconic approach. They showed the fashion industry that people want to make their own looks now. When you look at a group of kids on the street, everyone has their own style, it’s not like a group of punks, skins, goths: there is a goth, a club kid, a streetwear enthusiast, a classic bad-boy Yohji Yamamoto silhouette. Vetements hits all the notes. Making clothing for a range of personalities is a way to speak to a broader audience. Making clothing that you can and are encouraged to make yourself is also a new way that brands like Vetements are identifying with their consumers lust for control and individuality.

PR: Would you say DIY-making, for you, is part of a political platform of self-sustaining production, then?

IP: Yes and I galvanise it. If people make their own textiles they understand how things are actually made. It brings awareness to the supply chain and how much things cost. The best way to see the price and difficulty of making something is doing it yourself. It’s also a good way for people to find their own sense of expression in a heightened state of neoliberalism. It’s also a way of making things on a limited and more controlled scale rather than outsourcing t-shirts, for example, where a minimum order is over $1000

PR: You spoke about hedonism and ego via materialization before and now we have slipped into couture fashion. What are your final thoughts?

IP: I think making things is a luxury. It feels good; you are absorbed in something and can alienate yourself. The processes are so repetitive that you have time to think. Slowing down: this is also a luxury. On the other hand, we don’t need any more things and especially not laborious handmade things. But allowing a strong sense of individuality and expression is exactly what we do need, from the foundations of textiles to the clothes we wear on our backs.

[mrsteveecook]

updates: former coworkers still vent to me, the racist coworker, and more

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are five updates from past letter-writers.

1. My coworkers at my toxic former job still vent to me about how bad things are there — and it’s draining

I really appreciated the advice that you and the commenters gave me – it helped me put things into perspective and realize that I was expending emotional energy that I didn’t have to spare worrying about these former coworkers and a problem that I had no hope of fixing for them. However, I really only had the chance to put your advice into practice a few times before the situation at my former job imploded.

Without going into identifying details, a few months ago, Cersei threatened to fire one of her favorite scapegoats during one of her routine tantrums; that individual walked down to HR with a 10 page document listing all of the inappropriate comments Cersei had made to them, as well as all of the non-work related tasks they had been required to do for her over the past year or so. Apparently that document was damning enough (I glossed over some things in my initial question to avoid identifying information, but suffice to say that Cersei frequently made comments that did meet the legal threshold for workplace harassment, even if the tasks she was assigning didn’t) that HR finally felt compelled to act, and Cersei was placed on indefinite leave. The writing on the wall was clear enough for even an unhinged narcissist like Cersei to read, so she has since moved on to another organization. Cersei’s departure took the wind out of Septa Unella’s sails (I don’t doubt she’ll cause problems in the future, but, as I learned, that’s not my circus), and my former unit is now answering to a higher up in the org while a hiring search is conducted.

I am happy to report that in the instances prior to Cersei’s departure, I was able to communicate a need for boundaries that my old coworkers understood and respected. A few told me they “got it” and that they sympathized with how draining it must be to be dragged back into old office politics. After a few of those conversations, the emotional unloading pretty much ended. As many commenters anticipated, I speak to most of my former colleagues less frequently now that our shared problems have mostly been resolved, but I do still remain in regular touch with a select few. Thankfully, our conversations now revolve around sharing pet pictures and discussing best practices in our industry, which is the best possible outcome I could have hoped for. I am thriving in my current position, and feel free of the survivor’s guilt that was giving me such anxiety. Thanks again to you, Alison, and to the amazing comment section for all the help!

2. My coworker used a racist word at work (#2 at the link)

I eventually got the courage to address the issue to my manager. She and I had a good discussion on race and how to approach discussing language with older folks. She opted to not address my coworker, as you guessed. But as it was Black History Month, she used that as an excuse to send out a staff-wide email linking a few articles about race/diversity and terminology. Basically “how not to be a jerk to people unlike you 101.” Maybe I take for granted my “wokeness” but none of it was particularly enlightening or helpful, and it definitely did not address the issue head-on. We discussed it a little among ourselves, but there was not formal training or management-lead discussion.

A few months later Pam was let go. It was for a variety of reasons and to be honest I do not feel like she was given much in way of explanation. My boss and her managers were really worried about getting accused of age discrimination. But they never seemed to dedicate time to helping her understand her failings. But I think it was all for the best for both parties.

On another note, during a recent staff training day we had a diversity panel which I had high hopes for. Several members of the panel were excellent resources for our predominately white, straight female staff, and gave us a lot of insight and knowledge. I say several because one was jaw-droppingly obtuse – the straight white woman who multiple times referred to another non-binary panel member as a woman and “she,” when this person had opened the panel up by sharing their pronouns and gender identity. The offender is an employee of ours, though in another department.

