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transgalthoughts · 3 years

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Guide to transitioning on a budget when you’re scared to come out but certain you want to

There are a few components to this: budgeting, getting treatment, coming out, general life stuff

BUDGETING First and centrally is budgeting. I don’t know what your income is so I’m not going to assume, but here is what my expenditure has been and what I think is reasonable as a goal if you do not have uncontrollable overheads you can’t help - additionally you may find some of my spending to be a bit much (£600 a month rent is quite steep, but cos I live in Oxford and the utilities and everything are included in that price it works out as a fairly decent option)

£600 a month shared housing (+ utilities, council tax etc). This is for Oxford, you can probably find it cheaper in most other places.

£200 a month monthly spending - use a budgeting app like Emma (you will probably need to spend more if you need a car, but try and avoid one if you can, cycling is a good transport option. You should do big shops every week or two, NOT regular small ones, you will spend more. If you are really committed to making headway quickly then unfortnately you can’t go out, it will eat up money like nothing else, try and see your friends in person at your house or theirs, you can be honest or say you don’t like the atmosphere. Cook in bulk using cheap ingredients - tinned and frozen food is a huge win. If you really want to cut down on spending make sure to buy vitamin pills and psyllium husk powder - you can eat less healthily without feeling like crap all the time if you’re eating stuff like this. If you want to eat super healthily try frozen mixed vegetables, tinned tomatoes, lentils, tinned fish, and tinned pulses all mixed together in a wok with smoked paprika and salt - it’s quite cheap, imo very tasty, and very healthy.

Worth noting: over the course of a year your actual monthly spending is likely to be more liek £250 if you budget for £200 a month - you’ll need to replace phones and laptops and make big one off purchases occasionally, but remember the goal is saving, if you can avoid these costs then do (is your phone freezing for 20 seconds every half an hour really grounds for a replacement?) The £250 total spending per month is total spending - if you want to do something fun this should come out of other spending - not your savings

Medications: inhousepharmacy is a good one - make sure to buy in bulk (this goes for everything). Don’t try and include this in monthly spending, try and include it in the £50 extra a month spending. Here is a good guide for the first purchase Cyproterone acetate - 300 50mg tablets for £202.22 (1 a day) Estrofem - 364 2mg tablets for £148.94 (start on 1 a day, maybe move up to two if you feel you need to and are comfortable) - take these sublingually to increase the effective dose without spending more. So, your overall cost of living per year should be approximately £10,700 - put the rest into premium bonds, you can take it out relatively easily and you’re guaranteed not to lose your money (if the UK government collapses you have bigger problems than your savings being gone). If you’re earning £20k a year then you should be able to save £9,300 a year. If you have the time and energy try getting into some work, especially gig economy work on top of your current job/time in university (deliveroo for example).

GETTING TREATMENT Before any of the savings stuff, before you are even sure you are trans, talk to your GP about it and say ytou want to be referred to a GIC. It will take 3 years - you will have plenty of time to find yourself within that time, and if you still haven’t you can find yourself in the GIC. DO NOT wait until you are absolutely sure before telling your GP, I know it is scary but you can do it, and it’s almost easier to do it when you’re not sure. If you wait for a year you will fucking hate yourself 2 years later when you have been waiting for treatment for what seems like your entire life at this point - and private GICs are expensive as fuck.

If you can afford it go to a private GIC - if you want bottom or top surgery with any reputable surgery you will need to have been officially on hormones for a year, self-medding doesn’t count. There are a few options out there for you but most notably are genderGP (more expensive, but there is less expectation of you to prove you are trans, and they have no issue with previous self medding) and gendercare (less expensive but they may decide you are not quite trans enough - they are also less willing to take on patients who have previously self-medded). Additionally a lot of GPs will not work with (ie pay for the prescriptions for you on the recommendation of) any private GIC, but the ones that do are more willing to work with gendercare than genderGP - look into this more before deciding who you want to go with. Do not underestimate the importance of the type of HRT you are using. Cyproterone acetate and oestrogen pills are fine. GnRH analogues and transdermal oestrogen patches work far more effectively and with fewer side effects (but GnRH analogues in particular are far more expensive).

COMING OUT Coming out all at once publically is gonna be really fucking daunting. You are gonna want to identify individuals and talk to them one on one about it first. These should be people you are close with and who you think are gonna be supportive (ideally both, not just one of the other, but prioritise those who you think are gonna be supportive first - you will gain confidence as you do it if you choose the right people, and lose it if you choose the wrong ones). You do not owe honesty to your parents about this.

Once you have a good selection of people who you know who are supportive start thinking about how you want to play this - in particular how sure and scared you are. I decided to get FFS (facial feminisation surgery) BEFORE coming out publicly - but after 2 years on HRT (this restricts your choice of surgeons btw). I was absolutely certain before I did this and if you plan on doing this you should be too. I got my surgery with Dr Jesus Baez in Guadalajara (lip lift, closed rhinoplasty, type t osteotomy, hairline advancement, eyebrow raise, forehead bone shaving) and it cost £12,000 for the surgery - but a lot more than that for everything else (so I spent around £16,000 in total - and that was being tight). However, that’s less than 2 years of saving on £20k a year, so get started now. Voice training - do it, you can do it for free using transvoice on youtube - the main thing to practice if you have a deep, chest resonant voice is simply doing the *pah pah pah* exercise as often as you can (you can do it silently) and before you start talking to people.

Also GPs can refer you for voice training directly, even if a GP is unwilling to work with a private GIC they might be willing to do with this (since there is no liability associated with referring you to train your voice more effectively). I haven’t done this but I expect there is gonna be a waiting list though. You really can’t voice train too often (though you can too much in one session). HEALTH So as mentioned in the budgeting section it is very possible to eat healthily on a budget (well, the kind of budget I recommend, please please don’t try and push it too hard because you need to stay healthy for this - doctors, even gender specialists, are pretty unwilling to prescribe for trans health care because this country is transphobic, so you ideally want to be a picture of health before asking for treatment. Eat healthily, run, bulk up those legs and work that core (leg press, side leg raises with resistance band, crunches, squats, sit ups, reverse crunches, side crunches etc) - all of these things will a) improve the results of blood tests and make it easier to get a prescription, b) hopefully give you a body shape more in line with conventional standards for women and c) stimulate production of hgh which will make the estradiol more effective (but don’t even think of taking hgh as a medication without explicitly getting it prescribed by a doctor, it is seriously not worth it and it can fuck up your body a lot making it impossible to get effective treatment). GOOD LUUUUCK!!!

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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years

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Heather Cox Richardson:

July 26, 2020 (Sunday)

Reality is disrupting the ideology of today’s Republican Party.

For a generation, Republicans have tried to unravel the activist government under which Americans have lived since the 1930s, when Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and invested in infrastructure. From the beginning, that government was enormously popular. Both Republicans and Democrats believed that the principle behind it—that the country worked best when government protected and defended ordinary Americans—was permanent.

But the ideologues who now control the Republican Party have always wanted to get rid of this New Deal state and go back to the world of the 1920s, when businessmen ran the government. They believe that government regulation and taxation is an assault on their liberty, because it restricts their ability to make money.

They have won office not by convincing Americans to give up their own government benefits—most Americans actually like clean water and Social Security and safe bridges—but by selling a narrative in which “Liberals” are trying to undermine the country by stealing the tax dollars of hardworking Americans—quietly understood to be white men—and redistributing them to lazy people who want handouts, not-so-quietly understood to be people of color and feminist women. According to this narrative, legislation that protects ordinary Americans simply redistributes wealth. It is “socialism,” or “communism.”

Meanwhile, Republican policies have actually redistributed wealth upward. When voters began to turn against those policies, Republicans upped the ante, saying that “Liberals” were simply buying Black votes with handouts, or, as Carly Fiorina said in a 2016 debate, planning to butcher babies and sell their body parts. To make sure Republicans stayed in power, they suppressed voting by people likely to vote Democratic, and gerrymandered states so that even if Democrats won a majority of votes, they would have a minority of representatives.

This system rewarded those who moved to the right, not to the middle. It gave them Donald Trump as a 2016 candidate, who talked of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists and treated women not as equals but as objects either for sex or derision.

And, although as a candidate Trump talked about making taxes fairer, improving health care, and helping those struggling economically, in fact as president he has done more to bring about the destruction of the New Deal state than most of his predecessors. He has slashed regulations, given a huge tax cut to the wealthy, and gutted the government.

If the end of the New Deal state is going to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, it should be now.

Instead, the gutting of our government destroyed our carefully constructed pandemic response teams and plans, leaving America vulnerable to the coronavirus. Pressed to take the lead on combatting the virus, the administration refused to use federal power, and instead relied on “public-private partnerships” which meant states were largely on their own. When governors tried to take over, the Republican objection to government regulation, cultivated over a generation, had people refusing to wear masks or follow government instructions.

As the rest of the world watches in horror, we have suffered more than 4 million infections, and are approaching 150,000 deaths.

The pandemic also crashed the economy as businesses shut down to avoid infections. It threw more than 20 million Americans out of work. Republican ideology says the government has no business supporting ordinary Americans: they should work to survive, even if that means they have to take the risk of contracting Covid-19. Schools should open, businesses should get up and going, and the economy should rebuild. As Texas’s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick said to Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson in March, grandparents should be willing to contract coronavirus for the U.S. to “get back to work.”

The coronavirus has brought the Republican narrative up against reality. Just 32% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, and only 38% of the country think the economy is good. Americans believe that the government should have done a better job managing the pandemic, and they do not believe they should risk their lives for the economy.

To try to deflect attention from the failure of his approach to the coronavirus, Trump is once, again, escalating the narrative. He has launched an offensive against Democratic cities, trying to convince voters he is protecting them from "violent anarchists" coddled by Democrats. He is using federal law enforcement officers in unprecedented ways, not to quell protests, but to escalate them. In Portland, Oregon, as officers have used tear gas, less-than-lethal munitions (which nonetheless fractured a man’s skull), and batons to attack protesters, the events, which had fallen to a few hundred attendees, grew again into the thousands. And now the administration is planning to send in more officers, to escalate further.

The Republicans’ ideology is also making it impossible for them to deal with the economy. We are on the verge of a catastrophe as the $600 weekly federal bonus attached to state unemployment benefits runs out this week just as the moratorium on evictions for an inability to pay rent ends. At the same time, state and local budgets, hammered by the pandemic, will mean more layoffs.

The House passed a $3 trillion bill in May to address these issues, along with providing more money to combat the coronavirus, but Republicans in the Senate rejected it out of hand. Today on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) went back to his ideological roots. “The only objective Democrats have is to defeat Donald Trump, and they've cynically decided the best way to defeat Donald Trump is shut down every business in America, shut down every school in America," he said. House Speaker "Nancy Pelosi talks about working men and women. What she's proposing is keeping working men and women from working." "Her objectives are shoveling cash at the problem and shutting America down.”

Instead, both Trump and Cruz want a payroll tax cut, which will do little to stimulate the economy since the tens of millions who have lost their jobs would not see any money, and this late in the year much of the tax has already been paid. But the payroll tax cut is popular among Republican ideologues because it funds Social Security and Medicare. Cut it, and those programs take a hit.

