#Behold... a post roughly ten months in the making!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kc-anathema · 4 years

Text

I’m so sorry I did another long post so soon...

So a long time ago, I received a flame on Spec Ops 98: Jazz's Interrogation at Soundwave's Pedes. I hadn’t received a flame in a long time, and I haven’t received one since (which is amazing, since this was on chapter 26 back in...dear heavens, 2015. This fic is officially an epic.)

In fact, I stopped reading the flame once I realized it was a flame, about four chunks in. 2015, five years ago, I was changing principals, changing schools, trying to figure out how to marry my Canadian then-fiance and figure out immigration. (Fun type--marry her in Vegas, wait a couple years, bring her over. Use a lawyer to make sure it’s all kosher.) So yeah, didn’t read.

And then a concerned reader mentioned to me that I didn’t deserve this awful flame and that they loved the story. And I thought...oh yeah, there was a flame on this. That was a couple months ago.

I finally decided to break the flame apart like I used to. This feels very nostalgic to me. I found out that this is really the flamer’s only claim to fame--they flame fics and troll writers. I’m not going to name them then, although you can find the easily on the ff.net review page for this fic.

My father once told me that, if anyone ever spraypainted slurs across my house...leave the slurs up. Don’t pay to remove them. Let the awful words stay up until everyone in the neighborhood is begging us to take them down again.

I think leaving the review there says more about her than me. And I’m going to enjoy clawing this apart, I think, like a cat scratching apart a lizard.

Flame begin:

We’ve got a problem if Soundwave is involved here and he’s not pulling his usual ‘Decepticons, Superior’ line. Add on a fic about perverts and we get this. Ah, well. What are you gonna do?

Remember the character Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, and how he said “Bazinga” all the time? That kind of went from a joke to an overused character crutch. Like ‘dynomite!’ or ‘did I do that’? Is it really good to rely on a character line to the point where we can call it ‘usual’?

“I’ll take my pleasure and that sweet aft” – Sounds like a cheesy commercial for Robot Chicken. Fireflight is locked up in a dungeon and is about to be whipped by a BDSM Starscream. That’s not at all OOC. Basically it’s a fanfiction that talks about fanfiction.

I...um. Yes. Yes, it’s an OOC line modeled directly after pulp fiction zines and tijuana bibles. I literally looked up several of those on the Internet Archives and various old men’s magazines covers. It’s not fanfiction directly, although it’s certainly what fanfic evolved out of.

Do these look subtle? Low key? Classy? Tasteful? It’s cheap trash and it’s fun as hell. I don’t think readers at the time thought that these were in any way true. This is right along the lines of drawn hentai. So I think the flamer admitted despite themself that I did good.

“We’re stuck here in the middle of a war...we don’t have time for sex” – That’s right. But that fact doesn’t apply does it?

...reading trashy, porny magazines is not sex. It’s actually something you do when you can’t get sex for whatever reason. I would know. A lot of us would know. Apparently not the flamer. No one thinks that “hey, I got a chick/dude willing to bang right now...but the new issue of Men’s World is out! Can’t miss that!” Unless you have some serious fetishes that your partner is too weirded out by, I think this does indeed apply.

Then Jazz gets captured and lo and behold, Soundwave is revealed to be the Christian Grey of the story. I hope he has some maid outfits for Jazz.

...our flamer hits the sludgy bottom of the joke well and grabs their shovel. They do not try very hard for originality in their insults. And, while Grey was a jerk, Fifty Shades wasn’t quite a prisoner of war scenario. No, that was a cheap romance for chicks. I’m writing more akin to men’s...oh.

The flamer is a chick.

Their only bdsm or bad romance experience is with Fifty Shades.

I don’t think they read much.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we have a shower scene. Damn if it’ll be Carrie!

Iiiiiiiiiiiii did not write a shower scene?

Dudette, did you even do the reading you say you did?

There’s no point in adding moral ambiguity, especially in regards to Soundwave. He won’t be swayed easily, or at all, by Jazz’s speech. He’s cold hearted for a reason. He serves the Decepticon cause until the very bitter end. He’s a lot like Shockwave that way. Highly doubtful he would find meaning or even the relevance of writing pornographic fanfiction, but eh, this was never meant to be serious, was it?

...no. It’s a humor fic. The flamer is criticizing a humor fic for being humorous. Kudos for identifying the genre? I mean, the flamer is also complaining that I did not write Soundwave as a one-dimensional factionalist without examining what that means for him and how the mission creep has left the original political crusade behind. It’s not like I took pieces of Soundwave from Gen1, IDW, and the comics and blend them all together.

This reminds me of the fanboys in the TMNT fandom who keep pushing for every iteration to simply rehash their nostalgia boner for the original toon. I feel like I’m getting the Transformers version of wanting less of this:

because it isn’t the familiar characterizations of this:

“So what’s the down low?” – You, Jazz. You’re going to give the down-low to Soundwave. I can’t wait to read how shiny his robo-vagina is.

...wow. Classy there, flamer. Also I really don’t think they read anything. This whole fic is plug n’ play. There’s exchanging of cables, talk of code and positronic souls and sparks and revving engines. There isn’t a drop of sticky, spike, or fluids.

Chapter 15’s sex scenes bore me. Nothing is worse than having a guy ask to remove every bit of clothing. Just do it already! And why is Jazz a virgin? Come on!

Look--the thing about sex and fetish and whatever revs your engine is that it’s not going to rev everyone’s engine. You don’t like the type of interfacing here? Fine. I don’t like those kind of sex scenes in my porn either. But I wasn’t write that scene for porn. I wanted write warbuild Jazz dealing with violent subroutines while interfacing with Prowl. I had fun with it.

Why is Jazz a virgin? The previous 15 chapters discuss that.

I really don’t think the flamer read the fic.They scanned for anything remotely sexual, so I don’t think I’m going to take anything they say about this fic being ooc for perversion’s sake.

“Everyone here is damn pervy” – In which a character talks about the author.

“We gotta get Soundwave to finish writing his story” – Why? I mean, what’s the point? It’s not doing anything for them, unless it’s to show how castrated Soundwave is. I’ve seen him act better in Mary-Sue fics.

There is a whole plot about Starscream and Skyfire, and I thought I could trust the readers to be intelligent enough to make the leap with the parallels between Soundwave and Jazz.

This is literally the only review that questions why Jazz said that.

The Mary Sue shot just echoes the Fifty Shades swipe. I think this flamer did most of their flames roughly ten years ago--the insults are pretty dated.

The Decepticons don’t know about Ratchet? Why? I mean, he’s one of the oldest dudes there. He has a reputation. When you have a reputation, people know about you. It’s inevitable. I think your inner logic slips a lot.

At this point, I literally have 21 previous chapters of world building.