Needless to say, my workplace needs some adjustments before it becomes a welcoming environment for POC and LGBTQ folks. I was recently promoted, so I am hoping to be a part of that change. Overall I think most people are conscious of their privilege, we just have some management that needs to catch up.

Thank you again Alison for you insight on this matter and many others!

3. My boss is burning out

I have an update on the situation for you. I was hoping to wait for something more positive, but today was a complete game changer. Today they announced the majority of our department was going to be moved to a new department out of the country. It’s technically not outsourcing since this department is still part of our company. Those of us with high-maintenance accounts were told would be safe from the lay offs. Luckily, I am one of those people. I already had my ear to the ground for a while, so I had a sense this was coming and had been job hunting since right before your posted my question. I felt very reassured I was doing the right thing when you said it might be best for my boss to get out.

Since the announcement from great-grand-boss this morning a lot of the earlier situation and signs have made a lot of sense to me. They knew these lay offs were coming and believed Boss could handle the extra reports for the remainder of the year. There was no use back-filling the position they were just going to eliminated in a few months. Boss was up to 30 direct reports at our highest. Once the lay offs happen in February, she will be down to about 10-12. All of us survivors self-manage really well and have a good rapport with Boss. I feel a lot of sympathy for her right now as she knew this was coming and has to give the bad news to everyone individually today on the process is going to go down.

As for me, this situation with all the signs had burn out levels increase. I’ve had four job interviews alone this week. So, I think my future is looking good. Whether I stick it out with Boss or not is in the wind. I hope to have something better for you next time.

4. Am I obligated to ensure employees aren’t driving without a license? (#3 at the link)

I have an update and figured I’d share even though it’s not terribly exciting. To clarify one of the questions that came up in the comments, I am an external recruiter.

It turns out that a valid driver’s license is a requirement for this position and it wasn’t communicated to us. Not only that, but we are required to pull a motor vehicle report to ensure they have a clean driving record. We only found this out after we’d been trying to set up interviews for our candidates. The person who told me that he had a car was not happy when I told him that we couldn’t move forward with his candidacy and said he would be contacting the client directly because “he knows people who work there without a license.”

5. Manager won’t reimburse conference travel as promised (#4 at the link)

First of all, thank you for answering my question — I got some good ideas from your wording, as well as what was suggested by some of the commentators. I went to the manager in question to talk with her using your script, but she shut it down and said I needed to go through the formal reimbursement procedure for the organization. So I went to those people, and as I expected, since the charges weren’t pre-approved by the company, they were declined. I appealed (which was quite a process in itself!) but in the meantime my training program ended and I joined a different organization, so everything got delayed. Earlier this week, about 6 months after the conference, the reimbursement did post to my bank account.

My new workplace has a much more clearly defined and reasonable structure for conference time and funds. It’s also a more functional department in general. Thank you again for your help and the resources on your site.

You may also like:

my coworkers at my toxic former job still vent to me about how bad things are there — and it’s draining

my coworker keeps asking everyone for loans

update: my bombastic coworker is pushing me over the edge

updates: former coworkers still vent to me, the racist coworker, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

from Ask a Manager http://bit.ly/2BMdubs

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How An It Recruitment Consultant Can Progress Your It Profession