Today Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took to the Sunday talk shows to try to reassure people that the Republicans would, in fact, manage to cobble together a relief bill in the next few days (after not writing one in the last two months). They are talking about passing piecemeal measures, but, recognizing that this means Republicans will call all the shots, Pelosi says no.

Meadows and Mnuchin say they want liability protection for businesses and schools if they open and people get Covid-19. They were also clear they would not agree to extending the $600 federal addition to state unemployment benefits, arguing that it simply “paid people to stay home.” They say they want to guarantee people 70% of their wages, but the reason the earlier bill had a flat $600 payment was because it appeared impossible for states to administer a complicated program based on a percentage, so this might well just be a straw argument.

The Republican approach to handling the coronavirus and the economy is apparently not to turn to our government, but to put our heads down, go on as usual, and hope for a vaccine. What will end the pandemic is “not masks. It’s not shutting down the economy," Meadows said. “Hopefully it is American ingenuity that will allow for therapies and vaccines to ultimately conquer this.”

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betterhealthvalues · 4 years

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Health Care Reform - Why Are People So Worked Up?

Why are Americans so worked up about health care reform? Statements such as "don't touch my Medicare" or "everyone should have access to state of the art health care irrespective of cost" are in my opinion uninformed and visceral responses that indicate a poor understanding of our health care system's history, its current and future resources and the funding challenges that America faces going forward. While we all wonder how the health care system has reached what some refer to as a crisis stage. Let's try to take some of the emotion out of the debate by briefly examining how health care in this country emerged and how that has formed our thinking and culture about health care. With that as a foundation let's look at the pros and cons of the Obama administration health care reform proposals and let's look at the concepts put forth by the Republicans?

Access to state of the art health care services is something we can all agree would be a good thing for this country. Experiencing a serious illness is one of life's major challenges and to face it without the means to pay for it is positively frightening. But as we shall see, once we know the facts, we will find that achieving this goal will not be easy without our individual contribution.

These are the themes I will touch on to try to make some sense out of what is happening to American health care and the steps we can personally take to make things better.

A recent history of American health care - what has driven the costs so high?

Key elements of the Obama health care plan

The Republican view of health care - free market competition

Universal access to state of the art health care - a worthy goal but not easy to achieve

what can we do?

First, let's get a little historical perspective on American health care. This is not intended to be an exhausted look into that history but it will give us an appreciation of how the health care system and our expectations for it developed. What drove costs higher and higher?

To begin, let's turn to the American civil war. In that war, dated tactics and the carnage inflicted by modern weapons of the era combined to cause ghastly results. Not generally known is that most of the deaths on both sides of that war were not the result of actual combat but to what happened after a battlefield wound was inflicted. To begin with, evacuation of the wounded moved at a snail's pace and this caused severe delays in treating the wounded. Secondly, many wounds were subjected to wound care, related surgeries and/or amputations of the affected limbs and this often resulted in the onset of massive infection. So you might survive a battle wound only to die at the hands of medical care providers who although well-intentioned, their interventions were often quite lethal. High death tolls can also be ascribed to everyday sicknesses and diseases in a time when no antibiotics existed. In total something like 600,000 deaths occurred from all causes, over 2% of the U.S. population at the time!

Let's skip to the first half of the 20th century for some additional perspective and to bring us up to more modern times. After the civil war there were steady improvements in American medicine in both the understanding and treatment of certain diseases, new surgical techniques and in physician education and training. But for the most part the best that doctors could offer their patients was a "wait and see" approach. Medicine could handle bone fractures and increasingly attempt risky surgeries (now largely performed in sterile surgical environments) but medicines were not yet available to handle serious illnesses. The majority of deaths remained the result of untreatable conditions such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, scarlet fever and measles and/or related complications. Doctors were increasingly aware of heart and vascular conditions, and cancer but they had almost nothing with which to treat these conditions.

This very basic review of American medical history helps us to understand that until quite recently (around the 1950's) we had virtually no technologies with which to treat serious or even minor ailments. Here is a critical point we need to understand; "nothing to treat you with means that visits to the doctor if at all were relegated to emergencies so in such a scenario costs are curtailed. The simple fact is that there was little for doctors to offer and therefore virtually nothing to drive health care spending. A second factor holding down costs was that medical treatments that were provided were paid for out-of-pocket, meaning by way of an individuals personal resources. There was no such thing as health insurance and certainly not health insurance paid by an employer. Except for the very destitute who were lucky to find their way into a charity hospital, health care costs were the responsibility of the individual.

What does health care insurance have to do with health care costs? Its impact on health care costs has been, and remains to this day, absolutely enormous. When health insurance for individuals and families emerged as a means for corporations to escape wage freezes and to attract and retain employees after World War II, almost overnight a great pool of money became available to pay for health care. Money, as a result of the availability of billions of dollars from health insurance pools, encouraged an innovative America to increase medical research efforts. More Americans became insured not only through private, employer sponsored health insurance but through increased government funding that created Medicare and Medicaid (1965). In addition funding became available for expanded veterans health care benefits. Finding a cure for almost anything has consequently become very lucrative. This is also the primary reason for the vast array of treatments we have available today.

I do not wish to convey that medical innovations are a bad thing. Think of the tens of millions of lives that have been saved, extended, enhanced and made more productive as a result. But with a funding source grown to its current magnitude (hundreds of billions of dollars annually) upward pressure on health care costs are inevitable. Doctor's offer and most of us demand and get access to the latest available health care technology in the form of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostic tools and surgical procedures. So the result is that there is more health care to spend our money on and until very recently most of us were insured and the costs were largely covered by a third-party (government, employers). Add an insatiable and unrealistic public demand for access and treatment and we have the "perfect storm" for higher and higher health care costs. And by and large the storm is only intensifying.

At this point, let's turn to the key questions that will lead us into a review and hopefully a better understanding of the health care reform proposals in the news today. Is the current trajectory of U.S. health care spending sustainable? Can America maintain its world competitiveness when 16%, heading for 20% of our gross national product is being spent on health care? What are the other industrialized countries spending on health care and is it even close to these numbers? When we add politics and an election year to the debate, information to help us answer these questions become critical. We need to spend some effort in understanding health care and sorting out how we think about it. Properly armed we can more intelligently determine whether certain health care proposals might solve or worsen some of these problems. What can be done about the challenges? How can we as individuals contribute to the solutions?

The Obama health care plan is complex for sure - I have never seen a health care plan that isn't. But through a variety of programs his plan attempts to deal with a) increasing the number of American that are covered by adequate insurance (almost 50 million are not), and b) managing costs in such a manner that quality and our access to health care is not adversely affected. Republicans seek to achieve these same basic and broad goals, but their approach is proposed as being more market driven than government driven. Let's look at what the Obama plan does to accomplish the two objectives above. Remember, by the way, that his plan was passed by congress, and begins to seriously kick-in starting in 2014. So this is the direction we are currently taking as we attempt to reform health care.

Through insurance exchanges and an expansion of Medicaid,the Obama plan dramatically expands the number of Americans that will be covered by health insurance.

To cover the cost of this expansion the plan requires everyone to have health insurance with a penalty to be paid if we don't comply. It will purportedly send money to the states to cover those individuals added to state-based Medicaid programs.

To cover the added costs there were a number of new taxes introduced, one being a 2.5% tax on new medical technologies and another increases taxes on interest and dividend income for wealthier Americans.

The Obama plan also uses concepts such as evidence-based medicine, accountable care organizations, comparative effectiveness research and reduced reimbursement to health care providers (doctors and hospitals) to control costs.

The insurance mandate covered by points 1 and 2 above is a worthy goal and most industrialized countries outside of the U.S. provide "free" (paid for by rather high individual and corporate taxes) health care to most if not all of their citizens. It is important to note, however, that there are a number of restrictions for which many Americans would be culturally unprepared. Here is the primary controversial aspect of the Obama plan, the insurance mandate. The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided to hear arguments as to the constitutionality of the health insurance mandate as a result of a petition by 26 states attorney's general that congress exceeded its authority under the commerce clause of the U.S. constitution by passing this element of the plan. The problem is that if the Supreme Court should rule against the mandate, it is generally believed that the Obama plan as we know it is doomed. This is because its major goal of providing health insurance to all would be severely limited if not terminated altogether by such a decision.

As you would guess, the taxes covered by point 3 above are rather unpopular with those entities and individuals that have to pay them. Medical device companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors and insurance companies all had to "give up" something that would either create new revenue or would reduce costs within their spheres of control. As an example, Stryker Corporation, a large medical device company, recently announced at least a 1,000 employee reduction in part to cover these new fees. This is being experienced by other medical device companies and pharmaceutical companies as well. The reduction in good paying jobs in these sectors and in the hospital sector may rise as former cost structures will have to be dealt with in order to accommodate the reduced rate of reimbursement to hospitals. Over the next ten years some estimates put the cost reductions to hospitals and physicians at half a trillion dollars and this will flow directly to and affect the companies that supply hospitals and doctors with the latest medical technologies. None of this is to say that efficiencies will not be realized by these changes or that other jobs will in turn be created but this will represent painful change for a while. It helps us to understand that health care reform does have an effect both positive and negative.

Finally, the Obama plan seeks to change the way medical decisions are made. While clinical and basic research underpins almost everything done in medicine today, doctors are creatures of habit like the rest of us and their training and day-to-day experiences dictate to a great extent how they go about diagnosing and treating our conditions. Enter the concept of evidence-based medicine and comparative effectiveness research. Both of these seek to develop and utilize data bases from electronic health records and other sources to give better and more timely information and feedback to physicians as to the outcomes and costs of the treatments they are providing. There is great waste in health care today, estimated at perhaps a third of an over 2 trillion dollar health care spend annually. Imagine the savings that are possible from a reduction in unnecessary test and procedures that do not compare favorably with health care interventions that are better documented as effective. Now the Republicans and others don't generally like these ideas as they tend to characterize them as "big government control" of your and my health care. But to be fair, regardless of their political persuasions, most people who understand health care at all, know that better data for the purposes described above will be crucial to getting health care efficiencies, patient safety and costs headed in the right direction.

A brief review of how Republicans and more conservative individuals think about health care reform. I believe they would agree that costs must come under control and that more, not fewer Americans should have access to health care regardless of their ability to pay. But the main difference is that these folks see market forces and competition as the way to creating the cost reductions and efficiencies we need. There are a number of ideas with regard to driving more competition among health insurance companies and health care providers (doctors and hospitals) so that the consumer would begin to drive cost down by the choices we make. This works in many sectors of our economy but this formula has shown that improvements are illusive when applied to health care. Primarily the problem is that health care choices are difficult even for those who understand it and are connected. The general population, however, is not so informed and besides we have all been brought up to "go to the doctor" when we feel it is necessary and we also have a cultural heritage that has engendered within most of us the feeling that health care is something that is just there and there really isn't any reason not to access it for whatever the reason and worse we all feel that there is nothing we can do to affect its costs to insure its availability to those with serious problems.

OK, this article was not intended to be an exhaustive study as I needed to keep it short in an attempt to hold my audience's attention and to leave some room for discussing what we can do contribute mightily to solving some of the problems. First we must understand that the dollars available for health care are not limitless. Any changes that are put in place to provide better insurance coverage and access to care will cost more. And somehow we have to find the revenues to pay for these changes. At the same time we have to pay less for medical treatments and procedures and do something to restrict the availability of unproven or poorly documented treatments as we are the highest cost health care system in the world and don't necessarily have the best results in terms of longevity or avoiding chronic diseases much earlier than necessary.

