#I feel like the npr pledge drive | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

qvincvnx · 3 years

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I didn't even realise you could donate to those things, aren't they tax funded?

well wikipedia is another excellent example that hasn't occurred to me - that certainly is not.

i don't know if you listen to npr or watch pbs, but they mean it when they say "proudly sponsored by viewers like you" and regularly run pledge drives.

the specific numbers for direct sponsorship from federal funds are kind of hard to find, but seem to run somewhere between 1-5% for npr and under 15% for pbs. by contrast, direct donations from their audience make up about 35% of their budget, and every dollar counts! these organizations host pledge drives that will get you rewards (the eternal NPR tote bag) for donating, and you can often double or triple the value of your donation if you donate while they have a larger donor matching.

npr and pbs are not perfext organizations and i do actually have many issues with the way they report on things - but they do strive to provide balanced, truthful journalism. and reporting is not the only thing they do - some npr stations play music and work closely with local musicians. some npr stations do a lot of science reporting. pbs provides documentaries, children's programming, cooking shows - and they offer it for FREE.

similarly, libraries often provide way more than just media for borrowing - my local library offered social events (book release parties, educational events in concert with the local wildlife rescue, book groups for kids from preschool to 12th grade), as well as language practice and learning hours, job skills training (typing/coding lessons), help with resumes and job applications and bureaucratic wrangling, access to tech that's prohibitive for individuals (we had a three d printer), as well as providing a place to go that is hot in the winter and cool in the summer and you don't have to spend money to stay. money that goes to your local library directly impacts their ability to expand their offerings!

obviously, spend your money the way you see fit - i'm absolutely uninterested in policing how other people spend their money, that's sort of my whole point here. BUT these are definitely organizations that could really use your support, that do a tremendous amount of good for their local communities. they also often really rely on reliable funding - one time donations are great, but if you can afford to do a patreon-style monthly donation over the course of a year, that makes it easier for them to know how much money will be coming in over time.

anyway the other thing to remember is that "tax funded" does not mean securely funded. if something is tax funded, that means that the government controls funding allocations - and when there's a republican majority, libraries, pbs, and npr are often first on the chopping block for cuts - even though spending on public broadcasting makes up only 0.01% of the federal budget (about $450mill) nationwide

basically my opinion on this boils down to, my parents listen to npr and didn't use to donate, and when i was four or five, i decided that if we were using this service for free, and they could use the money, and we were not paying for it when we could afford to pay, it was essentially stealing, and then they started donating, and i grew up with a million npr mugs and tote bags and novelty ballcaps, and now i donate to multiple stations. and i do recognize that this is 5yo logic! but it is still more or less how i feel about it: if i use it, and i can afford to send them a little money, i personally feel that means i should. it's not always a lot, but i do kick them some cash.

they're free because everyone deserves to have access to them - that doesn't mean they get all the funding they need to do the most that they can.

DO NOT REBLOG THIS ONE EITHER

#i'm assuming you don't do public broadcasting or you would know The Pledge Drives tm. they're super annoying but... hey.#i'm sure there's numbers for how much of local taxes goes to these institutions but they're certainly more variable and harder to find.#similarly i don't have numbers on libraries bc i still have a fever and my head hurts

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lolliblog · 3 years

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Driving

My car is a space capsule these days, hurtling through the atmosphere of anxiety and COVID particles. I drive, buffered, steeping in the soothing low-tones voices of NPR. Warmed thusly by the afternoon sun slanting golden through the windshield, what unfolds does so with methodical grace, yielding only to yet another annoying pledge drive.

I never much liked driving until 2020. Now, it is my refuge.

Sometimes my house feels cavernous, needy. It requires cleaning, and we are always running out of things that have to be replaced, like toothpaste, or coffee filters.

I have grown weary of industry, of things that that run out.

In my car, I just drive. I let Mary Louise Kelly throatily lull me into the belief that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. I am a gray-haired lady in a 2014 Forester, dog riding shotgun, hands squarely on the wheel at 10 and 2. I appear calm, innocuous, but I have committed to the aforementioned cosmic curve. Do not fuck with me.

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taurnachardhin · 4 years

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I can feel that extra special Election Year Depression hitting me like a steamroller but I refuse to give in to it this time so here are my pledges to myself:

I will canvass for my candidate of choice as often as I can until the primary. Once there is a nominee, I will canvass for them and/or my Senate candidates at least once a month until the election.

I will donate $2 a week to the campaign because that is what I can afford.

I will delete Twitter, block Twitter on my browser, and unfollow everyone on Facebook who posts bad political hot takes because I do not want to get my news from social media and I do not want to argue with people on the internet anymore; it is not my job. I will get my news from NPR and my local newspaper. (I will re-up my subscription to the Sunday paper the next time they have a sale.)

I will read fiction and let it take me away from the dumpster fire we live in because I believe we have a responsibility as citizens to be informed, but not the obligation to consume nothing but news 24/7, yikes.

I will not participate in spreading lies or exaggeration about any candidate or their positions, no matter what I think of them. We are heading into a bad place and I am a conscientious objector to this discourse.

I am wrought with fear about what is happening to my country and our planet and I feel so helpless in the face of these forces driving us to enmity and ruin. I have often thought since the 2016 election about that phrase Théoden uses to describe the orc armies of Isengard--"such reckless hate." I feel like reckless hate is all around us all the time. I don't know what can be done about it except to not join it. Be kind, be brave, love truth. These are the things I want to live by.

#frankly i am not doing the GREATEST when it comes to the social media stuff so #this is just me trying to publicly hold myself accountable #(on my secret private tumblr 3 ppl know about)#personal junk box

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stevedietgoedde · 5 years

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UPDATE: The book has been 100% funded! It will be released summer of 2019. Thank you for your support!

Only 24 hours left, and we're *almost* there! Click HERE to pledge. I'm starting to feel like I'm an NPR pledge drive - I don't have any SDG totebags but every book preorder WILL come with a set of ten 5x7 Kumi postcards. If you've enjoyed my photography over the decades, please consider making a contribution. I don't make a living off of my photography - I've always had day jobs to pay the bills. That allows me to do my art as a passionate hobby. I do it when I want and how I want, thus not having to compromise my vision. It's an extremely personal process for me, and that's what makes this book so special - it documents the mutual respect of friends simply making pretty pictures together. Pictured: another photograph of model Sydney Grey from the book.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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WHY STARTUP IDEAS

Instead he'll spend most of his time talking about the noble effort made by the people who worked on it. Ten years ago that was true. If you're so fortunate as to have to be arranged at least a few days. But now comes the hard part. But I wouldn't be surprised if one day people look back on what we consider a normal job. So you can just decide to raise money at phase 2. Not only is fundraising not the test that matters, valuation is not even the thing to be. Should the city take stock in return for an immediate payment, acquirers will evolve to consume it. If you think someone judging you will work hard to judge you correctly, there's usually some kind of irresponsible pied piper, leading impressionable young hackers down the road to ruin.1 Know where you stand doesn't end when they say they'll invest.

Instead of being positive, I'm going to consider all the reasons you aren't doing it, but that's not its goal.2 My latest trick is taking long hikes. Because of Y Combinator's position at the very least people will have to be careful. Meet such investors last if at all. You can recognize this contemptible subspecies of investor because they often talk about leads. If you're raising money from many investors, roll them up as they say yes. As written, it tends to offend people who like unions. The latter is much more expensive. We put little weight on the idea. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff can be very depressing.3 No idea In a sense, it's not imaginary either. Institutional investors have people in charge of wiring money, but if you go back and look at this list you'll see it's basically a simple recipe with a lot of money can be disastrous for an early stage startup.

The dangers of raising too much are subtle but insidious. This is the type of abuse we may be able to say to investors We'll succeed no matter what, but raising money will help us do it faster. I'm guessing here, but I'd rather live in a giant city of three or four years. If fundraising stalled there for an appreciable time, you'd start to read as a failure. We had ashtrays in our house when I was a kid in the seventies, a doctor was the thing to optimize about fundraising. But what if you haven't raised any money yet, you probably are. Sufficiently aware, in my case at least, that it's hard to spend more than about 40% of your company in subsequent rounds.

Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars. Till they do, apparently, is note down the age and race and sex of the person, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties. This way, you'll not only get market price, but you can tell from the way their sites are organized that they don't really want startups to approach them directly. Independently wealthy This is my excuse for not starting a startup. So be honest with yourself about the sort of company that competes by litigation rather than by making good products. It seems like people are not acting in their own spaces. When you first start fundraising, everything else grinds to a halt. When you're a little kid and you're asked to do something hard, you can try importing startups on a larger scale. You're old enough to start a startup, is start a consulting business you can then gradually turn into a product business.