I am not surprised that the story’s logic was slipping away from one of us.

It’s funny to read the forum responses in the story. It’s like the author is trying to make fun of detractors yet ends up making fun of herself.

Okay, this part is hilarious for a reason only briefly noted in the fic. I think that the only things this can refer to are the comments from the chapter titled Flames of the M4gn1f1c3ntSkyPr1nc3--because those are literally the first flames/comments I put in the fic. And I didn’t write them!

My wife wrote them! I don’t write Starscream well but she just poured those out like water--she’s seen more of the hysterical side of fandom, particularly the earlier TF fandom, and I snipped out pieces for the fic.

So...I mean, we’re pretty happily married, so I don’t think she counts as a detractor. ^___^ Ultimately I started writing this fic for her.

“Your optics make me crazy” – Not at all a cliché.

Good thing I didn’t write that, then. Here is that little section in the Prowl/Jazz section. (Took me a bit to find it since I plugged that into the Find and couldn’t bring it up.)

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

I like what you do to me. Jazz allowed him in, tilting his helm. I never really understood it, y'know? How mechs could lower their guard so much. Let someone this close.

And now? Prowl drew back, wanting to see Jazz for the answer. With a quiet ping, he warned the other mech even as he raised his hand, touching Jazz's visor.

I still think you're crazy always going on about my optics, Jazz said, venting even as he disengaged the locks and let Prowl gently remove the blue polycarbon.

Your optics are perfection, Prowl corrected him. And you let me see them. Hundreds of mechs wondering what's under that visor, but I get to see.

Still shy about letting someone else see them, Jazz turned his head, only for Prowl to touch his cheek and turn him back, coaxing his optics to open with a soft brush of his thumb.

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

Not bad for an asexual, I think. I mean, it’s not like I have a ton of hands on experience, being kinda broken that way. But I have read plenty of pulp magazines and pulp radio shows!

This didn’t take long. I skimmed through this work, because there was so little content. Lots of ridiculous shit, though. Soundwave writes fanfiction, the Autobots are weirded out/turned on, capture Soundwave, Soundwave realizes that his whole life was a life and decides to defect. Yeah, about that. He wouldn’t do it lickety split, let alone EVER. Hell, the reactions in the forum bits show what some would think of this, if they weren’t too busy fapping.

The funny thing is I don’t think the mechs can even fap. I don’t write them doing that. But yes, flamer, I do believe that you skimmed through the work. Particularly since you’ve recounted it backwards...Soundwave captures Jazz as the capstone to a long internal conflict within himself, but rather than go through chapters of internal monologue and Decepticon politics, I started the story as close to the inciting action as possible, not quite in media res.

I won’t hash out why Soundwave defects. I mean, I spent 22 chapters at that point explaining it. But it’s my fault the flamer skimmed, I guess?

Needless to say: the romance bored me senseless. It was poorly written, and overall there’s really no skill attached to this. You don’t grip the audience and Jazz’s virgin mode made me roll my eyes. Reads like a first-time waifu manga.

Nah.

I’ve been writing way too long and am more than self-aware enough of my own failings that I’m also pretty self-aware of my own strengths, too. And no. It’s not poorly written. I definitely feel I could improve the first few chapters a bit, but that’s because I wrote those over five years ago and I’ve improved since then, too.

Empty insults. Maybe if the flamer had gone so far as to give a critique beyond a couple of misquoted lines and their own headcanons, I might have listened, but there’s literally nothing of substance here beyond a child tantrumming that I’m stupid and bad and should feel bad.

As for the other pairings, booooooooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring.

Usually I have a fun time setting these fics on fire, but this one bored me senseless. Yes, it was stupid, but the author’s attempt to authenticate it are just as sloppy as anything else.

“Authenticate”?

Is this person talking about using fandom tropes as my setting?

There are 22 chapters at the time, and now 51 chapters, building up this world and using roughly 20 years of fandom background to inform the fic.

Maybe if they hadn’t skimmed, they might have found something interesting. But considering that they skimmed over anything character related and stopped for the sex scene--I don’t think that says anything about my writing and more about their own proclivities.

They were trying to read one-handed. A plug n play fic. A long meta look at fandom in war in a humor fic. And they came here for the sexy times.

I don’t have to draw the conclusion here, do I? Well, for the flamer, probably. And then they’d glance at it for a second, call it sloppy, and say I showed nothing, and what I showed was boring, and that boring stuff was ooc anyway.

One thing I am thankful for is the fact that it is not long.

51 chapters later and I’m still not done.

Nothing’s worth remembering in this and I don’t need to tell you that these characters either act like simpering imbeciles, or are virginal waifus. All I’m missing is a senpai in the bed, some tissues, and some high quality lotion.

...why do they keep referencing gay human sex? I mean, I get it, they’re saying that it’s similar to yaoi fics, but.

This is anti-yaoi with its last hurrah, isn’t it? The late 90s, early 2000s, rising from its sludgy well to try to shame the easily cowed and intimidated, the young writers easily startled by long lines of text. No wonder the citations used are so...15 years ago. I mean, who was talking about Sues even 5 years ago. That criticism kind of faded a long while ago, even then.

I think the sad thing is, even the badly written Sue sex fics end up being more interesting than this. If Ebony Darkness D’Mentia Raven Way were to come along, I think this story would get better. What with her ‘I shot him a gazillion times’ lines.

...and there’s the cherry on the top. Third cheap shot firing blanks. Sue + Fifty Shades +...shit, I can’t even remember the title for that infamous fic. It’s that old.

...this fanfic flamer is old.

Like, don’t get me wrong. We’ve got fandom moms and grandmoms who cut their teeth on fandom print zines in the earliest conventions. They’re not “old” in the same way.

This person has lost any joy, humor, or playfulness that fanfic comes from. No one should go into fanfic expecting fine art. I mean, sure, it happens sometimes, but this is a playground of pulp, experimentation and just plain childish fun.

All in all, not worth remembering. It’s makes me tired to read it. It’s not even stupid enough to make me laugh. You’ll still get a fail rating for me, especially with the shitty version of Soundwave here.

Yes, fanfic flamer. You are indeed tired.

He should be on Big Brother. He’d be great making soy lattés and purees.

Big Brother in 2015 was in its 17th season. There were roughly around 6 million viewers at the time. The demographics for the tv viewing audience were graying even by the 2000s, and by 2015-18, it was significantly older.

Granted, it’s a very tenuous conclusion to draw, but combined with the old fandom references, the anti-yaoi vibes I’m getting, and the fanboyish desire to curate their own headcanon of a character to the point of insulting writers on the internet...