I believe that we need a revolutionary change in the way we think about health care, its availability, its costs and who pays for it. And if you think I am about to say we should arbitrarily and drastically reduce spending on health care you would be wrong. Here it is fellow citizens - health care spending needs to be preserved and protected for those who need it. And to free up these dollars those of us who don't need it or can delay it or avoid it need to act. First, we need to convince our politicians that this country needs sustained public education with regard to the value of preventive health strategies. This should be a top priority and it has worked to reduce the number of U.S. smokers for example. If prevention were to take hold, it is reasonable to assume that those needing health care for the myriad of life style engendered chronic diseases would decrease dramatically. Millions of Americans are experiencing these diseases far earlier than in decades past and much of this is due to poor life style choices. This change alone would free up plenty of money to handle the health care costs of those in dire need of treatment, whether due to an acute emergency or chronic condition.

Let's go deeper on the first issue. Most of us refuse do something about implementing basic wellness strategies into our daily lives. We don't exercise but we offer a lot of excuses. We don't eat right but we offer a lot of excuses. We smoke and/or we drink alcohol to excess and we offer a lot of excuses as to why we can't do anything about managing these known to be destructive personal health habits. We don't take advantage of preventive health check-ups that look at blood pressure, cholesterol readings and body weight but we offer a lot of excuses. In short we neglect these things and the result is that we succumb much earlier than necessary to chronic diseases like heart problems, diabetes and high blood pressure. We wind up accessing doctors for these and more routine matters because "health care is there" and somehow we think we have no responsibility for reducing our demand on it.

It is difficult for us to listen to these truths but easy to blame the sick. Maybe they should take better care of themselves! Well, that might be true or maybe they have a genetic condition and they have become among the unfortunate through absolutely no fault of their own. But the point is that you and I can implement personalized preventive disease measures as a way of dramatically improving health care access for others while reducing its costs. It is far better to be productive by doing something we can control then shifting the blame.

There are a huge number of free web sites available that can steer us to a more healthful life style. A soon as you can, "Google" "preventive health care strategies", look up your local hospital's web site and you will find more than enough help to get you started. Finally, there is a lot to think about here and I have tried to outline the challenges but also the very powerful effect we could have on preserving the best of America's health care system now and into the future. I am anxious to hear from you and until then - take charge and increase your chances for good health while making sure that health care is there when we need it.

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dallasareaopinion · 4 years

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a better economy

I have touted this before, yet as I think about it I do not tout it enough.

First though a comment to the pretentious left. Yes, we know Trump is not the most admirable person on planet earth and yes Putin is probably trying to destroy our country using him to divide us. Stop the madness though. You cannot go all in on every twitter comment or every comment in general that tells us Trump is being a bad boy or saying something crazy. You need to concentrate on making sure you talk about what you can do if Biden becomes President. You aren’t changing Trump supporter’s minds, but you have to convince the undecided that you have better ideas. Right now all this slapping each other on the back every time you tweet something snarky is not going to win the Democrats any elections. On to better things.

And back to the economy. If you really want to improve the wealth gap, the wage gap, the disproportionate allocation of resources, just things in general you need to reverse years of the one percent consolidating their wealth.

In general our economy is more than the stock market, but somehow Fox News, the brokerage houses, and now the big banks convinced millions of Americans that it is the economy and that everyone needs to be all in on buying stocks or you are not successful. Everything about money or wealth is tied to the market and in some respects it is a lagging economic indicator that reflects what people thought was going to happen. The banks want you to think it is a leading economic indicator so you may get confused. They want you to believe if the market is going up the economy is doing well and will continue to do well. That is their sell. There is much more to this discussion because in general I have to prove some of my points in this paragraph for you to understand why I eschew a bit of a contrarian view point on the market.

Today though isn’t about the market, it is about something more important.

Today is about undoing the consolidation of wealth that has been going on for decades. And that is finding ways to encourage the break up of large companies which may not be that fruitful. Or better yet the development of regional economies that create new industries, new business and new companies in existing industries.

Lets break this down using some simple examples. Right now big oil makes a fortune developing plastic products. And they have done a fine job creating all sorts of plastic products from bottles to clothes to so much more. This creates a two fold problem, it destroyed older more established products and companies and second plastic just isn’t good for the environment so an excessive amount of energy and resources are used combating the drag on our lives with all this plastic.

For some reason recycling is a negative word to too many people, yet overall there is so much benefit, but to change minds we need to change the approach. Some of you may remember buying soft drinks in glass bottles. First remember how good they tasted coming from glass bottles. I feel with 100% certainty that if you could drink from a glass bottle you would appreciate the difference. Think about this, beer is sold in glass bottles. Why not every marketed drink? Now some of you may also remember for the soft drinks you had to pay an extra 5 cents and then when you returned it you got your 5 cents back. Seemed a bit of a hassle. So you have two choices, you could just pay extra for the product or pay the deposit. Either way you have a better product. And glass is something that could be produced in regional plants creating two businesses. One glass manufacturing and two potential recycling of the glass since it can be recycled. You introduce the deposit again. People will balk at first but over time they adapt. They always do. Some will fight for the convenience, but you have to stick with it. And nowadays with debit cards and customer loyalty cards the exchange of the deposit could be seamless.

It seems trivializing, but start applying it to other businesses. What clothes are the most comfortable? Clothes made from cotton and wool. Yes a very light weight wool fabric is still comfortable in the summer. So you bring back clothing manufacturers and work with local agriculture to develop cotton and wool suppliers. And yes cotton is best grown only in some regions, but at least the farmers can sell to a much larger customer base if more people made clothes. And sheep thrive better in certain climates, but either way you work to spread out the growth of the entire business chain.

Some people will still want the cheap plastic clothes so I know you cannot get rid of this product completely, but if you create very strong public policy that encourages the change and discourages the products that aren’t beneficial then the change can happen.

What people have forgotten with all the consolidation is quality. Glass, wool, cotton create a better product. And it is worth it to pay a bit more because they last longer and once you have finished your soda or the clothes have worn out, you can recycle which helps to keep supply costs down, hence retail costs down. And people have forgotten that cotton and wool clothes last longer, look better, and feel better.

The idea is to bring back products where quality is important. Why, because to produce quality products you need to put more work into it, which means more jobs and better paying jobs because you have to pay for better work. The end retail costs may be a bit higher, but the products are better and last longer.

The corporations wanted us to believe convenience was more important to us. They created behaviors that benefit them, not the consumer. Convenience and marketing ruled our day. We lost touch with being consumers and customers. The Democrats created bureaucracy to protect us from our own misguided consumer principles and now we have no idea on how to shop well. Too much government, not enough common sense.

And I always struggle trying to create a succinct message on this change. I know too many people that will shoot down the idea because they are programmed to believe large corporations are shining examples of capitalism when in reality they are anti capitalists. It benefits them to reduce competition, to dictate what we know and how we act. Their lives are easier when they create an illusion our lives easier, but we do not benefit in the long run from these conveniences.

We are subject to their whims, when they make a mistake there is no competition to turn to and show them they need to do better because we can go elsewhere or have more choices. Some will argue too many choices are counter productive and I agree there is a saturation point, but we are far from that right now. We may see a hundred different shirts or blouses in a store, but the real choices are few and far between. We need to bring many industries back home. This may sound a bit Trumpish, but that is one of his selling points. We do need more industries and better jobs here. He knows the message, but has no desire to actually implement the change. And he gets away with it because we are programmed to accept certain words and messages without digging into the reality. He sold a bill of words in 2016 that so many people wanted to hear, but that is all he did was sell words. We need real bill of goods.

Again I struggle with communicating my ideas to redistribute the wealth. We do not need socialism we need true capitalism. So public and tax policy that brings back industries throughout the country is a goal we should strive to achieve. This will not be easy because doing what is right never is easy it seems. Hammer me on the particulars because I get bogged down here something fierce. Make me flesh it out. I feel very strongly that for our country to actually thrive again, we need to open up the country and have people start new businesses that build quality products using natural resources not plastic and convenience. It may seem odd sounding that I am encouraging going backwards in some ways, but technology will still be used it is just reconfiguring where productivity and resources are applied.

Okay enough for the evening. It is September the weather will be changing soon, hopefully we can change too.

Cheers

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your-curatorial-convivialist · 4 years

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July 26, 2020, Heather Cox Richardson*

Reality is disrupting the ideology of today’s Republican Party.

If the end of the New Deal state is going to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, it should be now.

As the rest of the world watches in horror, we have suffered more than 4 million infections, and are approaching 150,000 deaths.

*Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and Professor of History at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts.

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justbeingnamaste · 5 years

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NASA have admitted to spraying lethal chemtrails into our atmosphere – saying that lithium being sprayed into the Earths ionosphere helps to treat people with manic depression or bi-polar disorder.

NASA personnel have come forward saying that lithium, along with other potentially harmful chemicals, are intentionally sprayed into our environment regularly.

Wakingtimes.com reports:

NASA Confesses to Dosing Americans with Air-borne Lithium & Other Chemicals

There’s the official explanation for why NASA is spraying lithium, a pharmaceutical drug most often used to treat people with manic depression or bi-polar disorder, into our ionosphere, and then there is the probable reason(s). It would be easier to accept NASA’s official explanation if they were not so secretive about everything they study and do in space – but one thing is for certain – NASA’s own personnel have admitted that lithium, along with other chemicals, are intentionally being placed into our environment regularly. It is possible that many of NASA’s own employees aren’t even aware of the true motivations for carrying out such a project, ironically displaying the very behaviors that these chemicals/pharmaceuticals are meant to instill.

In the first bomb-shell video a NASA employee ([email protected]) admits that lithium is being sprayed in the atmosphere, and says that it is “harmless to the environment.”

youtube

Before I give you NASA’s official explanation of why they are spraying psych-meds over hundreds of thousands of Americans, I’d like to point you to some references so that you can do your own research, and discover that this is no conspiracy theory. It is very real, and there is ample scientific documentation to corroborate what I put forth here:

A Pub Med abstract titled, Feasibility of Aerosol Vaccinations in Humans discusses how an increase in antigen volumes can be beneficial in aerosol delivery of vaccines, and could be used in “developing countries and disaster areas.” The abstract also admits that several thousand human subjects have already been aerosol vaccinated with live attenuated measles and influenza A vaccines. The executive summary further states that aerosol vaccinations are ideal for “large populations.” This has apparently been happening since as early as 2003.

Another discussion of aerosolized vaccinations can be found in The New England Journal of Medicine. A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Aerosolized Vaccines Against Measles states that these vaccines were tested on children in India that were as young 9 months old.

The World Health Organization has been researching aerosol vaccines for years now, as have “philanthropic” agencies which have clear aims to sterilize the population. It is also worth noting that the pharmaceutical industry has been absolved from any legal responsibility for medicating the masses since they were awarded legal protection from all lawsuits by Congress in 1986. This law was challenged, but upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011. Many powerful agencies are making sure that we “take our medicine.”

In fact, many nations are participating in our unwitting, forced vaccination, and the dumping of any number of attenuated viruses, chemical concoctions and other ‘chemtrails’ on our heads with dogged frequency.

The Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) considered giving a license application to PaxVax Australia (PaxVax) for the intentional release of a GMO vaccine consisting of live bacteria into the environment in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria. They planned to release cholera on their people.

According to the regulator, this GMO vaccine qualified as a limited and controlled release under section 50A of the Gene Technology Act 2000.

Of course, we can’t ignore the USA. Michael Greenwood wrote an article stating that:

“The incidence of human West Nile virus cases can be significantly reduced through large–scale aerial spraying that targets adult mosquitoes, according to research by the Yale School of Public Health and the California Department of Public Health.”

So, hopefully we’ve established that this IS happening. But why?

As more nations refuse genetically modified food, and refuse to drink fluoridated water, which has been named as a neurotoxin by one of the world’s premiere medical journals, the power structure that desires a complicit population has to figure out a way to alter our neurochemistry.

Lithium alters how we think by changing the levels of serotonin and norepinephrine secreted by our endocrine system. Lithium strongly alters the brain system, yet the NASA employee in the above video states that “it is not dangerous” and doesn’t harm the population. Even doctors who normally prescribe this medication for the mentally ill have said that it is dangerous because it is hard to figure out proper dosing. Surely, spraying copious amounts of lithium indiscriminately into the air via aerosols should be questioned – but here’s NASA’s official stance on this practice:

“The project is studying neutral and charged particles in the ionosphere and how each affects the way the other moves resulting in currents in the region. The variations matter because all of our communications and GPS satellites send signals through the ionosphere. A disturbed ionosphere translates to disturbed signals, so scientists want to know just what causes the ionosphere to behave in specific ways.” (NASA)

Meanwhile, should the over-medicated start to actually figure out what is being done to them, the government has imposed gag orders on the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who might easily refute the ridiculous claims of NASA.

Notably, every single person who works for NASA, the NWS or NOAA are paid with tax payer dollars.This means that we are paying to be medicated and poisoned.

Here, to corroborate information being given by the NASA employee in the video, is the Code 8440 RMMO which states the exact purpose of using Wallops Flight Facility to launch a rocket containing lithium thermite:

“Purpose: The primary purpose of this mission was to test the loading methods for lithium canisters to be flown on the upcoming Kudeki (Kwajalein, April 2013) and Pfaff (Wallops, June 2013) missions, and verify their functionality under sounding rocket launch and space flight conditions.

Rocket Type: Two-stage Terrier MK70 Improved-Orion

Location: Wallops Range

Launcher: MRL

Date of Launch: January 29, 2013

Time: 17:50 EST

Experiment results: Thermistor data looked nominal. Good report from airborne optical platform of recorded video and lithium clouds also visible by ground observation.’

We also learn from this specific call that lithium has been dumped in our skies since 1970. If you wanted to medicate the masses to create mindless, slave-like prisoners who didn’t even know they were imprisoned, this is surely a good way to do it. Spraying lithium into our skies, along with countless other bacteria, viruses, prions, parasites, fungi, carcinogens, toxins, hormone-altering drugs, anti-flora and anti-fauna, as well as gene-altering micro-dust is nothing more than bio-warfare against the world’s citizenry. You can call them chemtrails or something else, the effect is the same.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ~Edward L. Bernays, Master Propagandist

Article By Christina Sarich

Source: State of the Nation

Categories:

Sci/Environment

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the-light-followed · 4 years

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THE LIGHT FANTASTIC (1986) [DISC. #2; RINCEWIND #2]

“What shall we do?’ said Twoflower. ‘Panic?’ said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry sabre-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying ‘What a magnificent brute!’ and ‘Here, pussy.”

Rating: 5/10

Standalone Okay: No

Read First: ABSOLUTELY NO.

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x]

* * * * * * * * * *

If The Colour of Magic is a bad place to start reading Discworld, The Light Fantastic is 100% worse. Not because it’s bad, because it’s absolutely an improvement on its predecessor. It’s just that The Colour of Magic ends on a cliffhanger (only in the metaphorical sense; in the literal sense, Rincewind has just fallen off the cliff). The Light Fantastic picks up exactly where it left off, with only a little exposition or explanation to soften the shift from one to the next. I tend to think of The Light Fantastic as more like The Colour of Magic: Part 2, Now We’re Getting Somewhere, because, well, now we’re getting somewhere.

Folks, we finally have a cohesive, over-arching plot! We have stakes greater than “let’s not get killed by this latest thing that wants us dead!” We have purpose, and drive, and successful barbarian heroes so old they lack teeth and have to make dentures out of diamond, and I love absolutely every bit of it!

In what will quickly become obvious is the norm for him, Rincewind’s life continues to be a series of upsetting things happening one after the other. Some highlights from The Light Fantastic include:

Being forcibly teleported (back) onto the Disc by the parasitically-attached Great Spell living in his brain, after falling over the Rimfall. Reality is completely rewritten to do this, but everything remains exactly the same except Rincewind’s new position clinging to the top of a pine tree. (Twoflower gets dropped back onto the Disc as well, but that seems mostly incidental.)

Going to the land of Death while still alive, picking up his mostly-dead friend, and running right back out to the land of the living.

Camping in the mouth of a giant troll the size of a mountain, while being held captive by mercenaries. Somehow only the mercenaries end up dead.

Being attacked by wizards and Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, and fighting said wizards and Things in life-or-death battles.

Using the most powerful magical book on the Disc, possibly the most magical item full-stop, and then afterwards, allowing said item to be eaten by the carnivorous sentient Luggage for safekeeping. Rincewind ends up owning the Luggage before the end of the story—so technically, he still has this wildly dangerous book.

Oh, and saving the world, of course. He also does that.

I love, love, love the way Pratchett writes ‘heroes’ vs. how he writes his protagonists. Absolutely none of his protagonists are the stereotypical hero, and his stories are better for it.

Quick sidetrack to define terms: when I say ‘stereotypical hero,’ I’m talking about the kind of lawful good protagonists you see in most high fantasy adventure stories or superhero comics, the stuff with worldwide or even cosmic stakes. They’re typically well-trained or have some kind of special skills, or they acquire special training/skills along the way. They almost always set out specifically to save the world, and typically do not have any ulterior motives beyond it being ‘the right thing to do.’ Usually, they’re strong and rugged manly men with impressive jawlines. I’m talking Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. I’m talking Captain America and Superman. I’m talking the real Boy Scout types.

Truth, justice, and apple pie—or whatever the regional-specific pastry of choice might be!

Pratchett’s heroes are not that. They’re cowards. They’re scared or confused or unprepared, or making the whole thing up as they go along. They’re fools, alcoholics, con men. They’re salty old ladies and know-it-all young girls. If there is a stereotypical hero-type character, they’re going to be a foil for the actual main character, and they won’t stay perfectly pure and uncomplicated for long—I’m thinking specifically Carrot, though we’ll talk about him later when we get to the City Watch books.

Here, what we get is Rincewind. And he is as far from a stereotypical hero as it is possible to be, probably because he would have started sprinting full-speed away from the thought before anyone finished saying it out loud. Rincewind doesn’t save the world because he suddenly found his courage, or developed bonus superpowers, or found some kind of magical sword to do the fighting for him. (He actually found the sword back in The Colour of Magic, hated every second of it, and got rid of it as soon as possible. Goodbye and good riddance to Kring the magic sword.) He hasn’t secretly had the courage inside of himself all along.

Rincewind saves the world because he’s got nowhere left to run, and that’s excellent.

I’m going to save a lot of my rambling about Pratchett’s deconstruction of the concept of ‘heroes’ for when I get to Guards! Guards! and later City Watch books, since Carrot is, like I said, both the main example and the central thesis. But it is very important for everyone to understand: for me, nothing is more satisfying from a literary perspective than knowing that, at the end of the Discworld series, coward and hero-only-by-accident-or-mistake Rincewind is one of the two people in contention for the spot as ‘ultimate savior of the world, the universe, and all of existence.’ The other is a teenage girl.

Honestly, the only reason I think Rincewind might edge her out for the title is because he technically saved a slightly larger slice of reality with this whole escapade. In Tiffany’s defense, I’m 98% sure she hadn’t been born yet when this whole thing went down, so we really can’t blame her for not solving it first. If she were there, she’d have it handled, and that’s just objective truth.

But Rincewind. Rincewind. At the end of The Light Fantastic, the dude’s spent two whole books screaming and running whenever something tries to kill/maim/eat/threaten him. The audience has absolutely figured out by this point that while he’s smart and sarcastic and surprisingly speedy, he’s totally useless in a conflict. His priority is saving his own skin, not dashing feats of derring-do or whatever it is heroes are supposed to do.

And yet with the end of the world looming, his back against the wall, and no real place left to run, when the Big Baddie demands that he give up the last Great Spell, the one last thing preventing the immediate destruction of everything and everyone, we get this from Rincewind:

“If it stops anywhere, it stops here, thought Rincewind. ‘You’ll have to take it,’ he said. ‘I won’t give it to you.’”

And that’s it. That’s what saves the world. Not a stereotypical hero, not a hero of legend, not a mythic champion showing up for a final glorious battle—it’s a Pratchett hero. It’s an everyday guy, a coward and a failure, dragged in by accident and against his will. It’s an average person, nothing really special, who looks at something that he knows is wrong and that he’s sure will hurt him for disobeying. And yet he still says no. It stops here.

Even rats fight back, as Rincewind himself says.

This is the moment that really sells me on Rincewind’s character, every time. Even before Pratchett was really taking Rincewind or the Discworld seriously, even while the whole thing is still one massive joke more often than not, he’s still given the readers a POV character who feels believably real. He’s scared shitless, he’s tired, he’s sarcastic, and he doesn’t want to be there. But that’s too damn bad, because he’s the one there, and if he doesn’t do this, no one else will.

And maybe Rincewind’s not Superman, but he still does it. He succeeds, he saves the day, and—despite everything—he’s somehow the hero of this story. Screaming all the way, maybe, but he still gets it done.

[Paul Kidby does incredible Discworld art, including some of the amazing cover art for the books. You can find a lot of it on his website— www.paulkidby.com. This one,The Colour of Magic, stars Rincewind, Twoflower, and their dramatic escape from the Wyrmberg.]

While we’re on the subject of heroes, we can’t skip over Cohen the Barbarian, who makes his debut here in The Light Fantastic. Now, Cohen is technically a hero, but this is still not in the ‘stereotypical hero’ sense—it’s literally his job. It’s the thing he writes in the little box marked ‘Occupation’ on his tax forms, or at least it would be if he actually paid any taxes. Or if he actually wrote things down.

For Cohen, being a hero is how he makes a profit and pays the bills, and he is very, very good at it. That’s 100% objective truth, and I know that for sure, because the man is old as the hills and still gets into life-or-death fights about twice a day, and that’s the sort of thing that gets you dead very quickly if you aren’t very good at what you do.

But Cohen still isn’t a stereotypical hero. He does a lot of looting and pillaging, and his body count over the Rincewind books is—wow, it’s up there. It’s a real doozy. It’s hard to call his work heroism when it’s hardly a smidge to the left of repeated, outright murder. I’ll probably circle back around to this in Interesting Times and The Last Hero, because there are some really interesting points made there about the ways that Cohen and his contemporaries play at heroes and villains like they’re a sort of performance they’re putting on rather than a moral act or a choice made out of necessity. But I will say now that putting Cohen in the same storylines as Rincewind really does put both characters into a more complex and interesting light. Rincewind, the coward-not-hero, and Cohen, the fearless warrior, can kind of play off of each other.