Look at outsourcing your headhunter, Payroll processing, Group Benefits choice and Employees payment protection to reduce each fixed and variable costs, acquire profit and increase efficiencies. Choose an external HR supplier who allows you to concentrate on your inner features. Devote more time to your employees to make them more productive, more profitable and much less likely to sue you. For headhunters, discovering candidates should not be too tough. There are numerous individuals who are looking for jobs, who are getting difficulty finding them on their own. They require someone to assist them, to link them with companies for whom they would be perfect workers, and this is just what a headhunter can offer. These people are just waiting around to be discovered. If you are attempting to find them so that you can help them get started on their subsequent career, there are a few issues that you require to think about. Don't let the recruiter / headhunter dismiss your CV just because you produced a mistake or misspelled something. Numerous recruiters / headhunter see these types of mistakes as serious. They say "If you can't even spell right or produced stupid errors, you most likely haven't even read the CV following you wrote it." Use a spellchecker on the text and have somebody you trust, proofread it to get a 2nd viewpoint. "Check out the new man." When introducing the new group member to the relaxation of your staff delivery is key. Make certain that these introductions are carried out is a way that respects the new employ's position and lets employees associates know that they ought to welcome them. A resume is important to a occupation application, but a good resume is vital to a effective job search. A resume that is truthful, but appealing account of an applicant's experience, education and abilities can assist display recruitment managers why the applicant is a suitable candidate for the position. I hope that this good resume writing suggestions will be of great assist in your lookup for better occupation possibilities. Change Profession Fields. Make a money survey of comparable degree work. Frequently occasions a change more than to a higher having to pay track is feasible without need of an sophisticated diploma. Think outside the box. If you look at your particular ability sets, they may be effortlessly transferable to an additional, greater paying, place. Alter niches inside your field. Attempt to believe exactly where the cash is and how you can parlay your encounter to get a shot at it. A human resources corporate recruiter who desires to make a six-figure income could become a headhunter for an outdoors lookup firm. Bank jobs are considered as the most prestigious jobs in India. Every year a big quantity of candidates apply for the bank occupation. Private as nicely as government bank is recruiting candidate for the post of clerk and probationary officers. It is heard that over 2 lakh of applicant will be employed in the banking sector till 2012. Couple of times in the past Bank of Baroda has recruited around thousand candidates for the clerk post. Now the Indian Bank is employing about 685 candidates for the Clerical employees post. The software type for the clerical staff publish is accessible on the Indian financial institution web site. And finally, do not give up. Job searching is never easy or enjoyable, and in our present economic local weather it is the toughest it has been for a quantity of years. Nevertheless, maintain at it, if you adhere to the actions over the right position will be yours prior to you know it. The recruiter has been informed "Don't send us anyone who's lacking abilities or certifications X, Y and Z." That makes feeling, simply because lookup charges are significant - usually 20 or twenty-five percent of a new hire's total first-year money compensation. If the wage for the occupation is eighty thousand dollars, the search charge will be in the community of twenty thousand bucks. Naturally, a employing supervisor won't want to spend that big a fee unless of course the candidates the headhunter is sending him are correct on the spec. When I was nonetheless recruiting throughout the working day and creating software program at night I labored elbow to elbow with fellow recruiters. I used to criticize the recruiter who was usually fussing with the computer and their information. Do you know why? I'm guessing you think it is because I am so arrogant that I did not want to pay attention to anybody else's ideas. You are wrong, although I do like my personal ideas! The real reason, however, was that I knew this recruiter was by no means going to be successful and we would shed cash. Time after time, yr after yr for 15 years, I found that the recruiters who focused on the recruiting instrument and gimmicks instead than execution unsuccessful. Somebody once told me that Vince Lombardi, a extremely successful soccer mentor, had only about 6 performs. The success was all in the execution!

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Your next pc can be in a data center

New Post has been published on https://pagedesignhub.com/your-next-pc-can-be-in-a-data-center/

Your next pc can be in a data center

Computers have come to be greater powerful and more portable, letting you execute some compute-in depth responsibilities to your PC. But internet connections have additionally come to be tremendously quicker, making it plenty easier to outsource a few duties to servers sitting in an information center.

Most of the apps in your cellphone already depend upon a server aspect to keep and method your records. When you submit a video on Facebook, it gets re-encoded into multiple formats on the server in order that other users can move your video in SD, HD, and so forth.

But I think this fashion is going to become even greater essential inside the coming years, with all of your gadgets performing as an easy display into your stuff strolling on servers in information facilities near you.

First, net connection speeds and latency need to enhance substantially for every person. I’m lucky that I stay in Paris, a dense town with green infrastructure. I get around 800 Mbps and 250 Mbps of down load and upload speeds at domestic. And I can ping all records facilities round Paris in less than 2 milliseconds with a stressed out connection.

Second, I’ve valued portability over specs for years. I’m presently typing this article on the tiny 12-inch MacBook. It’s a light-weight, fanless device that is greater or less as powerful because the MacBook Pro I became formerly the usage of.

Raw overall performance has greater or less stagnated for laptops in case you choose the lightest device you may get. At the equal time, more responsibilities are counting on effective pictures processing devices. Creative people control larger photos and 4K video pictures. Even your browser has to turn out to be more annoying.

Third, agencies want to increase services that everyone can use with none coding enjoy. For example, Adobe may want to release thin customers of Photoshop, Premiere Pro and other apps with all the heavy paintings occurring on a server. I feel like Adobe’s subscription version is an appropriate opportunity to do that with a non-obligatory add-on.

Even with out reinventing the wheel, a few businesses are innovating in this area. French startup Blade is operating on a service referred to as Shadow, basically for cloud gaming. It is strolling heaps of digital machines on server-grade Intel Xeon processors with a devoted Nvidia GTX 1070 for every consumer. You can get your non-public example for round $32.70 per month (€30).