Flamer grew from being a reader to a bitter, old person angry and the whipper snappers for writing stupid, trashy crap that they criticize with broad, unspecific insults.Flamer is the stereotypical mean adult in any 90s cartoon or heavy metal rock video.

A little depressing. Poor flamer. I do hope they found more creative, engaging, and positive things to do.

Me? I just wanna rock.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk on pulp fiction and bitter cultural creators.

#in a nutshell #sorry for another long post #I just wanted to finally do this #after thinking about it for awhile #felt like a loose end #fandom #fanfiction #transformers fanfic

7 notes · View notes

tfrohock · 6 years

Text

a poem, a title, and how all this works in publishing

A very quick note on book titles. When I pitched the Los Nefilim series, I wrote a proposal that consisted of the first ten thousand words of the first book, a three-page synopsis (roughly … okay, three and a quarter, so what?), and two very brief proposals, meaning a paragraph each, for the how I envisioned the next two books in the series to play out.

As part of the proposal, I gave titles to all three books. That is because this is usually how proposals are submitted, although I’m sure some authors list Book #2 and Book #3, as well, who knows? I’m just speaking from my own experience.

Ask any author, and they will most often tell you that they hate coming up with a title for their books. It’s serious torture. We’re trying to think of something unique enough to stand out while remaining brief enough for readers to remember. It’s a lot like writing poetry, except you only get to write one line and it can’t be too many words, because it has to fit on the cover of a book, and it also has to essentially capture the essence of your story and SURE THAT’S EASY! NOT!

In my case, the original titles that I proposed for the Los Nefilim novels were: Where Oblivion Dwells; Carved from Stone and Dream; and A Song with Teeth. These are the titles that wound up in the contract, for yea, this is how contracts are written—with titles, because publishers and agents and writers and editors and lawyers love details, because legal and binding and all that.

Of the three titles, I’m only going to talk about the first book for the purposes of this post. I got the title from a poem by Luis Cernuda entitled: “Donde Habite el Olvido.” I’ve seen the title translated to both “Where Oblivion Dwells” and “Where Oblivion Lives,” depending on the translator.

For those who are unfamiliar with Cernuda’s work, the poem is:

Where oblivion lives, In the vast gardens of darkness; Where I will be no more Than the memory of a stone lost in spiky weeds Where the wind goes to escape its insomnia.

Where my name leaves Its body destined for the arms of the centuries, Where desire has ceased to exist.

In that great realm where I love, terrible angel, Doesn’t slip its wing Into my chest like a knifeblade, Smiling airily as my torment grows.

Out there where this passion demands a master in its own image, Submitting its life to another life, With no more horizon than a face with other eyes.

Where sorrows and joys are nothing more than names, Native land and sky around a memory; Where at last I’ll be free without even knowing it, Mist in the fog, an absence, A light absence like a child’s flesh.

Out there, far away, Where oblivion lives.

The imagery and themes Cernuda expressed in this poem simply ignited my imagination and heavily influenced some of the ideas in my novel. Which made this a rare time when choosing a title wasn’t difficult at all.

When I first read the poem, translated by a different individual, it was entitled “Where Oblivion Dwells.” I loved the sound of “dwells” and decided to go with that as my initial title: Where Oblivion Dwells. I did all the due diligence of running the title through Google, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble and I couldn’t find another similarly title novel in their databases. This proposal was submitted to and purchased by Harper Voyager in April of 2017.

MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE, COMPLETELY UNBEKNOWNST TO ME, SOMETHING COMPLETELY SIMILAR WAS GOING ON:

So one fine day, I was busy checking my links and did a quick name search in Google to make sure a certain link was appearing correctly, when low and behold but what did my wondering eyes see: they’d listed me as the co-author of a completely different novel entitled Where Oblivion Dwells by Lorena Franco.

Of course, I’m all: wut?

It seems that Ms. Franco’s novel was originally published in Spanish and it was entitled … wait for it … Donde Habite el Olvido. The novel had recently been translated into English in May 2017 and given the title: Where Oblivion Dwells, about a month after I’d done all of my searches for books with that title.

Google’s algorithms apparently decided that since two women had written a book with and identical title, we must therefore be co-authors, because algorithms without human intervention are notoriously stupid. Out of curiosity, I looked at Franco's book, which is also Gothic and has supernatural elements. That put us in similar categories. However, other than the titles, our themes and stories are very distinct.

This next part of this saga is very important, because at the point I discovered this SNAFU of minor proportions—which was some time in the late summer of 2017, I think—we had put zero work into the cover art for my novel. Timelines in publishing can be tight, and you don’t want to make a title change that is going to affect the work of the cover artist, who has spent effort in coming up with the right design. Not to mention the fact that the title was already beginning to show up in online searches through Amazon, etc. and is probably what caused the initial algorithm co-author issues in Google books. Someone would have to go back and make any changes to those databases.

If we had gone even a month more into the process for my book, we couldn't have done what we did. As it was, we were drawing a tight line and creating more work for people, who are, like everyone else, maxed out to the max in their jobs, too.

Knowing this, I emailed my editor and agent and outlined my thoughts. I wanted to see if was too late to change the title to eliminate confusion. Fortunately, David was fine with it. We decided to go with Where Oblivion LIVES, as this would cause the least disruption to the title change, and which spellcheck sometimes calls Where Oblivion LIES just for shits and giggles, I guess—I don’t know; I’ve just learned to roll with these things.

So the thing with titles and the sheer number of books being published means there will be some, nay, maybe a lot of crossover in book titles. No matter how diligently you search for your novel’s title or series, someone else may be rolling in with the exact same title within days, months, or years of one another.

And it’s okay. The people who are going to buy Franco’s novel, are going to buy her books. Likewise, the people who are looking for Los Nefilim stories know where to find me. Neither of us are taking anything from the other.

As a matter of fact, if someone buys Franco’s novel, thinking that it’s mine, they might find themselves turned on to a new author they otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. I think that’s a win a for all of us.

#Where Oblivion Lives #Where Oblivion Dwells #Poetry

1 note · View note

odinsblog · 6 years

Note

Look it’s fine that you want to ban automatic weapons, I agree with you. But saying that all white men and all Republicans who own guns are evil cultists is literally no different then saying that all black men are criminals, or that all feminists are extremists that hate men. You are sexiest, and just as disgusting as the things you hate.

[re: this post]

LOL. White people have turned “I’m rubber you’re glue” into a highly ornate art form. “Calling ME racist means you’re the real racist,” is practically a legal defense.

James Baldwin once said that white people are like children who are the victims of their own [white purity] brainwashing. And no matter how many times I’ve seen it, this childlike inability, this refusal to acknowledge anything non-flattering—but true—about white people (aka: white fragility) is really something to behold.