It just goes to show Pratchett’s grasp of people as people, and not unidimensional cardboard cutouts. Nobody’s always right. Nobody is always wrong. And real people don’t always stand up to perfect, pure concepts of what we think they should be.

Also, since Cohen is about a billion years old, we get little gems like his toothless lisp before he picks up some dentures, a concept that Twoflower brings with him from the Counterweight Continent. (Or, as Cohen calls them, dine chewers. That, friends, is a pune, or a play on words.) Also, because he’s Cohen and therefore a dramatic bastard, the dentures are solid diamond. It’s not as if the man can’t afford it, I guess?

I do want to take a little side trip into some other new details that pop up in The Light Fantastic, specifically the more in-depth stuff about Unseen University and the wizards. The wizards are a lot of fun in the early Discworld books, specifically if you’re really bloodthirsty, because up until Ridcully arrives in Moving Pictures there’s quite a lot of turnover in Unseen University staff. The wizards are backstabbing bastards early on, and it’s almost jarring to compare the shifty, power-hungry jerks in The Light Fantastic and Sourcery to the fat, lazy hedonists they’ll become. We do get an impression of them as a collective that will stay pretty consistent as we move forward: their values, their skills, the way they do magic.

This is important not only because it establishes a lot of lasting detail for stories involving Rincewind, the University, and the city of Ankh-Morpork, but also because we’re about to get our first glimpse of the witches. (Hey-o, here comes Equal Rites!) With a lot of this stuff mapped out in advance, it makes it easier to run a compare-and-contrast of what’s going on with the two main schools of magic users on the Disc, what’s different between them, what’s the same—and the positives and negatives in them both. (Again, hey-o, Equal Rites! That all is about to be the whole damn point.)

I think it’s also fun to note that The Light Fantastic features the brief run of Galder Weatherwax as Archchancellor of the Unseen University, A.K.A. He Who Dies So Granny Weatherwax Can Have His Frankly Excellent Name. Granny Weatherwax is the steel-souled spine of the witches, and the driving force of their run of books, and it’s kind of hilarious to think that Terry Pratchett did the writer’s equivalent of digging through a graveyard to give her a name. This theft is later lampshaded and then ignored; Granny says something briefly about Galder Weatherwax being a distant cousin she barely knew, and the whole thing is never mentioned again from then on out. I can’t exactly remember where, and it might even have been in a short story or one of the side books Pratchett eventually put together, not in a novel. Honestly, who cares—Granny Weatherwax is such a force of nature that it only takes a few minutes to forget that her name ever could have belonged to anyone but herself.

But Granny Weatherwax is not a discussion for The Light Fantastic. It’s time to move on to Equal Rites!

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

This is the book where the Unseen University Librarian is changed into an orangutan. It happens early on in a magical accident, as the grimoire containing the Eight Great Spells attempts to save Rincewind and the spell trapped in his mind, and he is never reverted to human form.

He is referenced but does not appear in The Colour of Magic.

At no point anywhere in the Discworld does he appear in human form. At no point does he have lines in human language. He is never named. At no point is he described as he was prior to this change, except that the orangutan he becomes is initially said to look “like the head librarian,” so presumably he was already a bit orangutan-ish.

For something as weird as this is, and for something with such long-lasting repercussions, it is treated in the moment as a thing of very little importance—except, of course, that now he has to be paid in bananas. I find this absolutely delightful.

Tim Curry plays the wizard Trymon in the BBC miniseries The Colour of Magic, which combines The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. Trymon only appears in The Light Fantastic in the books, and I can’t read it anymore without picturing Tim Curry in his ridiculous robes and shoes, with his ridiculous overdramatic murder plots, working his way up to the top just to die a ridiculous death.

No, really. Look at this hat. Look at this goatee. Only Tim Curry has the acting chops to pull this off.

Death once again appears, and this time we also get to see his house and his daughter, Ysabell! I can see why it didn’t take long to go from here to Mort: the concept is way too good to leave to little snatches and side appearances.

Krysoprase the troll shows up for the first time in this book. Later, he’ll be known as Chrysoprase, and will make appearances in several other Discworld novels: Feet of Clay, Wyrd Sisters, and, notably, Thud. There’s also a troll named Breccia in The Light Fantastic; Breccia will become the name of Chrysoprase’s gang in Ankh-Morpork.

While going through my copy of The Light Fantastic to work on this post, I glanced at the cover and briefly thought I was losing my mind. At the bottom, there’s a blurb talking about beloved Discworld character “Conan the Barbarian”—but up until that moment I was 100% certain the beloved barbarian on the Disc was named “Cohen.” Turns out I’m not crazy, it’s just that the literal cover of the book decides to make a reference to the character that Cohen is parodying rather than to Cohen himself. And this is the 2008 print edition, not an early run or a badly-assembled e-reader edition, which means it’s being released by a professional publishing company a full 22 years after the original novel came out. It’s not like nobody’s had time to look over the material and do some copy-editing.

* * * * * * * * * *

Favorite Quotes:

“The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.”

“Do you think there’s anything to eat in this forest?” “Yes,” said the wizard bitterly, “us.”

“Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn't take you seriously until you'd actually killed them, by which time it didn't really matter anyway.”

“Are you a hero, actually?” “Um, no. Not as such. Not at all, really. Even less than that, in fact.”

#discworld #rincewind #the light fantastic

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kingofthewilderwest · 5 years

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Heyo, Haddock! I'm a linguistics student, fluent in French, and I'm studying German. I'm looking into freelance translating as a job, but so far it's pretty overwhelming - do you have any suggestions or tips on how to get a jump on that? How do you find work as a freelance linguist?

Hey there, linguist! That’s really cool, and I wish you the best as you start exploring freelance translation as possible work.

Admittedly I’ve never done translation as a job. I briefly considered it once, but never applied to any jobs there. I subsist 100% off linguistics commission work, but it’s all in theoretical linguistics, mainly along the semantics-pragmatics interface (just finished a fun project related to phonology-morphology shenanigans though). I implement theoretical linguistics knowledge by annotating large corpora of data (usually a database of many sentences) with pertinent linguistics information. At times I help modify an annotation system to be better, too. I then send my annotated data to another team, where they do computational work to develop language-related technology: for instance, using semantic information to improve a computer’s algorithm for returning relevant search results, or helping an AI interact better with humans in back-and-forth conversation. There’s limitations to how much I can explain because of nondisclosure contractual agreements. However, I can say I like to joke with my friends that, when the sentient robot revolution happens, you technically could pin part of the blame on me. I don’t do any computation stuff teaching computers to be smart, but I do feed theoretical information to a computational team.

So…. all that said! I’m happy to talk about things I’ve learned to make my freelance life sustainable. Hopefully that can help you find a groove for your own freelance journey! However, I’ve seen that translation jobs tend to run differently than what I do. You will certainly have different experiences than I do, because the translation world has is own quirks and system. But maybe some of this is applicable, and I wish you the absolute best with sorting out stuff that feels overwhelming now.

What makes my freelancing work work is that I’m re-employed by the same people and companies consistently. I’ve been doing annotation linguistics work on several projects for my alma mater university since 2012. In the public sector, there’s one company in particular I have consistent interactions with. For that one, hiring directors have my resume on file in the company’s database of possible contractors. Those hiring directors and project managers who’ve worked with me in the past tend to come back and email me with new opportunities later. What started as me tossing out a bunch of resumes and applications has turned around; now I’m at the point that I almost never look for a new contract, but get emails asking me if I’m available for a new gig. Free new job offer in the inbox! There have been times I’ve had to turn some down, too! Two to three contracts going on at the same time is more than enough volume to handle, and any more than that is ridiculous and unsustainable. I tend to prioritize the longest-running projects, while picking up a few smaller tasks from new project managers to build connections for future networking purposes.

Actually, one of the main companies I work contracts with, Appen, also hires translators for basically EVERY language internationally - so you could check them out if you’d like! You could be qualified to do some gigs with them! Once you submit an application for one job, your information is on store for the company to use for future gigs. However, an idle resume probably isn’t going to do much over time. I recommend re-submitting your application for new jobs - it shows volition, availability, and helps your name get pulled to their attention. I’ll admit that my first few applications didn’t catch any fish; it wasn’t until I name-dropped (one of the university professors I worked for) that I ended up receiving responses from the hiring managers and project leads.

If you do end up doing contract work in a system like Appen’s, I encourage you to be very careful. With freelance linguistics or translations, there’s many gigs that underpay workers or have paying practices that might not secure semi-stable income. You and I don’t live in the same country, so this isn’t going to be the same, but there’s healthcare and tax stuff I have to keep an eye on, too. Honestly, one of the reasons I decided not to pursue the possibility of remote work translating… was that many available translation jobs offered in my area… made me raise my eyebrows. Some sketchy stuff is out there. Sure. Some was GREAT work. Full-time salaried position working as a civilian in a military base? Those looked like solid gigs. Other common translation work is remote translating through a translation-oriented company, where you’d have consistent work and could be a freelancer, not in short-term projects like I get, but being an ongoing member translator. But some translation companies I saw lots of negative reviews for regarding payment practices and how they treated employees as replaceable; seems like you had to be a project manager overseeing translation quality to have a good gig (I did have one old linguistics classmate get that position). I also always was nervous about the idea that some translation companies seemed to pay you per word for what documents you translated (what if you only got short messages that month? maybe workflow is steady(?), but that sounded nerve-wracking to me on the outsider’s perspective - same type of scary as people in sales being paid based on how much they sell). The work I do is paid per hour - not salaried - but at least “per hour” can be more stable and flexible with what you do.

So yeah. I don’t know if this makes your job searching more or less overwhelming, but be careful. Sometimes job-wise in life we have to start with “anything,” but “anything” won’t get good money or mental rest, and there’s times to say “no” to “anything”. There is fair work too, though.

Note that some of my comments on the translation field maaaay be inaccurate, given as it’s been a while since I’ve looked at that, and some of my observations will be based upon where I live versus you. I don’t want to feed unintentionally bad information, so everything I say on the field should be taken with a good grain of salt.

I haven’t had problems with my work, in part because I’ve figured out the payment bargain game. Every time a new gig asks what I’d like to be paid, I increase the price amount slightly. They usually agree. I feel like, as far as hourly contract work is concerned, I’m not being paid jack shit or being taken advantage of so much, and I am more than happy to spend my work week in my pajamas at home listening to metal music in the background, choosing my hours - even if it’s freaking 2 AM. Salaried positions pay more of course, and would be “fairer” considering my education level, but I’m still well over minimum wage. I’ll take it. Once I get mental health issues worked out (they’re capping my ability to work the number of hours a week I need), I’ll be making decent yearly income. There’s the constant terror of not getting new gigs, though, which comes with companies making me only a part-time contractor… but in your translation, that shouldn’t be any issue. There’s going to be freelance translation you can do within one translation company and chill there as long as you like. You won’t have to keep reapplying to new gigs if you settle in with some translation company.

One thing I suspect you might have to do, though, especially to get decent gigs, is get translation certification. I haven’t looked into it, though I remember seeing the word floated around. Maybe you know this already though. XD You would have looked more into the field than me!