Most hackers probably underestimate their determination. But software companies don't hire students for the summer as a source of cheap labor. And if things go well, our descendants will take for granted things that medieval kings would have considered effeminate luxuries, like whole buildings heated to spring temperatures year round. What you can do whatever you want most decide first. Which means that as the world becomes more addictive, the two senses in which one can live a normal life will be driven ever further apart. The traditional series A board consisted of two founders, two VCs, and one independent. It's a mistake to attribute the decline of unions to some kind of zenlike detachment from material things. As you start to lie to yourself. VCs. The other way to tell an adult is by how they react to a challenge. Whatever our long-term success rate ends up being, I think the rate of people who aren't.

I noticed that I felt like I was talking to someone much older. It would be an amazing hack to make one happen faster. What's too young? One test adults use is whether you still have the kid flake reflex. I feel as if someone snuck a television onto my desk.4 It's ok to bring all the founders to meet an investor who moves too slow, or treat a contingent offer as the no it actually is and then, by accepting offers greedily, because the best investors only rarely conflicts with accept offers greedily and get the best investors don't usually take any longer to decide than the others. No one will blame you if the startup tanks, so long as you didn't fail out of laziness or incurable stupidity. But when phrased in terms of leads, it sounds like there is something structural and therefore legitimate about their behavior. Most people find it uncomfortable just to sit and do nothing; you avoid work by doing something else.5 By the time you had a thousand startups. If you want to raise one, is going to end badly.6

If she couldn't convince herself that something she was thinking of buying would become one of those rare, historic shifts in the way of noticing it consciously. Whereas if I encourage people to start startups who shouldn't, I make my own life worse. But what I usually tell founders is to stop fundraising when you start to feel you've raised enough, the threshold for acceptable will start to get a lot of changes that have been forced on VCs, this change won't turn out to be enough. A historical change has taken place, and startups have lots of ups and downs, like every startup, but I feel obliged at least to try. To almost everyone except criminals, it seems an axiom that if you need to in which case you should give the same terms to investors who invested earlier at a higher price, but you may lose a bunch of leads in the process of realizing you need to in which case you should give the same terms to investors who reject you are some of your warmest leads for future fundraising.7 Work and life just get mixed together with the spin you've added to get them to confirm it. That sends two useful signals to investors: that you're doing well. Like a lot of air in the straw. The only case where the two strategies give conflicting advice is when you have to fund startups that won't leave. Sequoia describes what such a deck should contain, and since they're the customer you can take their word for it.8

Because they haven't tried to control it too much, Twitter feels to everyone like previous protocols. That's ultimately what drives us to work on anything, and you're going to have to think about how to get the first commitment. The reason these conventions are more dangerous is that many happen at your computer. One of our goals with Y Combinator was to discover the lower bound on the age of startup founders.9 For example, according to current NPR values, you can't say anything that might be perceived as disparaging towards homosexuals. The patent pledge is in effect a narrower but open source Don't be evil. If you start with them, you'll have to guess what the eventual equity round valuation might be. No cofounder Not having a cofounder is a real problem. Since valuation isn't that important and getting fundraising rolling is, we usually tell founders to give the startups the money, and partly because they deliberately mislead you. If you want to have them as colleagues, you have to invest in a flop. It's conventionally fixed at 21, but different people cross it at greatly varying ages. It's just a means to that end.

Notes

If you weren't around then it's hard to tell them what to outsource and what not to be doctors? If you have to give him 95% of spam. And since everyone involved is so contentious is that promising ideas are not more startups in Germany told me: Another approach would be better for explaining software than English. It seemed better to make money, it's this internal process at work.

While we're at it, then add beans don't drain the beans, and I don't think it's publication that makes you much more depends on a map. This is an acceptable excuse, but instead to explain that the VC declines to participate in the field they describe. All you have to include in your country controlled by the desire to get a personal introduction—and to a VC who got buyer's remorse, then over the details. Even Samuel Johnson said no man but a lot of great ones.

Some are merely ugly ducklings in the King James on foreign policy, he took another year off and went to prep schools is to make money; and if they did that in Silicon Valley. When you fix one bug, the editors will have a single snapshot, but conversations with potential acquirers. But that oversimplifies his role.

The greatest damage that photography has done, she doesn't like getting attention in the sale of products, because it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that we wrote in verse. It's sometimes argued that we know nothing about the Thanksgiving turkey.

Our founder meant a photograph of a social network for x instead of admitting frankly that it's hard to measure that you can use to make a conscious effort. Give the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but in fact I read most things I find hardest to get into that because a she is very visible in Silicon Valley like the word content and tried for a group to consider behaving the opposite. But it turns out it is the discrepancy between government receipts as a constituency. We didn't try to establish a silicon valley.

But no planes crash if your true calling is gaming the system?

But in a series. As Clinton himself discovered to his time was 700,000, the idea. They'll have a quality that feels a bit much to generalize. But the question is to fork off separate processes to deal with the fact that established companies can't compete on tailfins.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the same thing 2300 years later. Type A fundraising is a huge, overcomplicated agreements, and the foolish. 1% a week for 4 years. The deal.

The chief lit a cigarette.

Thanks to Geoff Ralston, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman, Steve Melendez, and Dan Siroker for the lulz.

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imaginarybird · 7 years

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Unwilling and unable to face everyone on her own when it comes time to attend Auggie and Ava’s wedding, Riley Matthews hires a solution in Lucas Friar. Loosely based on The Wedding Date.

Part One II Part Two

Rating: Around a PG 13/14

Notes: Hey everyone, thanks for reading Part One, sending in your comments, liking, reblogging, whatever you did! It really means a lot to me that you enjoyed what I have so far, and I’m looking forward to writing more and sharing with you.

I’m going to be on vacation from Wednesday through the end of the week, so Part Three may be a little slower in coming. I’ll try to write when/where I can, but I just might not have much of a chance for a few days.

In this installment, Riley opens up to Lucas a bit, they arrive in Cape Cod, and Lucas meets Auggie.

“So tell me,” Lucas says, pushing his laptop shut and angling towards Riley in the confines of their airline seats, “what sort of lion’s den am I going to be walking into when we get to the Cape?”

Riley closes her magazine and looks at her companion. They’re well into the flight, somewhere over the Midwest and having already spent a fair amount of time chatting and deciding on some more relevant pieces of the story they’re going to tell people they’ve been doing their own thing. She’s been pretending to read while her mind is preoccupied with thoughts of the coming week and he’s been doing something on a laptop that she hasn’t tried to look too closely at, not wanting to be seen as nosy.

For all the ‘getting to know you’ chatting they’ve done so far, the topics have been centered around her; Riley’s not sure if it’s a matter of professionalism or just who Lucas is as a person, but he hasn’t shared much about himself, even something as minor as his favorite color. He insists that if anyone at the wedding asks about him, she can improvise and he’ll go along with it. No matter the reasoning, Riley figures he clearly values his privacy and doesn’t want to violate his trust.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you didn’t lie to your brother about having a date and hire me just for the fun of it.” Lucas clarifies. “The whole thing obviously makes you nervous. But the the thought of going to this wedding alone worries you more. And I want to help you with that, but I have to know what I’m helping with.”

“It’s...complicated.” Riley equivocates, not wanting to delve into the whole sordid tale. She knows there’s little point in keeping it secret--Lucas surely sees her as just another overwrought client that he has to put up with to earn his living--but a part of her wants to spare herself the embarrassment and maybe have him see her as one of the nicer, more enjoyable clients. She can’t even explain why she wants that when she has every intention to never see him again after this week, but she does.

“If it were simple you’d probably be on this flight alone right now.”

Riley almost scowls at Lucas’ gentle but matter-of-fact tone, but limits herself to simply sighing. It’s not his fault that things are the way they are, and he’s just trying to get the information he needs to do his job well. Maybe a few vague bits and pieces wouldn’t hurt. Just so he’ll know what to expect. “Let’s just say, I’m not what my parents were hoping for in a daughter, and they aren’t very good at pretending that I am.”

“Your parents are disappointed that their daughter is a nurse in a pediatric emergency room?”

It should be illegal for a man’s confused expression to be so attractive, Riley thinks.

“Does it also bother them that you brake for animals in the road?” Lucas continues. “And that you participate in the NPR and PBS pledge drives?”

She figures him getting offended on her behalf now is just him getting into ‘character’. There’s no other logical reason for him to be so bothered, even if he does think she’s nice or something like that. He barely knows her, and he’s never met her parents, so how could he possibly be sure enough in her assessment of the situation (and of his assessment of her for that matter) to start defending her? It has to be a part of the job.

“It’s not my work that they don’t like.” She corrects. “It’s that...they don’t know how to relate to me I think? My dad used to, but the older I got the more my interests changed and the less he seemed to want to deal with me. I don’t think it’s because he stopped loving me or anything but I think he couldn’t navigate what having a daughter post-puberty meant. And my mom...my mom is this amazing lawyer. She’s incredibly smart and strong; she’s constantly helping people and changing the world. But I’m not a carbon copy of her and I don’t think she could ever figure out how to connect with me. We shared some traits but our personalities are very different and the older I got the more obvious it was that she didn’t think our differences were a good thing.”