Anon seems to think that there are equal numbers of women and/or black people committing mass school shootings. This is another tepid version of, “Both sides do it equally,” which is a way to avoid responsibility by spreading the blame around. But I defy you to name 18 women who went on mass shooting sprees at their schools during the last six months. Or even the last six years.

And before anyone tries to go pin gun violence on “mentally ill” people, remember this: women and black people (which includes black women) are susceptible to mental illness too. But for SOME reason, those two demographics are wayyy under represented in random mass shooting sprees. Hm… Why do you think that is, anon?

Depending on where you get your stats from, white men make up something like 30-35 percent of the U.S. population.

The general profile of gun owners in America differs substantially from the general public. Roughly three-quarters (74 percent) of gun owners are men, and 82 percent are white. Taken together, 61 percent of adults who own guns are white men. Nationwide, white men make up only 32 percent of the U.S. adult population. Roughly three-in-ten (31 percent) whites own a gun, which is much greater than the rates of gun ownership among blacks (15 percent) and Hispanics (11 percent).And there is no demographic that owns AR-15s more than white men. (source) (source) (source) (source)

If you really want to decrease gun violence in America, the police should begin a Stop-and-Frisk program that targets white men.I could end here, because the point has been made: gun ownership and gun violence in America is disproportionately a white male problem.

But let’s continue. For example, try scrolling through the #gunblr tag on tumblr. It’s overwhelmingly young white men posing with their beloved phallic symbols, talking about their childish superhero fantasies where they would have rushed in and “saved the day” by adding even more unknown shooters into an already chaotic situation.

SN: Unless they are at point blank range, most police who fire their weapons in the line of duty have an astoundingly low 18 percent hit rate. Let me repeat that:According to a 2008 RAND Corporation study evaluating the New York Police Department’s firearm training, between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate during gunfights was just 18 percent. When suspects did not return fire, police officers hit their targets 30 percent of the time. I know it goes against the “good guy with a gun” narrative, but police very often shoot innocent bystanders who they weren’t aiming at. But all of these childish, irrational and untrained gun nuts want you to believe that they’re special. That they would somehow remain calm, cool and collected and have perfect aim if THEY were suddenly under fire by a random shooter armed with an automatic weapon. (source) (source)

So yes anon, the gun problem in America is absolutely positively tied to men in general, and white men in particular. #ToxicMasculinity.

And finally, just for the record, I didn’t say “All Republicans who are gun owners are evil,” what I said was, “REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL,” whether or not they own guns. Sorry not sorry, but you don’t get to say you’re a nice guy™ when you’re the reason extremists Republicans keep getting elected into office.

If you support and vote for a homophobe, then yeah, you’re homophobic. You forfeited the “nice guy” title. And if you vote for a racist or a misogynist just because you like their stance on guns, then yeah you need to own that too.

#anon #ask #answered #guns #gun violence #mass shooting #gunblr #white terrorism #gun culture #2nd amendment #2a #gun rights #public safety #republicans are evil #toxic masculinity #domestic terrorism

150 notes · View notes

petergetsfit · 7 years

Text

The Late, Great, PGF Diet Update

**DOUCHEBAG WARNING: This post contains a picture of me flexing in a mirror. I am so, so sorry. It was for science.**

HOKAY. The time has finally come to talk about diet, weight loss/gain, and my thoughts on how that impacts performance, and what I’ve done to affect those changes, particularly over the past five months. I’m going to keep this short and sweet, but thorough. And in order to do that, I have to do a little history lesson with regards to PGF. We must go all the way back to the beginning, to the dark days pre-PGF.

THE STORY

For most of my non-athletic adult life, I weighed somewhere in the 170s.

But by 2013, this had crept up a bit to 181lbs, and I wasn’t in any particular shape at all. Lo and behold, THE DAWN OF PGF.

Now. As I began my journey into beastliness, I steadily became larger. With no particular diet plan in place (except for early forays into Paleo which I eventually turned away from,) I gained muscle, and I gained things other than muscle.

By 2015, I was steadily in the 190s. And I was totally into it. As they say in weightlifting, “mass moves mass,” and a little meat on my bones translated into heavier lifts and strength under the bar. I was full-on bear mode.

But 2016 wasn’t a great year for training. Without a lot of training, that mass was a little less useful. Also, I felt like it was impacting OTHER aspects of my performance negatively: I felt sluggish with cardio, and even if it didn’t make a ton of sense, I felt like it was impacting my mobility (you try touching your toes when you feel chubby.) And yeah, I didn’t always love how I looked in the mirror.

Around of 2016, I was around 200lbs, a weight I had been hovering around for the past few months.

Time to lean out a bit.

WHY

I want to make a couple things clear. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to diet for cosmetic reasons, but PGF is a performance-based project and that was the primary motivation for me. Weight is often a terrible metric by which to gauge body composition anyway, and more often than not decreases in weight correlate to reduced performance, especially in things like Crossfit. But for me, in particular, I felt like my strength-to-weight ratio was off, and that my “efficiency” wasn’t right for my size. I would HAPPILY be 200lbs again, but I’d want to build up to that so that I am the right 200. A lean 200 that’s really working, not an accidental 200 that doesn’t feel great in the gym.

PICTURE TIME:

This is what I look like in the high 190s, to give you a visual.

Notice that my parents’ dog and I have roughly the same physique. Also, just to prove that “before” pictures are total BS. Here’s a picture of me and Quinta five minutes later.

Note that I look about 20lbs leaner. That’s how diet pictures sell you on their efficacy. Watch “Bigger Faster Stronger” to see how you can take Before and After pictures five minutes apart and put them on the side of a bottle of diet pills. Anyway.

ENTER THE DIET

I’ve tinkered with a few diets in the past--counting macros, paleo--but the one I decided to go with on January 1st of this year was the Slow Carb Diet from Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Body.

I’ve posted the “rules” before, but here’s a summary, basically:

- No grains

- No dairy

- No fruit

- Couple glasses of red wine only

- Go nuts once a week

It’s barely more complicated than that. Eat vegetables, meats and beans and take one day off.

Why did I choose this diet? I shall tell thee. Because it fulfills the only two requirements that a diet need fulfill:

a.) It works for my body

b.) It’s reasonable

Here’s what those mean.

a.) It works for my body. The reason there isn’t a lot of consensus about diet science doesn’t seem to be because we can’t get good data, it’s because one of the only universal truths is that there is so much variance from human to human that it’s incredibly hard to come up with unilateral rules for diet and weight loss. The unfortunate reality is that there are a million variables that make me different from you, and affect why I might respond well to a diet that has a lot of fatty meats and you might not feel great.

b.) It’s reasonable. The best diet is the one that you do. I’m not going to sell you on the Slow Carb Diet, other than to say this: I do believe that it is one of the most reasonable diets out there. It doesn’t ask you to cut out any of the three major macronutrients (carbs, fats or proteins.) It doesn’t make you count or measure. You get to eat as much as you want and you don’t go hungry. Once a week you get to go nuts. Which is good physiologically and psychologically. The adherence factor is really high.

HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN:

STARTING WEIGHT: 200lbs (approximately)

I began the diet and didn’t look back. Honestly, every diet I’ve ever done has been a nightmare and a struggle. This was a total breeze. I really felt like it was the easiest thing in the world. I basically just, y’know, didn’t eat a huge sandwich during the week (saved it for cheat day), and instead ate other stuff I like--chili, thai food, tons of stuff. It was, legit, no big deal.

I lost ten pounds in the first month.

By April, I was in the 170s for the first time since high school.

CURRENT WEIGHT: 176-178lbs, depending on the day.

TOTAL WEIGHT LOST: 22-24lbs.

Shabang.

HOW DO I FEEL:

This is by far the most important piece. How has this whole thing affected me in the gym? And the answer is: hugely. I was actually surprised that a lot of my “oh, this would be easier if I was leaner” things were...totally true. Running, mobility, gymnastics, muscle-ups, pretty much everything but powerlifting got wayyyy better. Cardio absolutely skyrocketed. And on a clean diet that left me feeling great all the time, I felt awesome in general. Plus, I started seeing all kinds of other benefits: my migraines drastically improved, I felt less “up and down” on such a steady blood-sugar diet, cheat day honestly left me feeling sick and headachy. It’s been the best.

So, that’s all folks. If you have any questions, hit me.

As far as the diet itself, I recommend it for nothing else than it’s common sense-ness. It’s not low carb, nor low fat. It’s not low cal. It just keeps you away from quick blood sugar spikes and a lot of things that tend to make people feel a little gross. And it does seem to help most people lean out if they need to.

Here’s where I ended up for the moment:

I warned you.

#fitblr #fitspo #fitspiration #fitness #workout #diet #weight loss #slowcarb #transformation #me #picture #inspiration #motivation

25 notes · View notes

giancarlonicoli · 5 years

Link

Newsonomics: Inside the new L.A. Times, a 100-year vision that bets on tech and top-notch journalism

It’s a few years behind its East Coast brethren in New York and Washington. But tens of millions in new investment and ambitious digital plans are showing a path back to its former prominence — and beyond.By

KEN DOCTOR

@kdoctor

March 27, 2019, 2:05 p.m.

Look past the view of the 105. Beyond it is the unfolding of the 21st century, delayed but now in full force at the Los Angeles Times.

That’s my big takeaway from a visit to Patrick Soon-Shiong’s new temple to next-stage journalism. Last summer, he moved his just-purchased L.A. Times (whose lease was expiring) to one of the sprawling L.A.’s least glamorous addresses: 2300 E. Imperial Highway, El Segundo, CA 90245. (Google’s satellite view is revealing.) That move stirred some newsroom complaints early on, though the new address seems to have receded as an issue as Soon-Shiong and editor-in-chief Norm Pearlstine have laid out their fast-paced, if still incremental, visions of a new Times.

The visions are big enough, but they stand out even more dramatically in a newspaper business still cutting its way to the future, looking to mergers and acquisitions as a short-term lifeline in the cash-poor trade. Like The New York Times and The Washington Post, the new L.A. Times wants to tell a contrarian story: Investment in the daily press underlines a deep belief in the power of journalism, optimism that it can make both readers’ lives and their democracy run better amid the gobsmacking rate of political and technological change.

“So my concern was editorial, the newsroom. That was my very, very, very first concern,” Soon-Shiong told me in a two-hour interview. “I knew that that’s where I needed to go as my first and highest priority. My second priority now is the business model, but the business model, sadly — and I don’t mean this to sound in any way arrogant — has to be consistent with this next generation, not with the past generation,” says the 66-year-old Soon-Shiong. He’s put his money behind his ideas, taking a loss of about $50 million this year as he marches the Times forward.

Soon-Shiong has been a man of some mystery in the news trade, his entry having been midwifed clumsily by one-time Tronc chairman Michael Ferro. In our wide-ranging interview — to be published in full here tomorrow — the med-tech billionaire connects many of the missing dots that have characterized coverage of him over the last several years.

The Times’ turnaround from those bad old days (actually quite recent!) of the Tronc/Tribune/Ferro reign is nothing less than remarkable.

The Times’ newsroom had unionized as Tronc’s tragicomic handling of its properties reached a denouement, and Ferro made Soon-Shiong an offer he figured he shouldn’t refuse. Soon-Shiong believes that had Tronc/Tribune kept title to the Times, it would have cut as many as another 100 jobs in the newsroom in short order.

His June 2018 purchase stopped any new cuts in their tracks.

Norm Pearlstine, one of America’s top editors whose career had been built at The Wall Street Journal, Time Inc. and Bloomberg, inherited a newsroom of about 440, including part-timers and contractors. That still ranked among the largest in the country; The New York Times counts 1,550, The Washington Post about half that number.

Want a number that symbolizes the Soon-Shiong era? That 440 less than a year ago stands today at 535 newsroom employees.

Many in the business thought that Pearlstine, 76, would play something of a caretaker role — a short opening stint to help orient Soon-Shiong in this business and then stepping aside to pick a younger successor. But Soon-Shiong told me Monday that he’s signed Pearlstine to a new multi-year contract extending his term as executive editor.

“When Norm agreed to come out of retirement and become the executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, we were thrilled,” he said. “He has a long, impeccable track record as a journalist and as a media executive. He is truly enjoying the challenge of guiding the L.A. Times through the transition and positioning the company to succeed. As part of that, he is developing a diverse team of managers and possible successors. We are moving forward in a very positive direction and Norm and I have agreed to a multi-year extension of his term as executive editor. I could not be more pleased.”

How does Pearlstine now look at this almost unique turnaround opportunity? “I’m a little bit torn because I don’t think I’ve ever met an executive who did a turnaround who looked back and said, ‘I went too fast,'” he said. “So the pressure intention is to want to move quickly. But that said, I think we need a pause to just catch our breath and integrate…If you think about [Soon-Shiong’s] ambitions and what the brand lets you do, we need to do additional hiring as we roll out some of these products that we think will induce people to pay for content. What we’ve done over the last eight months has been to fill critical vacancies that had resulted from either layoff, buyouts, or attrition.”

Pearlstine described his Times journey so far in depth in two additional hours of conversations. (We’ll run a transcript of that interviews, like my one with Soon-Shiong, later this week here at Nieman Lab.)