I’m wishing you the very best with starting a freelance translation journey, and you rock for being a linguist. I wish I could have been more helpful! I’d be interested to hear any experiences you have or end up having, if you ever want to share! Languages for the win!

#canadarama #long hair #linguistics #non-dragons #my life #translation #sorry that I don't know more!#I.... hope this was clear #I'm always happy to talk back and forth #and explain things more #hope you end up finding something cool #:)

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contrabassconversations · 5 years

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How to work in Germany as a double bass player

Check out Uli's post on the web here

Starting Off

Although I started very early with the Double Bass with the age of 10 (1991 there were no small basses in Germany, so I started to play a 3?4 sized bass while standing on a stool) the instrument did not play a big role in my life. When I finished my school in 2000 I stopped playing the Double Bass for 2 or 3 years and began to study Musicology, German Philology and Pedagogics in Cologne.

For some reason I was always thinking about starting to play again and so I called my first teacher Jon Diven who studied at the Eastman University with James VanDemark before if he could teach me again. Because I showed more interested in playing the Bass I improved very fast and so I was going to my first masterclass with Prof. Ulrich Lau.

All the people I heard there were so much better than I was and I wanted desperately to study the Bass and play the same stuff that they were playing. The more my interest grew the more opportunities opened up and I think this was one of the most important aspects for becoming successful with my instrument.

Starting in a Freelance Orchestra

My first bass teacher told me later in 2005 that there was a freelance-orchestra sponsored by a big pharmaceutical company named Merck where he works as principal bass player and they where looking for new members. At that point the orchestra was full of amateurs like me but they had a professional conductor who wanted to improve the orchestra’s quality. The pieces were getting harder and also the orchestra’s quality was improving very fast. After some time I was the only amateur left and I was quite afraid getting kicked out as well so I decided that it was time to study the Bass.

Honestly, I was very naive to think that it would be easy and so I failed my first audition in Music university. Shortly after the audition, I heard that the Bass teachers there were having a barbecue party with their old and new students and asked me if I wanted to join as they knew me from some masterclasses and lessons before. Without knowing how good it was to join this party I was going with them. When we were sitting on the camp fire the two teachers asked me to come to them and have a short talk about my audition and the future and one of them said that if I would have some private lessons for 6 months, that there would be a chance to join the class in University.

So I started having private lessons with Prof.Gottfried Engels. It was such a strange coincidence that a party was actually the starting point of my career. After some weeks my new teacher told me that he has to take responsibility for me and that I would have no chance to become a member of a States orchestra because I was simply too old but that my qualification in Musicology and pedagogics could help me to become a very good double bass teacher. At the same time he kind of destroyed my dream to become a professional bass player in one of the States orchestras in Germany. He also told me that I had to finish my masters in musicology otherwise he would kick me out of his class. Trusting my teacher, that there will be a good chance for me to start a career as a teacher, because I studied Pedagogics before, I decided to take that challenge even if it was not my dream at all. That was another lesson I learned for my future life: Find a teacher you can trust and who will take responsibility for you. The next audition was fine and finally I had a place in the Class!

A Special Project in Cologne

After some months I heard about a special project in Cologne which was paid by a foundation: There was an old guy who asked the Music University if they could develop a string class project for the elementary school as he knew he was going to die and he wanted to donate his money for cultural belongings. Without having a single idea what string class teaching is and how you deal with around 30 kids per class at the same time, I started this adventure. In the elementary school I learned very fast that I did not learn anything in Music university that could help me because you only learn how to play your instrument and how you deal with a student in a single lesson which is a completely different thing. So I had some talks with some elementary school teachers and my parents who were teachers as well (but in physical education)if they could help me with my lack of knowledge. It was maybe the first time that I found out that you have to build a good network around you and that you have to trust the experts surrounding you to improve your own skills.

A few months later it went better but in the first months I was always hoping for the end of the day. But: It was the first opportunity not to work in a supermarket or doing other jobs that did not have anything to do with music education. The funny thing was that this project started without having any bassplayers there and the responsible teachers in music university didn’t want to develop the project for Minibasses because they were afraid of making any mistakes.

Actually they had no clue what Minibasses are. But my teacher hopefully had! Can you imagine a University that has professors for music pedagogy who can live with that? For me this had nothing to do with music education. It was simply a big mistake to choose the easy way. After some time we convinced the foundation to buy some basses, but they bought 1?2 sized basses for 7 year old children who needed 1/8 sized basses. In the following months I met some bass players who were working in the same city and had the same problems (guess who was their professor?), so we started a revolution in the project. 1 year later there were 5 elementary schools with four classes minimum each with four or more basses in the right size and we all could teach the kids properly. Some of the students asked if there is a possibility to have additional single lessons and of course we said yes.

What I learned

If you want to live as a freelancer in Germany you have to teach in String classes as well because the lessons take place in the morning. In the afternoon there is time for the single lessons. A normal music school in Germany pays around 70 Dollars per month per student which means even if you have 30 students you have to live from 2100 Dollars a month, including living, insurance, healthcare, taxes, car and so on. Thats not enough to have a family and take care of them. A string class pays 120 Dollars for each day per hour per month. That sounded good. What I found out later is that the music schools in Germany often don’t have string class cooperations with public schools, so the bass teachers have maybe 4 or 5 students in single lessons and have a bad contract with the music schools: Every year you have to fight for a new contract. But if you are an expert in string class teaching you can either convince your boss to start such a program or work more hours in an already existing project at the same place. Another advantage is, that there is a possibility that you could get an unlimited contract with the city you work in, which means that they pay 50% of your healthcare and insurances.

During my studies in music university I had to visit teachers in some public music schools to learn more about teaching. I had to observe some lessons and also taught on my own under advice of the the mentor.

in Germany a music school is a completely different thing as an elementary school. Everybody can apply there and can have lesson with a music pedagogue but it is an additional „hobby“ like playing soccer or basketball. In Germany there are nearly no boarding schools that focus on music or prepare young students for University. Every school is a public school with no school fees at all. That means on the one hand that everybody has a fair chance to have a good school education. On the other hand there is no money for music equipment or instruments. That means that you have to apply in a music school besides your regular public school.

Becoming a Minibass teaching expert

When I had my first appointment with the bass teacher in Du?sseldorf which is the Capital of the State „Northrhine-Westphalia“ (the state has around 20 million inhabitants, which means a quarter of Germany’s citizens and Du?sseldorf has 600k) I recognized that this guy runs the biggest bass class in Germany. He had and still has 50 students per week, the youngest are 4 years old. For me this experience was like a goldmine in music teaching and a new idea was born: Becoming an expert in Minibass-Teaching as well. My professor was a good friend of him and so I recognized that this was the second big favor my professor did for me. What I learned: The more interest you show, the more chances you get. The more people you meet the more opportunities will open up.

In 2010 some teachers and students in Northrhine-Westphalia founded the Double Bass Teachers association in Northrhine Westphalia with the goal to develop the teaching of Minibass in the music schools. In NRW (short version for the region) there are around 800 Double-Bass students taught in music schools. That sounds a lot but most of them have lessons in the big cities. On the countryside there is nearly nothing. So one of the goals of this association is to develop a good infrastructure concerning teaching there.

At that point I was still a student and I was asked if I wanted to join the association. Of course I said yes because I had the impression that this could be a very big thing for the future. As well the government was going to help us and as well the cultural ministry made a cooperation with us. I helped at the annual Basscamp as a student. In the beginning we earned nearly no money and the students worked for free but I thought and still think that it is better to start a thing you have a good feeling with and later on you will get some other chance because the people you were helping remember you as a good guy. Honestly we were all working for the idea and the dream not for money. But that fact paid out some years later.

Meeting Caroline Emery

The first time in my life that I met Caroline Emery who was so kind to come to the Basscamp as a teacher was a big inspiration for me and she also had a lot to tell about the invention of the Minibass and her books. We had some very interesting talks about my future plans and she told me some of her “secrets of teaching.” At the last day of the course she said to me: Hey you should come to Bassclub in Menuhin School and help a little and I can tell you it will blow your mind. And it did.

I saw all those talented young Bassplayers there playing on the highest level I heard so far and I also had a chance to teach a little during this very intense week at Bassclub. Most of the time I was taking notes and tried to keep everything in mind. At Bassclub I also met Francois Rabbath, Gareth Wood, Christian Mortensen and Jan Alm which was absolutely crazy. Meeting Caroline was very important for me and she still means a lot to me. I still think that she gave me a lot of good advice and an idea of quality-based teaching.

The same year the first International Basscamp in Germany took place and again Caroline Emery was there and as well Edmond Cheng who has probably the largest Minibass-Class worldwide in Hongkong. Another very inspiring person for me. All of his students play on a very high level. I only heard that quality in Carolines class before. With Edmond I had some very interesting talks too and one of the things I kept in mind most was: If you think small you stay small, so think big. I will keep that sentence in my mind forever. I met Edmond at three or four more courses and so I had the chance to teach some of his students and he taught mine. The same year I finished my Masters and half a year later I made my diploma in Music-Pedagogy.

More Camp Experiences

After that there was the same camp taking place in Berlin where I met Szymon Marciniak and Giorgji Makhoshvili. The course was led by Prof. Stephan Petzold who is a big influencer in BASSEUROPE and he also invited me to teach on another course- again a lucky coincidence.The next Basscamp in Germany was with Thierry Barbe? who I met before on a masterclass in Montepulciano. All these events took place in 3 or 4 years and they were all very inspiring. Actually I felt like a sponge getting more and more useful information and as well the network was growing.

Shortly after that there was a small city music school close to my home and they had a very small Double-Bass class with 5 students. As my mentor told me that they were looking for a young and motivated Bass-teacher I gave the boss a call and they wanted me to become their new bass-teacher. That was in 2011. Unfortunately I had to quit after two years because there was a better job in another city.

A New Job

There was another music school looking for a teacher and again my professor gave me the advice to give their office a call. Again I was lucky because in that school they had not one single Double- Bass student so it was somehow like a laboratory where you could start from the very beginning. I have to say that I was lucky at that point of time because the city was running a project for the elementary schools there. In collaboration with the music school there, the city spend a lot of money to pay string class teaching in elementary school.

After two years my class was growing and I had 15 students there plus 5 hours string class teaching. As the school was desperately looking for more string teachers, I could help some friends to work there as well. As a consequence we could build up two orchestras in the music school, one of them is conducted by me. I also had a very good friend who was willing to teach the piano at that school. That meant that the quality of my class was improving as most of the students had the possibility to play in the orchestra and could play with a professional piano teacher. I think that we have it our own hands if our class becomes a class of motivated and talented kids. The more quality the kids see and hear (from yourself, from piano teachers etc…) the more they can improve. That means as well that you should try to bring them to masterclasses, concerts and so on.

In 2012 my wife, who was my piano player in Music university before I married her, became pregnant and I was living quite okay for a single household .But at that point of time I only earned around 1200 Dollars a month- not enough to make a living with wife and kid. Also my contract was limited for one year. So something had to happen very fast. My day was full of driving to several music schools and string classes but still there was a lack of money. So I decided to ask all my bosses if there is a chance to work more. My Expectation was that maybe one of them could help me but all of them offered me to work even more!! Within 1 month I had a 50 hours work-week and the family was fine. At the peak I had 18 string classes, 30 students, orchestra playing, courses and so on. The best thing that happened to me was that I got an unlimited contract in one of the schools. As a consequence I had to decide to quit some of the small jobs and concentrate more on the bigger ones. In my opinion this is also a very important aspect: If you want to improve you have to quit the worst job you have to create space for more inspiring ones.