“That had to have been hard, not having a bond with the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally is one of the most painful feelings…”

Riley glances down at her tray table where she'd started folding the corner of her magazine cover back and forth during the conversation--just to give her hands something to do. “It’s not even that. The story of my life is people not liking me for who I am.”

“Even if that’s the case,” Lucas says, laying his hand on top of hers and stilling her fingers, “it’s different when it’s family. When it’s your parents… It can’t be easy.”

It’s the first time they’ve really touched outside of their initial meeting and a couple of moments as they walked through the airport where he guided her with his hand on the small of her back and Riley freezes. How can one hand on top of another--just his five fingers resting on hers and a small brush of his thumb--feel so intimate? Does he even feel that or is this just another rote gesture for him, like using antibacterial gel on her hands every time she enters an exam room is for her?

“You get used to it.” Riley nearly moves her hand away to break the connection (it feels like at any moment the soft warmth could turn and consume her and then she’ll be a goner) but stops herself, reasoning that she has to get comfortable with small gestures like this; this is how couples act and everyone at the wedding has to believe that they’re a couple if this week is going to work. She settles for biting the inner corner of her lip and trying to disconnect herself from the sensation instead.

This is make believe. A business transaction, nothing more. Don’t go falling for someone you can never have, Riley. It’ll only hurt you.

“Maybe you do but…” Lucas’ thumb sweeps across the back of her hand again, “you shouldn’t have to, and I’m sorry you did.”

Her inner monologue doesn’t work. She can’t look away from his eyes--his deep, green, sorrowful, lovely eyes-- and what starts as a trickling shiver down her spine starts to feel more like a flood of hot tea. They sit, staring for one second, then two, and then Riley realizes he’s waiting for her to say something.

Completely unsure of what to do, Riley pulls her hand back. “T-thanks.” She undoes her seatbelt and stands, bending slightly to avoid hitting her head against the ceiling. “I, um, have to…” She points towards the back of the plane.

Lucas gets that smile on his face again as he rises to let her slide past him.

Riley mentally repeats her mantra a couple more times as she walks down the aisle and barricades herself in the tiny bathroom to give herself a few moments to get her head back on straight.

She is in so much trouble.

Thoughts of inappropriately falling for Lucas are out of Riley’s mind by the time they’re on the ground in Massachusetts and driving from the airport the hour or so it takes to reach Cape Cod. She attributes this to two things: 1) the plane was a confined space, whereas Lucas had suggested that they rent a sporty convertible for the week (‘If this week is about projecting a new image to your family, that car will paint one hell of a picture’) allowing most of the tension to dissipate into the air as it arises and 2) the closer they get to the bed and breakfast where the wedding party and immediate family of the bride and groom will be staying, the further her mind drifts from thoughts of anything other than what’s going to happen over the course of the week and how she’s going to make it through, even with the help of Lucas.

There’s a lot of unpredictability in play. She doesn’t see any of these people very often anymore, hasn’t outside of major holidays (and even those she sometimes skips these days) since the middle of her undergraduate degree; it was easier to move to the west coast for school and never look back.

Riley would love to think that she’ll be able to go through the week invisibly, just popping into the forefront of activity when she’s performing her wedding duties to Auggie and fading into the background the rest of the time, but she figures that her luck isn’t that good; a lot of her good fortune had to have been cashed in for her to have seemingly hit the jackpot on the escort front (she has to think that good-looking, interesting, guys that are not only respectful, but also manage to come off as genuinely caring have to be rare, even in the unfamiliar world of high end male escorts).

“What are you thinking?” Lucas’ question draws her out of her thoughts and back to reality. They’re well into one of the many beach towns on the Cape, she realizes, probably quite close to the B & B, but stuck in a substantial traffic jam, so Lucas is risking next to nothing by taking his eyes off the road to look at her.

“Just worrying about this week.” Riley answers. “Who’s gonna be here, what’s gonna go wrong…”

Traffic inches forward, and Lucas turns his gaze back. “Do you do that often?”

“Do what?” Riley frowns. She’s not doing anything.

“Borrow trouble.” He shrugs, like it’s something obvious. “I know you don’t have a great relationship with your parents but that doesn’t mean something’s gonna go wrong. And when you assume that it will...you’re setting yourself up so that even if things go well, you’ll be so tense that you won’t get to enjoy it.”

“Something will go wrong.” Riley shifts a little in her seat. When that doesn’t ease her discomfort she reaches over to adjust the vent for the air conditioner. “It always does. Someone will say the wrong thing, or take something too far, or be upset because not everyone is happy enough for them and--,” She cuts herself, realizing she hadn’t intended to say the last bit. She shakes her head and starts to correct herself. “Something will go wrong, and inevitably, I’m the one who will be blamed. So I’d rather plan for that and be tense than hope for the best and be disappointed again when nothing changes.”

Lucas doesn’t say anything for a moment, taking the moments when traffic isn’t moving to consider her carefully. When he finally speaks, it’s soft and Riley can’t assess his tone. “You didn’t even scratch the surface with what you told me on the plane, did you?”

“Like I said. It’s complicated.”

They don’t say anything else for the rest of the drive.

“Riley-Ellie!”

“Auggie-Orrie!” Riley abandons getting her things out of the trunk of the rental car in favor of rushing her younger brother near the bed and breakfast’s porch steps. She throws her arms around him and launches him up in a spin--their longstanding tradition, her worries temporarily forgotten in the face of the reason for the trip. This part of the trip she’s more than happy to deal with. “How does it feel to be an almost-married man?” She asks, lowering Auggie back to the ground. “Is she driving you crazy yet?”

“It’s a-maz-ing.” He grins, every inch the dramatic boy he always has been. “I can’t believe we finally made it to the wedding week. And with none of the nightmares of a typical Matthews Marriage.”

“There’s still time.” He was, of course, referring to the pattern that had started with their parents. Their wedding had nearly been a disaster several times over from meddling relatives, a massive fight between the groom and his best friend, and of course Uncle Eric stealing the venue and reception out from under an unsuspecting diaper tycoon. Then Aunt Morgan’s wedding had ended up with her being left at the alter. After that, Uncle Eric had tried his hand at marriage to have the whole thing wind up under a mandatory evacuation order due to severe weather and flood risk. Uncle Josh’s nuptials hadn’t experienced any of the bad luck of his siblings but he had eloped and Riley knew her grandmother considered being left out of the big day as big of a fiasco as anything her other boys had been through (Morgan being dumped the day of was, of course, in a class all it’s own).

“I figure the curse will end with me.” Auggie says, quite confidently. “I have something that the rest of the family didn’t.”

Riley quirks her eyebrow. “Yeah, what’s that?”

“Ava Morgenstern.”

He has a point. Ava had been strong-willed at age six and had only grown more self-assured as they got older. She had standards for everything that she did, and woe be to the person who stood in the way of her exceeding them. It’s entirely possible, Riley thinks, that if Ava decided she wanted a sunny day for her wedding and a cloud appeared in the sky, that the girl would simply plant herself in place to glare up at the sky and will the cloud into retreating.

“Well, you’ve got me there.” She concedes, smirking and glancing down the wraparound porch. “Where is my future sister-in-law?”

“One of her bridesmaids stumbled at graduation so she is hosting a pre-rehearsal walk-down-the-aisle-in-your heels practice session before she has to get back here for the big family welcome dinner.”

Again, not exactly out of character for Ava. “You mean the high school graduation that happened three years ago?”

“The middle school one, actually. Ava has a long memory.” Auggie says matter-of-factly. “But enough about that.” He taps her shoulder. “How are you? How was your flight? Where is this mysterious boyfriend that you never once mentioned until all of a sudden you were bringing him here?”

Riley knows he’s only really asking the last question; he cares about the other stuff too, but they talk all the time, so the sticking point for him is definitely that she hasn’t ever talked about Lucas before. Auggie will be the hardest sell of the weekend, not only because he knows the most details of her life to poke holes in her story, but because he’s always been suspicious of her suitors and protective of her. She’ll have to be careful to be as normal as possible around him.

“I’m fine, the flight was long, and Lucas is getting our things out of the car.” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder towards the parking lot. She can’t help but glancing over her shoulder as she does so. Playing it cool might be the best option to lower any suspicions but she’s never been very good at it. Her nerves always manage to take over.

Auggie follows the gesture and blinks. “The blond guy in the jeans and the smedium t-shirt?”

“Yeah.”

“The one pretending it takes more than thirty seconds to take two bags out of the trunk of a ridiculously beautiful sports car?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The one who looks like he was ripped from the cover of American Apple Pie Boy’s Next Door?”