It’s not just the number that matters — it’s also the kind of hires Pearlstine is making, near the top of the newsroom and throughout it. In leadership, he lured away from the East Coast both The New York Times’ Sewell Chan, who heads the news desk and is also responsible for audience engagement, and Slate’s top editor Julia Turner, who is creating the Times’ playbook for upping its arts and entertainment game. In this hiring binge, Pearlstine aims to do both the basic blocking and tackling required to heal an ailing news enterprise and to draw from the new world of digital journalism. His key hires of food critic Bill Addison from Eater and Peter Meehan from Lucky Peach signal an appreciation of journalism that comes from beyond old “newspaper” formulas.

But even that almost 25 percent headcount increase in less than a year marks just the beginning of the Times’ expansion ambitions.

Behold the fifth floor

Among the projects soon to get more attention is on the fifth floor. There, Soon-Shiong says, about 100 new staffers — about 80 of them still to be hired — will operate what he calls a new transmedia operation. The idea — in video, TV, audio, VR, games, and plain old-fashioned social management — is multiplication.

The strategy: Even as fundamental newsroom resources are being rebuilt, magnify their impact across all the means of distribution and audience engagement that technology now enables. Which will work and which will prove to be experiments to retire? Soon-Shiong is the first to say he’s not sure. (A previous transmedia company he backed, Fourth Wall Studios, closed in 2012.) But while his optimism about applying his Nant medical tech to journalism was sometimes lampooned when he first bought into Tronc three years ago, he’s undaunted in explaining tomorrow’s potential.

Take another number: 157,000. That’s the number of digital subscriptions the L.A. Times has today. It’s roughly doubled over the past two tumultuous Times years. The growth rate is significant, as is the fact that it’s more than any other “local” daily in the U.S. But Soon-Shiong sees it as just the first handhold on a towering mountain. He wants to get to 1 million quickly and has a stretch target of 4 million over the next four years.

That quest for fast scale helps explain the Times’ decision to become a major partner of Apple in this week’s launch of the Apple News Plus subscription package. It’s another step in increasing reader revenue. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post declined to join Apple’s service, it makes more sense for Soon-Shiong’s paper. The L.A. Times wants to do everything it can to get “discovered” by new readers, and it has much less to fear from the cannibalization of existing direct digital subscribers. Says Soon-Shiong of the deal: “Apple News editors will be able to curate current and recent coverage from all of our sections…We are delighted to be one of just two U.S. newspapers selected to participate at launch and to share in the revenue from the premium subscription service, which will help fund our journalism.” (Some content, such as the paper’s archives, won’t be accessible through Apple News Plus.)

As for Soon-Shiong’s stretch goal, New York Times CEO Mark Thompson’s recently setting of a 10 million subscriber total by 2025 is instructive. Thompson had laid out that seemingly impossible number two years ago, but back then, he didn’t put a date on it. Now, having reached 4.3 million total subscribers, no one laughs at the 10 million aspiration anymore. That tells us a lot about the digital news business and all the ground Soon-Shiong’s paper will have to make up quickly.

How far is his paper behind The Washington Post or that other Times? (“You mean The New York Times,” he notes several times in our conversation, as if to emphasize there is another Times back in the national media conversation.) Jeff Bezos faced a similar challenge when he bought the Post six years ago, and the paper’s ascent since then has surprised even the most skeptical about the chances of journalistic rebirth. (Amazingly, when Bezos bought the Post, its newsroom staff was smaller than the L.A. Times’.)

Figure the L.A. Times is 6 to 10 years behind its East Coast models, the “papers” it once called its brethren and would like to again.

As it retools, the L.A. Times faces new competition — including from that other Times. The New York Times is intently focused on California, home to 40 million people. It has more digital subscribers in California than in the state of New York. Its California Today newsletter is its Trojan Horse into the Golden State, competing with the L.A. Times’ “Essential California” newsletter. Even as the L.A. Times works to maintain its claim on food coverage, The New York Times went and hired its first-ever California restaurant critic.

Maybe the meaning of the geographic identifiers in these two “newspaper” brands will be something quite different in the years ahead.

Why the long turnaround?

Why might it take the L.A. Times a half decade or more — and continued reinvestment — to enjoy success similar that of The New York Times or The Washington Post?

While any keen Angeleno will tell you that the Times’ troubles began when the Chandler family sold it (and the rest of Times Mirror) to Tribune Company in 2000, it’s been the past decade that inflicted the most pain to what was once one of the most powerful and influential of American press institutions. Certainly, the Chicagoans who ran Tribune — and often tried to run the Times from Chicago — never quite got it right, but it was the seizure of Tribune by bottom-feeder financier Sam Zell in 2007 that sent it into a deepening tailspin.

Throughout it all — Zell’s reign, his five-year “bankruptcy from hell,”Tribune’s split into newspaper and broadcast companies, new management, and then the company’s second legal seizure by the arrivisteFerro in 2016 — the Times resisted. That resistance was both staunch and at times comical. The L.A. Times newsroom would come to be known, rightly or wrongly, as the toughest room in the country.

Amid the turmoil, the L.A. Times was more a punchline than a setter of the news agenda, even though its newsroom through the years (and still today) has produced among the highest-quality newspaper reporting and writing in the country.

There was the midnight firing of publisher Austin Beutner by then-CEO Jack Griffin — who himself was dispatched just five months later by Ferro. Who can forget the three-month tenure of Lewis D’Vorkin as editor-in-chief, after longtime Timesman Davan Maharaj was axed? Or Maharaj’s secret taping of Ferro, chronicled in David Folkenflik’s watchdog reporting on Tronc excess for NPR and giving us the wonderful headline: “Tribune, Tronc And Beyond: A Slur, A Secret Payout And A Looming Sale“? Or the cameo appearances of serial CEO Ross Levinsohn and his sidekick Mickie Rosen in the farce? It all makes the Times’ breakout true-crime podcast Dirty John seem fairly tame. (Anyone written the Times’ screenplay yet?) Keen industry observer Tom Rosenstiel calls the Times, at the time Soon-Shiong bought it, “the most degraded major metro in the country.”

That environment is just part of what Soon-Shiong inherited when he decided to buy. (Ferro had given him a weekend to decide whether he wanted his hometown paper so much that he’d pay a half a billion dollars for it — not allowing him to do much due diligence. In our interview, Soon-Shiong also tells the story of how he entered into a “partnership” after a first whirlwind weekend courtship.)

Soon-Shiong, Pearlstine, COO Chris Argentieri, and the emerging new order of management also inherited a broken technology stack. As Tribune/Tronc reeled for a decade, it had both centralized its operational systems and technologies — and failed to sufficiently invest in them to keep them up to date.