At first, I become pretty skeptical as cloud gaming has never labored perfectly nicely because of latency, photo compression, and restrictions. But in this example, you get a full-fledged Windows 10 computing device surroundings with excellent network performances.

The agency has simply released Windows and Android apps, and it’s far presently running on a macOS app as well as a dedicated device with a reasonably-priced CPU and all of the ports you need. This way, you don’t even need to have an existing laptop to connect to your digital device on Shadow’s servers.

After a couple of minutes walking the Windows app on my Windows PC, I were given careworn and found out I needed to use special wallpapers due to the fact I couldn’t tell if I turned into interacting with my nearby PC or the digital machine going for walks in Shadow’s facts center near Paris.

When you run a recreation in your Shadow example, your computer fan remains silent because now not plenty is happening for your local PC. It’s one of the maximum telling examples of outsourcing compute-intensive obligations. These groups will have to make sure they have a rock-solid privacy policy and security gadget.

CPUs, GPUs, and SSDs are nevertheless going to get better through the years. These innovations will in the main benefit cloud groups so they can provide higher servers.

Why You Ought to Care About Computer Data Recovery

PC’s are a splendid time saver and tool for organizing. However, the more we rely on computer systems to shop statistics, the greater based our precious records safety is on technology. An era can help you down. The top information is that there exists manner to healing your information even after catastrophes. However, the most sound practice is to save you data loss from occurring inside the first area.

The fact is that information loss is a serious problem. There are handiest sorts of humans, those who’ve experienced records loss, and people who have no longer skilled records loss… YET! Those who’ve felt the remorse over not successfully backing up their information after losing it, or being not able to discover a person successful inside the field of computer records recuperation, understand the fee of this statistics.

Important data loss can ruin groups and wreck lives. Think I am being over dramatic? Then you obviously have not yet gone through the emotional turmoil of dropping your families prized pix, or your group’s key files.

Computer information recovery may be essential for something as small as the unintended deletion of a file or be as huge because of the whole wipe out of asinesses complete document records. Computer records loss can be caused by so several matters that maximum parents do no longer worry after they pass approximately their daily”computing” lives.

Hazards consist of: Electrical failure, surges of strength , harm to tough drives and disks, dust, overheating of PCs, in congruent hardware, errors, corrupt software files, viruses within the boot quarter, and you’ll be astounded at how plenty of human beings virtually save a record someplace they can not locate for the lifestyles of them.

Luckily, however all the possible methods you or your commercial enterprise can lose vital records, agencies and technicians exist who can carry your misplaced information returned from the lifeless. They literally provide some oldsters and enterprise owners the happiest days of their lives surely by retrieving data they assumed could be lost for all time.

Specialists within the discipline of PC statistics recuperation have the near superhero like the capability to deconstruct your situation and resurrect your facts. Always ensure whilst searching for these companies to do your studies, You ought continually start with local computer records healing service providers. Although there are commercial enterprise who function solely within the information recovery field, usually you will find these services within a typical “PC restore” or general IT company. You can often discover your dollar goes in addition to a nearby provider due to their low expenses and proximity. Google Places is a top notch tool to discover one of this business.

This would possibly sound obvious, but the excellent manner to deal with your laptop facts healing issues is by means of now not losing your records inside the first location. I am continuously amazed at how some of the folks do actually nothing to shield or backup their facts, yet house important records on their PC that they can’t stay with out. If you simply felt a guilty pang to your belly you are most possibly an offender. Backing up your records may be the neatest selection you’re making all year and then some.

Options to lower back up your information includes DVDs, Cds, uses and outside hard drives. Each of these techniques is cumbersome and admittedly worrying because you have to often replace your backup. If you use this type of techniques, external difficult drives are the best because you may sync your documents with out an excessive amount of-ofproblem.

The absolute satisfactory approach to returned up your statistics for my part is to apply an online garage provider. These companies permit you to store data wherever the is an Internet connection. Better than that, you can retrieve these statistics without having your personal computer or desktop handy. I use drop field myself, but short Google look for “on line information backup” will offer zillion options.

To sum up, groups and individuals must respect the crushing effect data loss can have. Total catastrophe is right around the nook, or at least you better reckon that it is so you do not get stuck along with your pants down. If you do experience facts loss, there are alternatives. Local PC facts recuperation specialists are your first-class guess followed through bigger “chain” laptop era companies. Sooner or later, always take into account to assume beforehand and keep your information before it’s miles too past due.