Not exactly how she would have put it but she can’t exactly deny the resemblance is there. “That’s the one.”

“Are you sure?”

“Auggie!” Riley smacks lightly at her brother’s shoulder.

He dodges, laughing. “I’m sorry, but I watched a lot of guys flirt with you when you were pulling shifts at the bakery and whenever you were into it, it was not with the guys that looked like that.” He waves his hand up and down. “That is not the sort of guy you go for. I know I haven’t seen him without a shirt off or anything but I’m pretty sure his abs have abs.”

Riley’s not sure how she’s supposed to respond. Partially because Auggie is right--she has never dated or even seriously flirted with a guy that’s so blatantly handsome and athletic; Charlie had been her first serious relationship and after him it had taken her a long time to even want to flirt and date again. It had taken even longer to start tackling the resulting self-esteem issues, a problem that, if she’s being honest with herself, she’s still working on. She’s never really been sure that guys who look like Lucas are genuinely interested in her so it’s always been easier to treat them as if they aren’t and stick with other types of guys.

She’s also at a loss because she also has never seen Lucas without his shirt off. Which sounds incredibly stupid, she knows, but the moment Auggie mentions it, Riley realizes that the status of Lucas’ abdominal muscles is almost definitely something that she should be aware of. After all, as far as everyone else is concerned, she and Lucas have been dating for several months.

And for all the planning she and Lucas have done, discussing the details of the nature of their fake relationship like where they met and where he took her on their one month anniversary, they have not really talked about whether or not they’ve taken any kinds of steps as a fake couple where she really would be privy to the what sort of torso he is barely concealing beneath his t-shirts.

“Yeah, he is really...really muscular.” It seems like a safe enough comment; anyone with eyes can tell that the man has muscles, even when he has his shirt on.

“Who’s that?”

Riley nearly jumps out of her skin in the split second it takes for her to realize that the smiling voice near her ear and the arm snaking around her waist belong to Lucas, but when she reaches her conclusion she manages to tamp back her reaction to something that she hopes is a bit more appropriate for being joined by one’s boyfriend. She still stiffens in surprise, but manages to release most of the tension and ease back into the embrace with a nervous giggle. “You.”

Being this close to Lucas, there’s really no question: with or without his shirt, he has a very healthy form. Riley swallows.

“I don’t think I’m that--,”

“You are.” Riley and Auggie cut off Lucas’ protest in unison, then share a grin.

“Well I’m not gonna argue the point too strongly.” Lucas says. He glances between the two siblings. “Did I take enough time getting the bags out of the car for you two to catch up or do you need me to go back?”

“Nope, you’re perfect.” Riley answers and then realizes what she said. She blushes and peers briefly at the ground, even as Lucas threads the fingers of one hand with hers and squeezes gently. She supposes that’s probably meant to be reassuring and a message that they’re doing OK but it’s just another reminder of how bizarre and out-of-character this situation is; she doesn’t do this sort of close contact with people she’s known forever, and yet here she is with a practical stranger. And not hating it. Struggling to figure out what to say and how to act the part, but not hating it. “I was just about to tell Auggie about you. Auggie, this is Lucas. The guy I’ve been seeing.”

Lucas doesn’t let go of her hand, merely uses his other hand to reach over and greet Auggie and offer his congratulations on the wedding. “You know, Riley’s told me so much, it’s great to finally meet you.”

“Likewise.” Auggie nods. “I mean, Riley hasn’t told me very much at all. Nothing actually. But it’s always fun to meet the guys who manage wiggle their way into her life.”

Auggie is supposed to be the easiest part of the week, but at the shrewd look on her little brother’s face, Riley is starting to think that while it may be on a different front from the rest of the family, he might be just as much trouble.

#rucas #rucas fanfic #riley matthews #lucas friar #gmw #fanfiction #au #fic: Cold Cape Cod Clams

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Nora Lum, a.k.a. Awkwafina — the YouTube viral sensation turned star in this year’s Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians and this week’s Saturday Night Live host — is having a very good 2018.

Her movies are doing well: Crazy Rich Asians is on track to be one of the biggest success stories of 2018; Oceans 8 has outearned all the other Oceans movies. And Awkwafina herself is being hailed as part of an immensely likable ensemble in Oceans 8, and as the breakout star of Crazy Rich Asians.

Rolling Stone called her Crazy Rich Asians performance “a singular, unforgettable take on the often-forgettable BFF part.” She’s “on the cusp of a movie star moment,” wrote Refinery 29. Newsweek declared 2018 “her year.”

“This is what Hollywood is built on,” gossip expert Elaine Lui told the Washington Post of Awkwafina’s current moment: “the moment a star arrives.”

But when Lum talks about her current star-making moment, she doesn’t seem to fully associate it with herself. That’s because she talks about Nora and Awkwafina as two different people.

She talks about leaving her office job for show business as going off “in pursuit of Awkwafina.” She switches between the first and third person when she talks about her persona. “You can put as much makeup [on me as you want] and put me in dance classes, but she’ll never be mainstream,” she told GQ, referring to herself and her persona (italics added). “It’s just not going to happen.”

“Awkwafina is someone who never grew up, who never had to bear the brunt of all the insecurities and overthinking that come with adulthood. Awkwafina is the girl I was in high school — who did not give a shit,” she explained to the Guardian in June. “Nora is neurotic and an overthinker and could never perform in front of an audience of hecklers.”

It’s a classic Norma Jean versus Marilyn Monroe split, and it’s laying some important groundwork for how Awkwafina’s career might develop.

Right now, Awkwafina is celebrated for her raunch; she’s America’s new favorite unruly woman. She’s doing the Melissa McCarthy/Tiffany Haddish maneuver, and doing it exceptionally well. She’s even got the SNL hosting gig to prove it, right on schedule: McCarthy hosted SNL for the first time six months after Bridesmaids premiered, and Haddish hosted four months after Girls Trip; Awkwafina’s outing comes four months after Ocean’s 8 and two months after Crazy Rich Asians.

That means that Awkwafina is currently on track to emulate the career path modeled by McCarthy and Haddish before her. But because she’s developed the Awkwafina/Nora split, she’s also left herself an escape route.

An unruly woman is a woman who transgresses the boundaries in which women are supposed to live their lives, and preferably one who does it gleefully, laughing all the time. She is the opposite of what we are taught a woman is supposed to be: She might be fat, or she might straightforwardly pursue sex, or she might just genuinely like herself without apology.

In her book The Unruly Woman, film scholar Kathleen Rowe names Miss Piggy — with her “overpowering” size and affection and her penchant for karate chops — one of the greatest unruly women on the American screen. The unruly woman breaks the rules of femininity, and she makes us love her for it.

When Melissa McCarthy exploded onto the screen in 2011’s Bridesmaids — stealing dogs and shitting in sinks with glee and abandon — she was breaking the rules on a new level. Bridesmaids was a whole movie about women who got to be gross and funny, and McCarthy was the grossest and funniest one of all.

GQ called her performance “the bravest, most batshit, most balls-out, and hilarious performance of the year,” and devoted an oral history to it. McCarthy “lit up the screen like a 500-watt bulb,” said Rolling Stone.

“Most of us remember the first time we realized that McCarthy was the funniest thing since really funny sliced bread,” recalled E Online five years later. “Some Bridesmaids fans cite the engagement scene when she pledges to ‘Climb that like a tree,’ others prefer the sight gag of her driving down the highway while wrangling a litter of puppies.”

McCarthy’s performance was so compelling that it effectively redirected her career. Before Bridesmaids, she was best known for being bubbly and sweet on shows Gilmore Girls and Mike and Molly; post-Bridesmaids, McCarthy would be best known for starring in a string of raunch comedies, some of them directed by Bridesmaids’s Paul Feig, and Mike and Molly would be tweaked to give McCarthy and her slapstick acumen more attention.

Six years later, Girls Trip premiered and it was Tiffany Haddish’s turn to take the Unruly Woman crown. Girls Trip, like Bridesmaids before it, was a raunchy sex comedy, and Haddish, like McCarthy before her, was the raunchiest one in the cast.

Over the course of the movie, Haddish gleefully scores absinthe, demonstrates her blowjob technique, and pees on a crowd while hanging from a zip line. The critics adored her. “It’s Haddish who brings all the hardest laughs,” opined Vanity Fair. USA Today called her “comedy gold.” “Tiffany Haddish steals the entire film,” concluded Caroline Framke for Vox.

What was shocking and exciting about these two performances was that McCarthy and Haddish were breaking all the rules of femininity — and they were doing it with incredible warmth and self-possession. (“I just love anybody who’s that comfortable in her own skin,” McCarthy confessed to GQ.) McCarthy and Haddish were utterly unruly and they loved themselves, and that made the rest of us love them too.