Argentieri describes what taking back the Times from Tronc/Tribune meant operationally: “Tribune operated with a number of functions shared across the company over the last couple of years — well beyond your typical shared services of finance, IT, HR. More than just the back office — so consumer marketing, circulation, national sales. Really, in Los Angeles at the end of Tribune’s ownership, we were essentially left with the newsroom and local advertising — and virtually everything else, including manufacturing, distribution, was all centralized.”

As Soon-Shiong told me, “With regard to the technology, I found it was non-existent. Not even…to fix. Just non-existent. I worried about the systems to the extent that I was worried: Could I run this paper with these systems that are so archaic?”

So even as the L.A. Times became “independent,” it remained — and still remains, roughly through the end of this year — stuck in part on aging, fatigued systems. Observers who wondered why Soon-Shiong signed a “standstill” agreement in January — allowing Tribune to commit to a merger or sale without his assent — have their answer. It was all that old tech that the Times still needs to publish (until its fast-paced plan to replace it all is complete) that was responsible. Soon-Shiong agreed to the standstill — which should make it possible for Tribune to merge with a McClatchy or otherwise sell itself — and in return got his “transition services agreement” extended until June 2020.

There are still many decisions to be made as the clock runs toward that date. Among them: Will the Times keep or replace Arc, The Washington Post’s fast-emerging new newspaper platform standard? Does it believe that Arc can rise to the occasion and help power Soon-Shiong’s expansive vision for the Times?

Overall, says Argentieri, the Times is “probably 40% there, I would say, through transitioning of services.” The big remaining piece, he says, “is to stand up our own traditional IT infrastructure — so our own HRISsystem, our own ERP system, our own infrastructure from a hosting standpoint. All are underway and will happen in 2019.”

Argentieri notes the unique perspective Soon-Shiong brings to the beleaguered newspaper industry. If Jeff Bezos brought the best consumer marketing chops, Soon-Shiong brings his own highly profitable experience.

“Nant [Soon-Shiong’s collection of tech enterprises] brings a pretty deep understanding from a technology standpoint. It’s a little different than how certainly we had looked at things…They look at things from fiber in the ground all the way up through the technology stats. Most, particularly legacy media companies have looked at IT as a major cost center, and put every bit of investment they could make into ‘digital business.’ We’re trying to look at it more holistically, because storage is cheaper, the infrastructure, there’s more things you can do today to have a site and app load faster, and all that leads to better user experience — where we just wouldn’t have focused on moving an infrastructure off servers in a data center in Chicago to somewhere else.”

After the buy and the building, $50 million

All of this transition — in hiring and in technology — comes at a hefty price. Which brings us to the third noteworthy number about the Times: $50 million. That’s the amount Soon-Shiong will have spent on the new Times in his first year of ownership.

How much more investment may be possible? Says Soon-Shiong: “I’m willing to continue to make an investment and collectively, as a collective, to work together” — mindful of the first contract with the News Guild, which unionized the place the week before he took title.

Like most other people of great wealth — Soon-Shiong’s fortune has been reported at over $7 billion — he’s not one to throw money around. Like Bezos, he’ll invest, but “he’s focused on where every dollar goes,” one insider says. As at The Washington Post, good ideas can get funded, but they’re approved by Soon-Shiong on an initiative-by-initiative basis.

How has that tough (and “abused,” as Soon-Shiong puts it) newsroom responded? Conversations with several staffers suggest a wary optimism — about as good as it gets in any newsroom. When the first union contract is concluded, staffers will see raises that mark a clear departure from the experience of their brethren at other dailies, including those still residing within Tribune. Those raises should add up to at least a 10 percent increase over the next three years.

“For staff who are over scale, they would see a 5 percent raise in year 1, 2.5 percent in year 2, 2.5 percent in year 3 under the company’s offer,” says Matt Pearce, a News Guild leader at the Times. “So in other words, pretty much the worst you can do is a guaranteed 10 percent raise across three years. It’s not quite enough to get us to match the pay standards at our East Coast competitors, and doesn’t repair the 10 years the newsroom went without regular raises, but it’s a decent bite out of the apple.”

For those who had been “underpaid,” the impact will be greater. “The company’s last/best/final offer on pay creates a series of pay minimums that would lift up some underpaid staffers fairly dramatically — in some cases, we’re talking raises of 30 percent or more on ratification,” says Pearce.

In addition to wanting a piece of the intellectual property action involved in Soon-Shiong’s multimedia adventures (which Soon-Shiong discusses in our interview), the contract addresses the usual issues: severance, jurisdiction, and seniority. It could be a month or two away from completion.

The guild, representing a workforce still recovering from shellshock, wants to add another clause to the new contract, one on “successorship.” Pearce: “So the contract survives, in the hopefully remote scenario that Patrick decides to sell the paper sometime in the next three years.” Just. In. Case.

Not yet defining the new L.A. Times

If you are reading this hoping to hear the new Times’ leadership clearly outline its strategy for the years ahead — sorry to disappoint you. Ever since Soon-Shiong bought the Times and pledged to rebuild it, people have been wondering about the big strategic questions.

Will the new L.A. Times be more national, expanding still further a fairly robust and re-energized D.C. bureau? More global, seizing the opportunity of the “Asian century” and its spot on the Pacific Rim? More California-centric, seeing a “nation” of 40 million to serve? Or will it be happy to focus on dominating the large and wealthy southern California market?

In other words, what category does the Times fit in now — or will it fit in in a few years? Is it America’s largest local newspaper in the country or its smallest national one?

(In Monday’s keynote, Apple split the difference, calling it “the country’s largest metropolitan newspaper and a rising star.”)

It’s both and neither at the same time, and that makes classifying it tough. “It’s probably safe to say if we’re trying to get to a million digital subscribers over a number of years, we will start with local. But we’ll have to evolve into California stories that have a global relevance,” Argentieri told me. (Former publisher Austin Beutner hired Argentieri, a magazine veteran, back in 2014, and through all the Tronc turmoil, he somehow managed to keep his head down. He widely receives plaudits for his steady hand.) “I think we’ll reach a point of penetration with people that are, you know, ferociously into local content, and we’ll have to go beyond that in some areas that travel better.”

The reality is that the Times is creating the building blocks that could easily be used across multiple strategies and target audiences. For now at least, instead of worrying about classification, let’s watch what’s in at the new L.A. Times. Its ownership is only nine months old, but Soon-Shiong talks about a 100-year vision — there’ll be plenty of time to classify later.

POSTED

March 27, 2019, 2:05 p.m.

0 notes

digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

Text

Google never really left China: a look at the Chinese website Google's been quietly running

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/google-never-really-left-china-a-look-at-the-chinese-website-googles-been-quietly-running/

Google never really left China: a look at the Chinese website Google's been quietly running

The data collected from 265.com provided the groundwork for Google’s secret, Chinese censorship-friendly, mobile search app.