While all these events took place I was member in two big freelance orchestras and so my dream to play in the orchestra somehow came true. At that point of time it was the first time that there were opportunities to pay back the favours other people were doing to me. I had some friends who were still studying and I heard about some schools looking for teachers and also our orchestras were looking for new members, so I remembered all the people who were taking care of me and paid back. Actually it was a very good feeling because the first years I only received and wasn’t able to give back. The whole freelance scene is like an organism to me that feeds you but also has to be fed. That means that you should not bite in the hand that is feeding you, should you?

Becoming a camp organizer

In 2014 my mentor, who was the head of our teachers association became sick and told me that the association needs somebody who can organize the bass camp instead of him. So in 2014 I became the head of the Double-Bass-Teachers-Association in Northrhine-Westphalia. In the beginning it was very scary because my responsibility grew and I had to take all the financial risks such a course has. But I also met new people holding very important positions in the cultural scene in Germany as the German association of music schools or the association of Orchestras for talented children in our region.

In Music University we did not learn anything about self-management or how to organize a course so I had to talk to a lot of people and visit the other Teachers-Associations in Germany. At the moment there are five of them, but as every head of the Associations was guest at the Basscamp before it was very easy to refresh the contact. From now on I visited mailed or called one of them regularly which was quite helpful. After some difficulties at the start with only 28 participants our course has now a size of 60 bass players every year, which makes it to one of Germanys biggest bass camps. We had teachers like Gottfried Engels, Thierry Barbe?, Caroline Emery, Carthy Elliott, Stefan Scha?fer, Boguslaw Furtok and Stanislav Anishenko who were so kind to give a lot of inspiration to the kids. Last year we came in contact with the European String Teachers Association (the german section) and as well BASSEUROPE.

The last months there were some possibilities to write articles about new literature for Double-Bass or stringclass-teaching. At the moment I am writing an article about Claus Freudenstein‘s new pieces „THE WOLF & STRUCT“ This is actually very funny because now, Musicology comes back to my life again. For me it means a lot, because I know now why I had to finish my first studies and that it was not in vain to choose the long road and is now a big advantage.

Lessons learned about teaching the bass

Since that point I recognized that teaching the Double Bass is a lot more than teaching one student after the other. You have to connect to influencers, you have to be diplomatic, you have to love children, you have to play and teach professionally, you have to go to events, courses, lectures and so on and you also have to try to do favours to people who helped you. All in all it is a very altruistic behavior which can ?t be wrong because you only make yourself and other people happy. I don ?t know if you will find another job that can make you that confident…

All these things you don’t learn in Music university. In Germany you study mostly one segment, for example: orchestra musician. That means you practice a lot without knowing if you get a job in a states orchestra.

You can study music pedagogy and you learn besides playing your instrument properly, how you teach a kid in the single lesson. Or you become a teacher in a High school or elementary school. While you study you learn how to teach your segment but no one tells you how to react on the fact that reality works quite different. Concentrating on one job will lead to nothing but self destruction.

If you want to get a job in a music school, they ask you if you have experience in string class teaching, otherwise they won’t hire you. That is a big scandal: How can music universities forget their responsibility on the students? Why don’t they learn the basics of their future life?

Violinists or piano players are a lot more prepared than we are. That made me think of the real aim of a Double-Bass-Teachers-Association and this is maybe the biggest thing you can think about.

What we don’t learn at the university

We work with children but we don’t really learn it in University. So the goal should be to improve the music education from top to bottom. There are a lots of very talented young bass players out there, but if they want to study Doublebass the music universities have to offer more opportunities. Therefore we have to open the professors minds for our belongings. I think the more professors know what we are doing, the more we can change. In fact we are experts like them but unfortunately some of them think different. I think that I was very lucky so far and I really met the right people at the right time. Nevertheless a living in the freelance scene in Germany is possible and you can be very successful.

The funny thing is that the freelance players in Germany live mostly from teaching and did not study music pedagogy. Teaching is sometimes seen as the second chance for all those who failed in the auditions. But everybody knows that teaching has a lot to do with responsibility and you cannot use 50% of your heart while teaching. It is a 24/7 job. In the orchestras there are not so many jobs at the moment but we need the teachers. Crazily people behave quite different. They study orchestra playing and only reproduce themselves and feed a system which is wrong. Most of the students who go to music university will have to live from teaching, writing and playing at the same time but they don’t prepare for that fact. If you want to live as a freelancer you should be able to become an expert in as many topics as possible. The music world is full of possibilities and I am sure that everybody can find his place in the freelancer scene.

Check out this episode!

#doublebass #bass #music #interview #orchestra #teaching

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renegadeblog · 5 years

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If I Was the President of the Republic of Congo

Pic from @theundefeated

So, I had a very good conversation with someone I know about feminism in sub-Saharan Africa. How is feminism manifested? Challenged?

This article is not about feminism in sub-Saharan Africa. The conversation did make me think that maybe what Africa needs is a woman at the helm because clearly years of male leadership has not made any major improvements. As such, this is what I propose as the president of the Republic of Congo:

1.Loyalty to one’s ethnic clan

This isht will end. There will not be any favoritism. Regardless of what ethnic clan you are part of, everyone will have a chance in the new government. There will be no such thing as nepotism and merit will be the one and only way to succeed in my government.

2. Contracts

Government contracts will be given to homegrown businesses first. That means France will have a fit and probably try to have me removed but I shall stand firm! Should an international company win a government contract, they will be obligated to hired local workers at 70% and the project must in some shape or form help grow the local economy and be sustainable.

3. Health

Every neighborhood will have a government-run mini hospital/clinic with a building treating specifically just women and children. I strongly believe that no society can thrive if its women and children are not made top priorities. We will boost our OBGYN services. Each new mother will be sent home with a starter package (i.e. milk, a small bedside cot that they can carry, a few diapers and a bottle). The starter kit would be similar to what is given to mothers in Finland and of which has been credited to lowering infant mortality rates.

3. Revitalization Plans

Each municipality mayor will be tasked with creating a revitalization plan that is sustainable and boosts the local economy. One of the rules would be to use feedback from the locals.

4. Taxes

There will be taxes. This is a way to keep government in check. This will allow the population to DEMAND out of my government to actually use the taxes levied to improve their lives. [ I don’t actually know how taxes will be taken but it will happen. Trust me.]

5. International Folks

International people with businesses will be made to apply for a special pass allowing them to work in the country. They will also need to apply/pay for a special pass allowing them to live in the country. The pass will need to be renewed every 5 years.

6. Calling nationals back home

Every national living internationally will be invited to come back home. Okay, that would actually mean creating jobs at home for them to be incentivized in coming back home. However, I could create a task force that would work with each minister and they would be responsible for creating jobs. Something like that.

7. Lands

No lands will be purchased if not a national. If you are not Congolese, your only option is to rent! Hopefully, this will lower the prices of some of those lands (some of them are selling upward to 45 million CFA!)

8. Presidency

Presidency will only last for 4 years. You may be elected for an additional 4 years. Unless I am re-elected, I will set the precedent by getting out of office as mentioned in the constitution. I am not trying to start a civil war for power.

And that is all so far! Renegades, what would you add to this fabulous list?

If I Was the President of the Republic of Congo was originally published on Renegade

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/karmic-tools-weekly-forecast-january-20-26-2019/

Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast: January 20 – 26, 2019

By Kelley M. Beard

The video version of this forecast, as read by the author, is available here.

The Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast covers the current planetary transits which affect people in different ways and to various degrees of intensity. Take notice when it is a Personal planet (Sun / Moon / Mercury / Venus / Mars) interacting with a Social (Jupiter/Saturn) or Collective planet (Uranus / Neptune/Pluto). And pay extremely close attention when it is a Social planet interacting with a Collective planet because that means something *big* is brewing that will move large groups of people along their evolutionary paths. Tuning in to the energy and rhythm of the planets can serve as a useful *guide* as you move along your Individual Path. It also helps to understand your place within the context of the larger Social & Collective Story. Below, you will find out how these energies tend to manifest, as well as guidance and direction.

*NOTE* There are some days when there are NO CONTACTS (besides the Moon), please note that there are no missing entries, we just list the actual Activations of each week + the day they happen.

Weekly Forecast: January 20 – 26, 2019

1/20 ~ Venus (love, finances & relationships) ~square~ Neptune (illusions & delusions): This energy is great for creative flow. If you are artistically inclined in any way, you will have access to an energy that may allow you to create something amazing. Dig deep and allow your Self to free-flow! This energy can also challenge relationships (personal or professional) to ‘keep it real’ in some way and ones which are not on a true, solid foundation are likely to dissolve under this influence. When Neptune is involved, we see life through a completely different kind of lens, often seeing the potential rather than the reality of the situation. Detach & Trust. If your relationship happens to end under this influence, it’s not necessarily a bad thing because it suggests that it was never on solid ground to begin with. Be thankful and move on. This activation is just helping you align your true values & priorities with the vision in your mind & heart, but you will have to expand your consciousness in some way, follow your inner compass and take practical steps going forward.

1/21 ~ Mars (anger) ~square~ Saturn (restriction):

This is the energy of action being restricted and the anger or frustration that follows. You can either be angry and feel restricted, limited and unable to move … or you can see this energy as an opportunity to define the right actions to take and strategically plan to take them when the Universe is more supportive. This energy requires us to slow down and double check The Plan. If you proceed consciously, your plan has a better chance of success than if you were reckless & impatient. You may experience a blockage of some sort, internal or external. You may feel this tremendous urge to change or move forward in your life but seem to find blockages and limitations with every effort. That is more likely your perception than a reality, but is there any way that you feel inadequate to the task at hand? What are you afraid of? Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real – release fear and choose to be responsible for creating your life. If you don’t, your outer circumstance only becomes a reflection of your inner belief. You will attract criticism and repel support. Take your grand vision and figure out three small steps you can take on this restricted level that is still taking you in the direction of your goal. Don’t try to initiate at this time, this is a time for cultivating, planning, working behind the scenes, doing the detail work and foundational (grunt work) that is NECESSARY to support the grand vision when the time comes to fully express it.

1/21 ~ LEO Super/Full Moon Lunar Eclipse: The Leo Full Moon often illuminates the discrepancies between who you are, who you think you are and who you are perceived to be. Because it is a Super Moon, you may feel it more intensely and because it is a Lunar Eclipse, you get to break a larger pattern, something that may also resonate with the years: 2008-09 & 1998-99. You are supported to do a personal (and major) release with this eclipse. Think 6-months to a year ago, what is culminating or completing now? Think 9- and 18-years ago for what has integrated within your Heart and how have you matured in your relationships. The Leo Full Moon reveals Self-Love issues and where you have been operating from the Outside-In, when Inside-Out is more effective. It may also expose where your ego has gone unchecked and/or where your Inner Child has been neglected and is now *cranky*. Play is part of being Human and something many have forgotten how to do. We must practice integrating joy into our daily lives! It is more fun & interesting to play with a variety of ideas and possible roles of who you are evolving in to (or would like to over the next 6-12 mos) and your place of service within any chosen Community. In what capacity can you shine and share your Light going forward? Use this final eclipse portal (in the Leo/Aquarius series) to release an old self or old desire of the heart so that a new, evolved version of YOU can be birthed to bless the world. It’s time to release anything that doesn’t truly express who you are so the real you can shine brighter!