Moreover, they were breaking those rules in an extremely specific context. Part of what made Haddish and McCarthy’s performances so compelling is that they were playing the most unruly women in a group of women who were already pretty unruly. They were there to establish the outer limits in each movie’s Overton Window of raunch: next to McCarthy shitting in the sink, Kristen Wigg projectile vomiting doesn’t seem so bad. Jada Pinkett Smith pees onto a crowd while hanging from a zip line, too, but she does it accidentally, while whimpering with shame; when Haddish follows suit, she does it with both intention and glee.

Both Bridesmaids and Girl’s Trip are id-driven movies, and McCarthy and Haddish provide the bulk of the id. That frees up the rest of the cast to be grownups while they get to have all the fun.

As a culture, we seem to need to pick a woman every few years who is allowed to be bigger and brasher and louder and grosser than everyone around her, who is able to be unruly and who forces us to love her anyway. We want someone who is willing to break the rules, and to make the argument through the sheer force of their charisma that the rules are there to be broken. And this year, it’s Awkwafina’s turn.

[embedded content]

Awkwafina emerged into public consciousness primed to take the crown as America’s next favorite unruly woman. Her first viral hit was her YouTube rap “My Vag,” which sees her pulling a violin out of an off-camera vagina and boasting, “My vag speaks five different languages, and told your vag, ‘Go make me a sandwich.’” Her first movie role was a small part in the raunch-comedy Neighbors 2, which saw her flinging used tampons at a house.

Her big breakout movie came with Crazy Rich Asians, which doesn’t have the raunch of a Bridesmaids or a Girls Trip: it’s a conventional romantic comedy with no jokes about bodily fluids. But within the confines of a classic romcom, Awkwafina shines with her own kind of unruliness, one that’s calibrated to stand out against the film’s more traditionally comedic tone.

Critics have drawn the connection to her immediate predecessor in unruliness. Awkwafina “Tiffany Haddishes away with this film in a big old way,” said Glen Weldon on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. “You’re going to get tired of people telling you” about her.

Awkwafina is playing Peik Lin, the main character’s best friend, and it’s her blonde-wigged brashness that powers the movie through its funniest scenes. She feels like she’s in a different, slightly coarser movie than everyone else, in a good way.

Awkwafina is the id monster of this movie in the same way that McCarthy and Haddish were the id monsters of their respective breakouts, and it’s the over-the-top new money crassness of her character Peik Lin that allows Constance Wu’s Americanized Rachel Chu to feel comparatively well-behaved. Peik Lin has set the outer limit of the Overton Window of unruliness in this world.

In the sweet, mannered, Austenian universe of Crazy Rich Asians, when Peik Lin says, “Bawk, bawk, bitch,” or tiptoes through a lavish house party in designer pajamas, she’s being about as unruly as anyone could manage. She’s the only person in the whole movie who gets to say fuck.

“In a romantic comedy, you get very earnest,” director John Chu told Rolling Stone, “and you need someone who can pop it, who feels confident and different, not the same old sidekick.” That’s where brash, bold Awkwafina comes in. But it’s not where careful, considering Nora Lum comes in.

Which is not to say that Awkwafina hasn’t incorporated Nora Lum into her acting at all. “I don’t know which one I turn on for acting,” she told GQ, before suggesting that she might rely on both: “Lum is the calculating, thoughtful preparation,” the article summarizes. “Awkwafina is the chaos.” But it’s the chaotic glee of Awkwafina that’s powering her rise to movie stardom right now, and Awkwafina’s unruliness that critics are lauding.

But by separating Awkwafina from Nora, Lum has also built an alternative future for herself. She has essentially replicated the work that the unruly woman traditionally does in a comedy within her own persona: Awkwafina sets the outer limits of the Overton Window of raunch the way Peik Lin does in Crazy Rich Asians, so that beside her Nora Lum looks comparatively more conventional, the way Rachel Chu does next to Peik Lin. Awkwafina is the id monster, and Nora Lum the grownup.

And that duality gives Awkwafina the possibility for enormous freedom in her future career. She can be both the unruly woman and the ingenue, because she’s laid the groundwork for audiences to see her as both. She’s built her very own personal foil.

Original Source -> How Awkwafina rode the unruly woman trope to stardom

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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marketing-physics · 6 years

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Those Dreaded Two Words: Pledge Drive

I’m a huge fan of NPR and I contribute annually to my local NPR station, KQED in San Francisco. They do a terrific job – except for three times a year where for about two or three weeks they put on their pledge drive.

Agony. Frustration. Disappointment.

I understand why they need to raise money and, as said, I’m a member. But why they handle pledge drives the way they do boggles my mind. Every hour during the day, from twenty minutes after the hour to thirty minutes after the hour and from fifty minutes to the top of the hour, they interrupt really good programming for ten minutes of redundant banality. A testimonial followed by people repeating essentially the same script about how important public radio is, offering gifts for subscribing and why we need to contribute…over and over again.

I do what I suspect most people do: turn off my radio for ten minutes or switch to another station.

What purpose does it serve to promote the pledge drive when I suspect most people are turning it off.

Proof point is that this current fall pledge drive has yet to meet its goals so they’re extending it.

What makes matters worse is that they’re interrupting regular programming. I’m missing 20 minutes an hour of insightful, thought provoking material – material that NPR and KQED invested a lot of time and money into developing and producing. I feel like I’m being ripped off. After all, I contributed to that programming in a small way.

Another public radio station in my area, KFJC, a community college radio station, does it a different (and in my opinion) better way. During their pledge drive, they prepare clever and entertaining one minute commercials. Now the styles of these likely aren’t a fit for NPR/KQED because they sometimes sing the commercial or their rather oddly and occasionally rudely humorous. But, the point is that they’re entertaining and I listen to them – rather than turning the radio off.

Why not have a local or NPR personality record one minute commercials reminding people why they listen to or value NPR and public broadcasting. NPR, in fact, does something like this with some of their national news correspondents. They’re interesting and insightful and they actually offer (to me) some emotional impact.

Try it once KQED I implore you. I’m tired of trying to schedule my out-of-town trips around your pledge drives.

(But even if you don’t, I promise I’ll keep renewing my membership – just not during one of the pledge drives.)

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djgblogger-blog · 6 years

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How to get the biggest bang out of matching funds

http://bit.ly/2A0wodz

That looks like a good match. Peshkova/Shutterstock.com

How many times have you tuned into your local NPR station and instead of the regularly scheduled program you’ve heard “If we get 20 donations by the end of this hour, a generous donor will give us $500 in matching funds”? How much of your mail and email, especially in December, bears messages like “If you give today, a generous donor will match your donation dollar-for-dollar”?

I am an economist who studies nonprofit fundraising, and these pitches made me want to find out whether matching funds, a common tool, really make people more likely to give.

Fundraising drives are routine for nonprofits that rely on donations. iQoncept/Shutterstock.com

Donations, including matching ones, are extremely important to nonprofits. NPR, for example, gets almost 40 percent of its funding from listeners, 20 percent from corporations and only 5 percent from the government.

Feeling important

Research on this topic has raised questions about this common fundraising tool’s effectiveness. Some studies have found that matching funds increase the likelihood someone will donate any amount, while others have not detected that benefit.

To determine one way that matching funds might work, I teamed up with fellow researcher Mike Schreck of the Analysis Group, an economic consulting firm. We looked into whether making people feel important by having them unlock matching funds for the nonprofits they support would increase the number of donations.

To understand what we mean by “feel important,” consider what happens when NPR stations say “We need 20 donors by the end of the hour to get $500 in matching funds.” If you could know for sure that 19 people would answer that call, you could believe in your power to personally activate the match.

However, if you could be certain that only 18 people will call in, then even if you make a donation the goal of 20 won’t be met. And if you were certain that at least 20 other people will call in, you would realize that you could be the 21st donor or the 22nd. In those cases your gift would still count, but you wouldn’t be helping to make a match.

Multiple matches

We reasoned that by tinkering with different thresholds and changing the number of donors needed to unlock matching funds, we could change how important potential donors would feel.

To give that a shot, we first partnered with an educational charity that requested anonymity.

The nonprofit mailed five different types of letters asking prospects for donations. Everyone on its mailing list randomly received one of the five letters. They included a traditional dollar-for-dollar match letter – meaning that if donors gave US$10, the charity would automatically receive $20 – and a control-group letter that simply told people about the group’s mission and asked for a donation.

We also created three letters telling recipients they had been randomly assigned to a group of 10 people. One promised that if at least one of the 10 donated, the charity would get an extra $50 in matching funds. Another said that if at least two of them made a gift, the nonprofit would receive that $50. The third letter pledged those $50 in matching funds if at least three recipients donated.

Everything we told potential donors was true. There was indeed a generous person who promised to make those matches if the various thresholds were met, along with dollar-for-dollar matches if that’s what a donor’s letter told them would happen across the board.