Image: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images

By Matt Binder2018-08-09 23:38:05 UTC

More information is leaking out about just how Google is planning to re-enter the Chinese market with a mobile search engine application that complies to the country’s censorship laws.

The Intercept first broke this story when a whistleblower provided them documentation detailing the secret censored search project (codenamed Dragonfly). According to them, an overlooked Google acquisition from 2008 — 265.com — has been quietly laying down the foundation for the endeavor.

Back in June of 2008, Google acquired the Chinese website 265.com, which Chinese internet entrepreneur Cai Wensheng, known as “King of the Webmasters,” founded in 2003. Cai is the current chairman and founder of the company behind the popular selfie app Meitu. As an early domain name investor, Cai “found it frustrating to have to type domain names in English,” according to a 2010 Wall Street Journal profile. So he set up what amounts to an early-internet web directory, or daohang — which roughly translates to navigation — as they’re known in China. His internet portal, 265.com, which provided Chinese internet users with a list of popular website links right on its homepage, was an instant success.

A screengrab of 265.com as it looks as of August 2018

With the success of websites like 265.com and China’s search giant Baidu operating its own web directory with its acquisition of Hao123.com, Google launched Google Daohang in March 2007. Just a few months later, rumors spread that Google had acquired 265.com. At the time, Google and Cai denied the acquisition, but they did admit the two parties have a business relationship. Cai’s 265.com was powering its search function with Google search ads.

In June 2008, a year following the acquisition rumors, Cai sold 265.com to Google for an undisclosed sum. Ten years later, the data Google has been collecting from Chinese users’ searches on 265.com is being used as the framework for the Chinese censorship-friendly search project they started developing last year. (Google currently doesn’t run a search engine in China, so the data is sent to Baidu to render the actual search query results.)

According to documents, Google’s engineers are using this data to develop a list of websites blocked in China in order to provide the most relevant, non-blocked search results for queries in its new search app. There’s reportedly already a working, functional version of this censored search app.

It’s important to note that when Google acquired 265.com in 2008, they were still operating their search engine in China, which launched in 2006. The company would continue operating the Google.cn website for another 2 years. Citing the country’s censorship and speech laws, Google pulled their search operations from the country in 2010.

But Google never really left China. Even after closing down its Chinese search engine at the beginning of the decade, Google still, 265.com aside, publicly maintained a Chinese presence. The company mainly ran an ad operation for companies in China looking to advertise globally, as well as developing advertising-related products.

In order to run a business in China, tech companies are required to obtain a Internet Content Provider license from the Chinese government. As it’s difficult for foreign businesses to obtain this license, Google has long partnered with Chinese IT company Ganji.com. Back in the early years of Google.cn, Google actually operated directly off of Ganji.com’s license, even claiming the Chinese company was temporarily running its search engine. Facing intense scrutiny from the Chinese government and the media over this license arrangement, in 2007 Google formed a legitimate joint venture company with Ganji.com — the Beijing Guxiang Information and Technology Co.

Because of the necessity of that license, Google has maintained that joint venture and has been operating in China under the name Beijing Guxiang Information and Technology Co. ever since. Even after the shut down of Google.cn, Google’s Chinese advertising enterprise has been operating under the joint venture company as well as, low and behold, 265.com. A whois search of the 265.com domain name, which provides a record of the current domain registrant information, pulls up Beijing Guxiang Information and Technology Co. as the registrant organization.

Google has owned https://t.co/rL3qKRf2Bi since 2008 & the site is hosted on Google servers, but its physical address is listed under the name of the “Beijing Guxiang Information and Technology Co.,” which is based out of an office building in northwest Beijing’s Haidian district. pic.twitter.com/OuBMApWPl6

— Ryan Gallagher (@rj_gallagher) August 8, 2018

A significant number of Google employees are reportedly none too happy about Google’s project complying with Chinese censorship laws. This most recent news, that the company has long been collecting data for a moment just like this, surely won’t make morale among these workers any better.

Source: https://mashable.com/2018/08/09/google-265-com-china/

0 notes

getsfitfamily · 7 years

Link

**DOUCHEBAG WARNING: This post contains a picture of me flexing in a mirror. I am so, so sorry. It was for science.**

THE STORY

For most of my non-athletic adult life, I weighed somewhere in the 170s.

But by 2013, this had crept up a bit to 181lbs, and I wasn’t in any particular shape at all. Lo and behold, THE DAWN OF PGF.

Around of 2016, I was around 200lbs, a weight I had been hovering around for the past few months.

Time to lean out a bit.

WHY

PICTURE TIME:

This is what I look like in the high 190s, to give you a visual.

Notice that my parents’ dog and I have roughly the same physique. Also, just to prove that “before” pictures are total BS. Here’s a picture of me and Quinta five minutes later.

ENTER THE DIET

I’ve tinkered with a few diets in the past–counting macros, paleo–but the one I decided to go with on January 1st of this year was the Slow Carb Diet from Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Body.

I’ve posted the “rules” before, but here’s a summary, basically:

- No grains

- No dairy

- No fruit

- Couple glasses of red wine only

- Go nuts once a week

It’s barely more complicated than that. Eat vegetables, meats and beans and take one day off.

Why did I choose this diet? I shall tell thee. Because it fulfills the only two requirements that a diet need fulfill:

a.) It works for my body

b.) It’s reasonable

Here’s what those mean.

HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN:

STARTING WEIGHT: 200lbs (approximately)

I began the diet and didn’t look back. Honestly, every diet I’ve ever done has been a nightmare and a struggle. This was a total breeze. I really felt like it was the easiest thing in the world. I basically just, y’know, didn’t eat a huge sandwich during the week (saved it for cheat day), and instead ate other stuff I like–chili, thai food, tons of stuff. It was, legit, no big deal.

I lost ten pounds in the first month.

By April, I was in the 170s for the first time since high school.

CURRENT WEIGHT: 176-178lbs, depending on the day.

TOTAL WEIGHT LOST: 22-24lbs.

Shabang.

HOW DO I FEEL:

This is by far the most important piece. How has this whole thing affected me in the gym? And the answer is: hugely. I was actually surprised that a lot of my “oh, this would be easier if I was leaner” things were…totally true. Running, mobility, gymnastics, muscle-ups, pretty much everything but powerlifting got wayyyy better. Cardio absolutely skyrocketed. And on a clean diet that left me feeling great all the time, I felt awesome in general. Plus, I started seeing all kinds of other benefits: my migraines drastically improved, I felt less “up and down” on such a steady blood-sugar diet, cheat day honestly left me feeling sick and headachy. It’s been the best.

So, that’s all folks. If you have any questions, hit me.

Here’s where I ended up for the moment:

I warned you.

0 notes