1/22 ~ Venus (values & priorities) ~conjunct~ Jupiter (truth & story):

This is an extremely powerful energy that brings the two *benefactors* together to initiate a new cycle that makes you very mentally “present” to the fact that both your values and your truth are shifting. This energy encourages you to improve your life in some way. You can also connect to material abundance & wealth of all kinds when these two get together like this. This is usually a pleasant shift because it is about expanding your sense of authentic beauty, as in nature & the interrelatedness of all living things. There’s also an energy of enthusiasm around new or growing relationships which attracts more positive energy. This is the best time to be creative and expect miracles!

1/23 ~ Mercury (lower mind & ideas) ~square~ Uranus (Higher Mind & awakening): This energy challenges you to expand your mind or consciousness in a way, pushing you to think differently and respond to information in new ways. Uranus brings sudden ah-ha moments, personal awareness and radical new ideas, which is great for you adventurous souls who thrive on change and new ideas. However, if you are personally attached to your routine and things ‘going as planned’, then this energy can cause aggravation and tax your nervous system because things will seem sudden (even though it is more likely that they have already been brewing under the surface for some time now). You will have to adjust and be more open & mentally flexible than usual. You may not be able to control the excessive mental activity or information-overload coming in, but hopefully you can direct it a bit. It’s good to activate or clean your personal filters by taking some time in nature to process things at your own pace and generally clear your head. This can be a very inspiring & creative time, so try to tune into that, while keeping in mind that anything you begin or get into, may require a review later so you can check over the details of your revelations (or creations). You’re just cracking the surface, this is all about the revelation or awakening, you will eventually have to figure out the logistics or effective actions necessary to bring your ideas into form.

1/25 ~ Mars (energy) ~trine~ Jupiter (enthusiasm):

This energy is generally positive as you are combining your energy & desires with an expansion of consciousness. It’s especially good for anything physical and bodes well for outcomes to any competition. You will be channeling more energy than usual so be sure to check in with your body and stay grounded. Jupiter often brings blessings that others may perceive as ‘luck’ but it is more of an alignment between inner Self & outer reality. Even if things are hazy or crazy, do your best to visualize success and put your Self in the picture ; -) You will have a great overall perspective of the “big picture” and can plan accordingly. The only caveat with this energy is to avoid being OVERLY confident where you feel invincible. Be confident, not cocky. This energy is very good for knowing what you need and being capable of making succinct decisions about the course which will get you there. Calculated risks are the name of the game!

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ellen0leary-blog · 5 years

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Musings Of A Dinosaur

This is a more specific example of a fake website and is a big problem. We hired an exterminator & hopefully he will be able to resolve the rat problem. Insurance is based on the law of large numbers, which means that, the greater the number of exposures, the more closely the actual results will approach the probable results that are expected from an infinite number of exposures. There are no contingency plans for this funding. There are numerous online Canadian drug companies which make provision users the facility of buying generic drugs against low prices. There are several disturbing prescription drug addiction statistics that are worth mentioning. Most family doctors will no longer prescribe narcotics in any case; and other pain specialists are closing shop too. We’ve already taken bold action here in Colorado to tackle gun violence, including passing universal background checks and closing the gun-show loophole. Group universal life insurance products are not designed to be policies of insurance under Section 79. In addition, each employee pays the full cost of his or her coverage. Building a universal 21st-century digital infrastructure enables more Coloradans to telecommute and can be a lifeline for many rural communities that rely on telemedicine. With states partnering in cost sharing, development, and implementation, we can provide coverage to more people at a lower cost than a state implementing such a system alone would be able to do. Overall, the cost of medical, hospital, and dental care is much lower than in the U.S. Insurance companies consider providing insurance to employee benefit plans if they meet the minimum standards of an insurable risk. 1. This method is fully natural, canadian pharmacy online simple and risk free. But, the best method to date has been my very brave Mini Schnauzer “Willie” who has killed off several over the last few weeks. Those who do go to the trouble of putting together an "alternative" cancer treatment website generally seem intent on making money out of it. When you invest in cloud mining, you’re putting a whole lot of trust in the mining company. Being not able to talk while doing an exercise means you’re working too hard which may cause injury and may discourage you to do any workout. Repeal the outdated and Big-Tobacco-friendly law that prohibits local communities from raising their own tobacco taxes without being forced to surrender revenue from the state’s tobacco tax. Antibiotic Ointment, 1 oz. Does that work for KENALOG may not work with tools, hold on to the build-up of scale. In Bermuda, the minimum legal age for alcoholic consumption is 18. Official ID such as a driver's license may be required. Put it around where you think they are coming in ( maybe in a bowl would work if you don’t know where) . Along with the replacement of the barristers and gate and repair work done to the column, the restorations have improved the ceiling of the structure which is designed to work as a loudspeaker. Take that, Americans, if you have diabetes or arthritis or prior cured cancer. First, many persons appear to have based their opinions on media reports and stories from friends, not on their own experiences. P.P.P.S Please save your money and don't buy a 'regular' book on anabolic steroids. We buy gadgets to see us through our resolution. However, in most cases, it is the insurance company, Blue Cross-Blues Shield plan, HMO, or PPO that enters into the carve-out arrangement with a "subcontractor" that manages the benefits. In both cases, income ceases. Those conditions just might not be eligible for sharing right away. I think I might try using peppermint toothpaste at some of the boundaries, so it sticks to their feet. Quality of Online Pharmacies and Websites Selling Prescription Drugs: A Systematic ReviewJournal of Medical Internet Research. Research has shown that all you need is to drink water while exercising and after it as well. But, as Colorado’s Water Plan demonstrates, water can also unite us. Policy provisions, benefit restrictions, and reinsurance can be used to help alleviate problems to the extent they exist. Conversely, the unbundled approach allows the plan sponsor to contract directly with a variety of organizations for different services or to develop its own network through direct negotiations with providers. When I took a large amount of the tincture as an experiment it had a significant calming effect. Step 6 - Use medications and nutritional supplements wisely. Next to eating a healthy diet and moving more, medications and supplements form the third cornerstone in managing diabetes efficiently. On April 29 and 30, Governor Deval Patrick will host the Health Information Technology: Creating Jobs, Reducing Costs and Improving Quality Conference. 140,000 worth of bitcoin in exchange for decrypting users’ hijacked files. In moving toward a more liberalized economy based on open competition, the government has privatized many state-owned industries and reduced subsidies to those that remain in the public portfolio. Hi Jeff. I live in the central Oregon high desert. They are in high demand and often come inclusive of high-quality, tasteful furnishings. These are both one time treatments provided to relieve minor soreness caused by the pressure beneath the nail or in the blister. Sure, you could manually move the gear shifter so the indicator tab physically sits underneath the “R,” or “D,” but you are still not going to go anywhere. Typically, a percentage of each premium, such as 2 percent, is deducted for expenses. International airmail from the U.S.

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outofbrainpower-blog · 5 years

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German Apotheke Ships Worldwide

The way it works is quite simple: It blocks the rat’s digestive system by aborting vitamin A and all those enzymes necessary to digest both protein and starches. The federal or state government might insure this type of risk, but it would be necessary for it to subsidize the premium rates to make them affordable. So don’t make the mistake of focusing only on weight loss. Once a death claim is verified, the amount of loss is normally the face value of the insurance contract. In contrast to group life insurance, for which employer contributions may result in some taxable income to an employee, Code Section 106 provides that employer contributions for disability income insurance result in no taxable income to an employee. When an employee benefit loss is difficult to verify or measure, the insurer may attempt to overcome the problem through several methods. For any period during which the employee is not under the care of a physician. Medical Care - Learning advanced first aid and natural remedies - or forming/joining a mutual assistance group containing medical care professionals of some type will vastly enhance the chances of surviving an EMP attack. Most people with this mindset have no clue about exactly what the government will have to fix after an EMP attack or natural electromagnetic pulse disaster - or even the true magnitude of the aftermath of such a monumental disaster. Can’t use poisons because we have 6 Chihuahuas and a lazy cat. Whether it is accompanied by weight loss or not, exercise can help the body use insulin more efficiently. Packages over 2 Kilos usually take 4 weeks or more. For more information, including other ferries going to Paget and Warwick, see Bermuda Transportation for Visitors. It is just not going to happen. In addition to housing the Corporation of Hamilton, it is the home of the City Hall Theatre (phone 292-2313), Bermuda Society of Arts Gallery and Bermuda National Gallery. Perot, nineteenth century first Postmaster of the city and Assemblyman of French Huguenot extraction. Immunizations and inoculations that are provided for public health or other purposes, where there is no work-related injury or illness, are not first aid or medical treatment, and do not in themselves make the case recordable. At first I used decon a joke then Tomcat, now I’m using Assault this stuff kills after 1 feeding! Surprising when I watch TV commercials recently, Caryn Hairpro is once again promoting strongly in the golden time slot around 8.30pm to 10.30pm on 8TV. The biggest surprise is you will now buy one get two! So do you really believe they will become ‘intimidated’ by your toilet cake rat repeller in your garage, attic, walls, or basement? No one should have to live in fear of rat bites. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. Depending on the nature of the scam, it may also be worth reporting it to your local police division. Based on the components of each, I don't see why not. Now, why am I mad? Note: Modafinil and Modalert are the exact same thing. According to Wikipedia, studies have shown that normal healthy volunteers between the ages of 30-44 showed general improvement in alertness as well as mood while using Modafinil. A smishing text message will usually have much the same aims as any other kind of fraud. I will not buy again. The other tag focuses on stopping public marketing by providing for reluctant Buy Prednisone Online in apprehending and convicting numbers and starving them of laws through portal, speech mouse, and cool hours. Colorado will achieve universal full-day kindergarten by making state kindergarten funding full-time (equivalent to the full-day for 1st grade) for all students in public schools. When federal legal issues surrounding cannabis tax receipts are cleared up, I will advocate for bonding of school capital construction revenues from Amendment 64 and subsequent cannabis tax initiatives. Coloradans will be the deciding factor on the type of train and route they want to build that will be best for them. I’m terrified of rats & I just want them gone before Christmas gets here. Almost all of them are identical in their active ingredients and can really save money on a prescription. Travel by taxi on a daily basis is expensive; ask the fare beforehand, canadian pharmacy online as taxis are not metered. Cannabis sales in store are permitted between 9 a.m. Retailers cannot run promotional activities like games, lotteries, contests or competitions to encourage cannabis or cannabis accessories sales. Actual savings can be affected by factors outside the parameters of the model, such as catastrophic claims, changes in membership demographics, and so on. This way, they can at least kick them off the site and hopefully prevent someone else from being scammed. I do apologize for being so long. Thanks for your help! Contractual warranty of state license. Companies simply pay people to write fake glowing reviews on supposedly unbiased review sites. This Liberty HealthShare review is an accurate portrayal of our experience as Liberty HealthShare members. Owned and operated by the Bermuda Government. Neighbours had garbage at one time along the fence, also animal feces from dog they never cleaned up. A sense of urgency is used to convince the receiver that they need to pay immediately or risk having the case transferred to a collections agency.

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