What worked best

Eight weeks later, we measured and compared the donation rates for the five kinds of letters.

Only 1.59 percent of the prospective donors who got the control-group letter with no match made donations, the lowest rate. The second-lowest donation rate was for those who got a letter requiring one person in 10 to activate matching funds, at 2 percent, followed by a 2.34 percent rate for the people promised an unconditional dollar-for-dollar match. The donation rate among prospective donors told that gifts from two in 10 would do the trick was about the same, at 2.35 percent.

For the people told matching funds would require three donors, the donation rate stood much higher: 3.68 pecent. That surprised us because we thought the higher goal would discourage donations. Instead, potential donors seemed to be reacting to our raising the bar by themselves rising to the greater challenge. It’s possible that as the goal rose, people felt more needed and so were more likely to give.

Response rates in the low single digits may sound underwhelming. But donation rates for this kind of campaign typically run only 2 percent and even averages of 0.5 percent or less can be worth it for fundraisers.

To further test whether making people feel more likely to activate matching funds makes them more apt to give to a charity, we did another study, this time working with people in person. We asked them to decide whether to donate and to tell us how important they thought their gifts would be in terms of activating the matching funds.

We summarize the results from both the mailing and the other study in a paper that is forthcoming in Games and Economic Behavior.

As with the mailings, we found that the more instrumental a person thought their gift was in terms of activating matching funds, the more likely they were to donate.

What should nonprofits learn from our research? Not all pitches about matching funds are equal. The ones that make potential donors feel that their gift is a key part of what it will take to unlock that extra money work best.

Laura Gee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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anchorarcade · 7 years

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Congress begins final lap on defense policy bill in ‘pass the gavel’ meeting

http://ryanguillory.com/congress-begins-final-lap-on-defense-policy-bill-in-pass-the-gavel-meeting/

Congress begins final lap on defense policy bill in ‘pass the gavel’ meeting

BIG FOUR HUDDLE ON NDAA: The Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress’ two armed services committees, called the Big Four, are set to meet today at 2:20 p.m. for the first time to hash out the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. The House has passed a $696 billion NDAA bill and the Senate has passed a $700 billion version, and both chambers named members to a conference committee this month aimed at negotiating compromise legislation. Sens. John McCain and Jack Reed will now sit down behind closed doors with Reps. Mac Thornberry and Adam Smith to discuss and smooth out differences, as well as “pass the gavel,” according to the committees. Each year the chairmanship of the NDAA conference alternates; McCain will be handing control over to Thornberry this year.

When asked recently what will be some of “the toughest nuts to crack,” McCain pointed to the House plan to create a Space Corps within the Department of the Air Force. Sen. Bill Nelson, a senior Armed Services member who sponsored legislation opposing the move, has said the new military service will never happen. But Rep. Mike Rogers, who is spearheading the push for a Space Corps, said he was feeling optimistic. “The Big Four is where it is going to be decided,” Rogers told the Washington Examiner. “The Senate, once they become more familiar with the underlying issues, it sells itself.” Pentagon leaders are against the proposal, saying the Air Force can handle military space functions already, and standing up a Space Corps would only create redundancies.

TRILATERAL CONFAB ON NORTH KOREA: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met in the Philippines with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting yesterday. “North Korea’s provocations threaten regional and global security despite unanimous condemnation by the United Nations Security Council,” Mattis said. He then quoted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has articulated the U.S. objective as “the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo said North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats “continue to heighten” and its “provocative behavior is becoming worse and worse.” Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said the threat posed by North Korea has “grown to [an] unprecedented, critical and imminent level.”

3 CARRIERS IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC: The Navy announced this morning that the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz has arrived in the Western Pacific, joining the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Theodore Roosevelt strike groups as tensions increase with North Korea. A release from U.S. 7th Fleet said Nimitz is on its way home from the Middle East and will be “ready to support operations” throughout the area as it passes through and conducts a port visit in the region. Roosevelt entered the Western Pacific Monday. Reagan is homeported in Japan.

CHINA’S NEW ORDER: Chinese President Xi Jinping has ushered in a new era of leadership, consolidating his power under a new plan that does not include a designated successor among the six officials who will help him rule in his second five-year term. Xi was given a mandate at today’s meeting of the China’s Central Committee. The absence of an obvious successor pointed to Xi’s longer-term ambitions, Joseph Fewsmith, an expert on Chinese politics at Boston University, told The Associated Press. “It suggests that Xi will likely serve a third term, and that he is likely to name his own successor,” Fewsmith said. “We have not seen that for two decades.”

KURDS CAVE ON INDEPENDENCE, FOR NOW: Two days after Tillerson, in a brief visit to Baghdad, called for Kurds to negotiate with Iraq’s central government, it appears they are willing to put their desire for independence on hold and give talks a chance. Baghdad has been methodically pushing the Kurds out of areas of northern Iraq that they occupied as the Islamic State was pushed back in 2014. A referendum on support for an independent Kurdish state in the north won overwhelming support, and fueled tensions with the government of Haider al-Abadi. The U.S. supports Abadi’s insistence on a unified Iraq.

In a statement, the Kurdistan Regional Government said, “The fighting between the two sides will not produce a victory for any, it will take the country to total destruction,” according to Reuters, which says the Kurds are proposing an immediate ceasefire, a suspension of the referendum result, and “starting an open dialogue with the federal government based on the Iraqi Constitution.”

McCAIN SAYS ‘I CHOOSE THE KURDS’: In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. John McCain says he’s solidly behind the Kurds in the dispute. “Let me be clear: If Baghdad cannot guarantee the Kurdish people in Iraq the security, freedom and opportunities they desire, and if the United States is forced to choose between Iranian-backed militias and our longstanding Kurdish partners, I choose the Kurds.”

McCain says while the U.S. is “basking in the feeling of victory,” Iranian forces are “working to sow discord inside Iraq, maneuver Iraqi politics against the United States; and turn next year’s election into a strategic setback that drives American influence out of the country.”

TILLERSON IN PAKISTAN, INDIA: From Iraq, Tillerson moved on to Pakistan, where he pressed for new measures to prevent northern regions of the country from being used as a terrorist haven. Speaking to staff at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Tillerson said, “We’re going to be very open, very frank about the challenges that we see, how we need to work together to address those challenges, certain things we really need for the Pakistan leadership to undertake, but we also want them to understand we’re here to work together as partners, and we should be working toward the same objective.”

Today, Tillerson is in New Delhi, where the U.S. wants to urge India to play a bigger role in the region and serve as a counterbalance to China.

Good Wednesday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre), National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten) and Senior Editor David Brown (@dave_brown24). Email us here for tips, suggestions, calendar items and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter @dailyondefense.

Q3 EARNINGS: F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin yesterday reported net sales of $12.2 billion for the third quarter of this year, up from $11.6 billion one year ago. Net earnings dipped, from $1.1 billion last year to $939 million this quarter. “Our continued focus on operational performance and meeting our delivery commitments has enabled us to increase our financial guidance and post a record backlog that supports long term growth,” CEO Marillyn Hewson said in a release. “As we look ahead to 2018, we remain focused on delivering for our customers, investing in innovative solutions, and returning value to our shareholders.”

This morning, Northrop Grumman is reporting third quarter 2017 sales up 6 percent to $6.5 billion from $6.2 billion in the third quarter of 2016. Net earnings increased 7 percent to $645 million from $602 million in the prior year. “All three of our businesses continue to execute well. Our third quarter operational performance in combination with strategic actions, such as the agreement to acquire Orbital ATK, continues to support our strategy to drive profitable growth over the long term,” Chairman and CEO Wes Bush said in a statement.

MORE NIGER AMBUSH DETAILS, PART I: The team of U.S. soldiers that were ambushed in Niger this month, which led to the deaths of four soldiers, was reportedly collecting intelligence on a terrorist leader when they came under fire. Two military officials told CNN the 12-man U.S. Army team did not have orders to kill or capture the terrorist leader.

MORE NIGER AMBUSH DETAILS, PART II: Army records show that the four U.S. soldiers killed during the ambush had little to no combat experience prior to their deployment. Three had only been deployed once, and one of them had never been deployed abroad, according to the Wall Street Journal. Additionally, none of them had received the Army’s combat infantry badge or combat action badge, awards given to those who have encountered action with an enemy.

MORE NIGER AMBUSH DETAILS, PART III: Video footage depicting a group of young men riding motorcycles and armed with rifles and machine guns is being examined by U.S. intelligence officials as part of an effort to identify the militants behind the ambush. The video was given to ABC News by retired Lt. Col. Rudolph Atallah, a former U.S. military expert on West Africa, who said it was provided by villagers near the attack. Atallah said the video was recorded by Abu Walid, a leader of a local terrorist affiliate that had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

SASC TO BE BRIEFED: The Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to get a classified briefing on the Oct. 4 Niger ambush tomorrow. Among the questions the committee has is whether Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of U.S. Africa Command, has all the assets he needs to carry out his assigned mission, Sen. Richard Blumenthal told NPR this morning. Blumenthal says AFRICOM is suffering from a shortage of intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance platforms, in other words, aerial drones.

The lack of a U.S. surveillance drone overhead that would have spotted the hostile forces before they surprised the U.S. and Nigerien troops is one of seven unknowns we have identified about the Niger mission.

CHINA SANCTION: House lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly in favor of new sanctions designed to curtail China’s support for North Korea. Rep. Andy Barr wrote the legislation to impose sanctions on “virtually anyone that facilitates trade and investment with North Korea.” Chinese companies represent the chief target of those measures, as China stands as the leading patron of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime.

The legislation also builds upon U.S. efforts to stiffen economic sanctions at the United Nations Security Council, in the face of Russian and Chinese recalcitrance. The bill — the Otto Warmbier North Korea Nuclear Sanctions Act — is named for the American college student who was arrested while traveling in North Korea and died shortly after being returned to the U.S. in a coma.

URANIUM DEAL: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes yesterday announced the launch of a joint investigation with the House Oversight Committee into a 2010 deal under the Obama administration that resulted in Russia taking control of a significant amount of America’s uranium supplies.

“This is just the beginning of this probe,” Nunes said in a press conference from the Capitol. “We are not going to jump to any conclusions at this time, but one of the things, as you know, that we’re concerned about is whether or not there was an FBI investigation. Was there a DOJ investigation? And if so, why was Congress not informed of this matter?”

The controversies over the 2010 deal have resurfaced after media reports suggested that Russia was working to blackmail and extort people in America in order to further Moscow’s pursuit of atomic energy interests in the United States.

RUSSIA’S MOVE: Russia blocked an effort to extend an investigation into Syria’s use of chemical weapons by casting a veto Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council. The investigation into chemical weapons in Syria has been a political football for years, but especially in recent months following President Trump’s authorization of an airstrike against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime in April. But Russian President Vladimir Putin has argued that Assad might have been framed by terrorists in order to justify the strike, a claim that set the tone for the debate over the U.N.’s Joint Investigative Mechanism for reviewing the attacks.

IT WAS ALL US: The State Department is rejecting any suggestion that the defeat of the Islamic State in its chief stronghold was the result of a “multi-administration” effort that began under former President Barack Obama. “The previous administration tried,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Tuesday. “But President Trump, and under this administration, we have doubled down on the efforts to take back all of the territory that had been taken by ISIS.”

The refusal to give any credit to Obama’s team ignores the fact that the “by, with and through” strategy that defeated ISIS began three years ago, and the crucial battle that broke the back of the terrorist group was the assault on Mosul, an operation that was planned and began before Trump took office (and a campaign he completely called “a disaster”).

Military scholars can debate to what extent adjustments to the strategy implemented under Trump accelerated the defeat, but the outcome was clear by the time of Trump’s inauguration in January.

THE RUNDOWN

The Diplomat: North Korea Has Tested A New Solid-Fuel Missile Engine

Defense News: Pentagon kicks off intensive F-35 cost review

New York Times: Tillerson in Kabul? Two photos lead to many questions

Wall Street Journal: Russia casts cloud over future of chemical arms probe in Syria

Military Times: U.S. lawmakers seek vote to abandon Saudi-led war in Yemen

AP: U.S. suspects Niger villager betrayed Army troops

War on the Rocks: It’s too early to pop champagne in Baghdad: The micro-politics of territorial control in Iraq

CNN: U.S. team in Niger was collecting intel

Stars and Stripes: Mattis, allies eye faster military movement across Europe

Washington Times: China Claims U.S. Navy Accidents In Pacific Due To Overstretched Fleet

Daily Beast: GOP leaders refusing to pay for Dana Rohrabacher’s travel over Russia fears

Capital News Service: Maryland A Battleground In Transgender Military Ban Fight

New York Times: A Sergeant’s Last Mission: Soldiering, Barbering and Missing His Family at Home

San Diego Union-Tribune: Court: Top Navy Lawyer’s Unlawful Influence Tainted SEAL’s San Diego Rape Case

Calendar

WEDNESDAY | OCT. 25

8 a.m. 2401 M St. NW. Defense Writers Group breakfast with Gen. Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee. centermediasecurity.org

9:15 a.m. Senate Visitors Center 217. Closed briefing on major threats facing naval forces and the Navy’s current and planned capabilities to meet those threats with Adm. Bill Moran, vice chief of naval operations, and Jason Reynolds, director of special programs for the chief of naval operations. armed-services.senate.gov

9:15 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Transformational leadership in international affairs with Sen. Ben Cardin. csis.org

10 a.m. Senate Visitors Center 217. Closed security update on Nigeria with Donald Yamamoto, acting assistant secretary of state, and Mike Miller, director of the Office of Regional and Arms Transfers at the State Department. foreign.senate.gov

10 a.m. Rayburn 2172. Next steps after the president’s Iran decision. foreignaffairs.house.gov

10:30 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Book discussion of “Vets and Pets: Wounded Warriors and the Animals that Help Them Heal” with authors Kevin Ferris and Dava Guerin. heritage.org

12 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. A book discussion of “Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator’s Quest for Disarmament in a Nuclear Subcontinent” with author Larry Pressler, a former U.S. senator. hudson.org

5 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Book launch of “Crashback, The Power Clash Between the U.S. and China in the Pacific” with author Michael Fabey. csis.org

THURSDAY | OCT. 26

8:15 p.m. 1777 F St. NW. Documentary screening and discussion of “Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS.” cfr.org

9:30 a.m. 529 14th St. NW. The parallel gulag: North Korea’s “an-jeon-bu” prison camps. press.org

10 a.m. Senate Visitor Center 217. Closed briefing on Niger with Robert Karem, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and Maj. Gen. Albert Elton II, Joint Staff deputy director for special operations and counterterrorism. armed-services.senate.gov

12 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Maintaining transatlantic unity on Ukraine with H.E. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former secretary general of Nato. hudson.org

4 p.m. 529 14th St. NW. Redeploying U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea with Joon-Pyo Hong, chairman of the Liberty Korea Party and Congressional Delegation. press.org

FRIDAY | OCT. 27

8 a.m. 300 1st St. SE. Mitchell space breakfast series: U.S. allies in space with Air Vice-Marshal “Rocky” Rochelle, of the Royal Air Force, and Wing Commander Steven Henry, Australian exchange officer at the Defense Department. michellaerospacepower.org

2 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Inclusion in combat and security: A book event with Maj. M.J. Hegar. wilsoncenter.org

2 p.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Book discussion of “Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: The Battle That Shaped America’s Destiny” with authors Brian Kilmeade, co-host of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” and Don Yaeger. heritage.org

MONDAY | OCT. 30

5701 Marinelli Rd. IPPM: Future dimensions of integration. ndia.org

9 a.m. 901 N. Stuart St. Microelectronics manufacturing models workshop. ndia.org

9:30 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Iraqi public opinion on the rise, fall and future of ISIS. csis.org

11 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Book discussion of “Inside Terrorism” with author Bruce Hoffman. wilsoncenter.org

2 p.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Russia’s demography: The basis for a prosperous future? atlanticcouncil.org

5 p.m. Dirksen 419. The administration perspective on the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. foreign.senate.gov

5:30 p.m. 1667 K St. NW. Book talk on “Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015.” csbaonline.org

TUESDAY | OCT. 31

10:30 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The unfinished business of the 1989 East European revolutions. wilsoncenter.org

WEDNESDAY | NOV. 1

8 a.m. 1550 W. Nursery Rd. Cyber DFARS workshop. ndia.org

9:30 a.m. 1152 15th St. NW. Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Summit with Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, Inc. and the chair of the Defense Innovation Advisory Board. cnas.org

10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Press briefing on President Trump’s trip to Asia. csis.org

2 p.m. House Visitor Center 210. Russia Investigative task force open hearing with social media companies including Kent Walker, general counsel for Google; Colin Stretch, general counsel for Facebook; and Sean Edgett, general counsel for Twitter. intelligence.house.gov

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stevedietgoedde · 5 years

Photo

UPDATE: The book has been 100% funded! It will be released summer of 2019. Thank you for your support!

Only 24 hours left, and we're *almost* there! I'm starting to feel like I'm an NPR pledge drive - I don't have any SDG totebags but every book preorder WILL come with a set of ten 5x7 Kumi postcards. If you've enjoyed my photography over the decades, please consider making a contribution. I don't make a living off of my photography - I've always had day jobs to pay the bills. That allows me to do my art as a passionate hobby. I do it when I want and how I want, thus not having to compromise my vision. It's an extremely personal process for me, and that's what makes this book so special - it documents the mutual respect of friends simply making pretty pictures together.

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awesomefelicitylewis-blog · 7 years

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Congress begins final lap on defense policy bill in ‘pass the gavel’ meeting

http://ryanguillory.com/congress-begins-final-lap-on-defense-policy-bill-in-pass-the-gavel-meeting/

Congress begins final lap on defense policy bill in ‘pass the gavel’ meeting

Today, Tillerson is in New Delhi, where the U.S. wants to urge India to play a bigger role in the region and serve as a counterbalance to China.

Military scholars can debate to what extent adjustments to the strategy implemented under Trump accelerated the defeat, but the outcome was clear by the time of Trump’s inauguration in January.

THE RUNDOWN

The Diplomat: North Korea Has Tested A New Solid-Fuel Missile Engine

Defense News: Pentagon kicks off intensive F-35 cost review

New York Times: Tillerson in Kabul? Two photos lead to many questions

Wall Street Journal: Russia casts cloud over future of chemical arms probe in Syria

Military Times: U.S. lawmakers seek vote to abandon Saudi-led war in Yemen

AP: U.S. suspects Niger villager betrayed Army troops

War on the Rocks: It’s too early to pop champagne in Baghdad: The micro-politics of territorial control in Iraq

CNN: U.S. team in Niger was collecting intel

Stars and Stripes: Mattis, allies eye faster military movement across Europe

Washington Times: China Claims U.S. Navy Accidents In Pacific Due To Overstretched Fleet

Daily Beast: GOP leaders refusing to pay for Dana Rohrabacher’s travel over Russia fears

Capital News Service: Maryland A Battleground In Transgender Military Ban Fight

New York Times: A Sergeant’s Last Mission: Soldiering, Barbering and Missing His Family at Home

San Diego Union-Tribune: Court: Top Navy Lawyer’s Unlawful Influence Tainted SEAL’s San Diego Rape Case

Calendar

WEDNESDAY | OCT. 25

8 a.m. 2401 M St. NW. Defense Writers Group breakfast with Gen. Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee. centermediasecurity.org

9:15 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Transformational leadership in international affairs with Sen. Ben Cardin. csis.org

10 a.m. Rayburn 2172. Next steps after the president’s Iran decision. foreignaffairs.house.gov

10:30 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. Book discussion of “Vets and Pets: Wounded Warriors and the Animals that Help Them Heal” with authors Kevin Ferris and Dava Guerin. heritage.org

5 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Book launch of “Crashback, The Power Clash Between the U.S. and China in the Pacific” with author Michael Fabey. csis.org

THURSDAY | OCT. 26

8:15 p.m. 1777 F St. NW. Documentary screening and discussion of “Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS.” cfr.org

9:30 a.m. 529 14th St. NW. The parallel gulag: North Korea’s “an-jeon-bu” prison camps. press.org

12 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Maintaining transatlantic unity on Ukraine with H.E. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former secretary general of Nato. hudson.org

4 p.m. 529 14th St. NW. Redeploying U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea with Joon-Pyo Hong, chairman of the Liberty Korea Party and Congressional Delegation. press.org

FRIDAY | OCT. 27

2 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Inclusion in combat and security: A book event with Maj. M.J. Hegar. wilsoncenter.org

MONDAY | OCT. 30

5701 Marinelli Rd. IPPM: Future dimensions of integration. ndia.org

9 a.m. 901 N. Stuart St. Microelectronics manufacturing models workshop. ndia.org

9:30 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Iraqi public opinion on the rise, fall and future of ISIS. csis.org

11 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Book discussion of “Inside Terrorism” with author Bruce Hoffman. wilsoncenter.org

2 p.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Russia’s demography: The basis for a prosperous future? atlanticcouncil.org

5 p.m. Dirksen 419. The administration perspective on the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. foreign.senate.gov

5:30 p.m. 1667 K St. NW. Book talk on “Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015.” csbaonline.org

TUESDAY | OCT. 31

10:30 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The unfinished business of the 1989 East European revolutions. wilsoncenter.org

WEDNESDAY | NOV. 1

8 a.m. 1550 W. Nursery Rd. Cyber DFARS workshop. ndia.org

9:30 a.m. 1152 15th St. NW. Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Summit with Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, Inc. and the chair of the Defense Innovation Advisory Board. cnas.org

10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Press briefing on President Trump’s trip to Asia. csis.org

Source link

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trajectoryoflife · 7 years

Text

“. . . and next, you repeat the phrase again while thinking of someone you don’t like — someone who may have caused you pain. May you be happy. May you be well. May you be comfortable and at peace.”

A few days, I settled into week six of the weekly meditation course I’ve been fortunate to be participating through at work. It can be a challenge to get away even for an hour in the middle of the day, but each week when I come out of meditation and make my way back to my desk, I am reminded why making the time is not only important but necessary. This week, however, I knew the real challenge would come during the practice.

I adore loving-kindness, or Metta, meditation. I also hate it because, well, it can be really difficult. As I listened to the class lead provide the instructions above, I could feel myself getting nervous. The last time I had practiced loving-kindness meditation was during the MBSR course I took earlier this year and it was a rough go. That whole think-of-someone-you-don’t-like-while-wishing-them-well thing had been applied to a pretty raw wound and I found myself sobbing in front of a room full of my classmates. (Fortunately, I was not the only person to which the practice had caused this reaction, so I was in good company.)

The impact of that meditation stayed with me for weeks and, as a result, I had never dipped my toe back in. I was afraid. But, again it had presented itself to me. And then the instructor said this, “Loving kindness doesn’t mean that at Thanksgiving you’ll go sit next to the family member you don’t get along with and everything will be fine. It doesn’t mean you need to reach out to a lost love and attempt to rekindle your relationship. Sometimes things — relationships — just don’t work out, but it’s not your problem. Loving-kindness meditation can help you release what you may be holding on to, the things you may still be making your problem. It’s about wishing someone — everyone — well but also letting go.”

So I did it. And, when the time came to focus on someone I didn’t like, I imagined that person again in my mind and I repeated the phrase, over and over again. It was hard and, if I’m completely honest, there were a few times when I really wanted to take back the words I was repeating. I was skeptical. Did that person really deserve to be well and happy and free of suffering after all the suffering he had caused to others, including me? Despite my reluctance, I continued repeating the phrase until it was time to move on to the next. And as I expanded my intention to all living beings and wished us all happiness and peace and comfort, a vision constructed itself in my mind — the same vision I had months ago in the midst of tears the last time I had done this practice. This time, however, I didn’t immediately will my brain to shut it down; I was ready to let the vision play itself out and watched as that person who had caused me so much suffering flew away. Like, grew wings and disappeared into the sky.

What followed was the feeling of a weight being lifted from my heart. I physically felt something shift within myself. It didn’t work out. It’s not my problem. I have so much good in my life. Let it go. And then, for good measure, I repeated the phrase again, “May we be happy. May we be well. May we be comfortable and at peace.” And this time, I really meant it.

“Every step you takes brings you closer.” ~Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It

week in review gratitude: this week’s intention: what I’m reading: Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It celebrated our pup’s fifth birthday continued 8-week mindfulness + meditation course at work podcasts: two episodes of How I Built This (Teach for America + Kickstarter) continued making progress on simplifying + decluttering celebrated one of my favorite kiddo’s second birthday made more trips to Goodwill first snow of the year! received our first NPR Wine Club shipment continued wedding planning turned our kitchen into a brewery, temporarily discovered Costco at opening on a Sunday is not a place I ever want to be continue meditation homework: random acts of kindness + gratitude letter + everyday gratitude killed it on Blue Apron recipe hosted monthly writing group (Denver Creates) purchased This is the Story of a Happy Marriage made a pledge not to buy any new books until I read what I have phone dates with two of my favorite humans contributed to coat drive at work continued our fantasy football losing streak met up with folks in town for GABF much-needed hair appointment drinks + catching up with one of my favorite people finally gave in and sold my skis 😦 enjoyed a chill Friday night out + ice cream in a pumpkin patch productive + rewarding workweek finish wedding tradition blog post celebrated six months with my love wrote + posted table for one: a year later wrote + posted ‘we’re not doing that’ + wedding traditions and their origins — in haiku wrote + posted boozy week in review

weekend happenings + intentions enjoy a weekend relatively free of activities finish Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It start reading This is the Story of a Happy Marriage catch up on blogging course more wedding planning visit friends in Colorado Springs complete second lesson of blogging course tackle a few more areas of decluttering brewery + dinner with good friends enjoy the fall colors via walks read + write + relax

loving-kindness + week reflection ". . . and next, you repeat the phrase again while thinking of someone you don't like -- someone who may have caused you pain.

#loving-kindness #meditation #metta #week in review #week reflection

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bigdatanewsmagazine · 7 years

Text

Data Science: Screening by Religion a Blunt Instrument for Security – The Predictive Analytics Times

This commentary first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Originally published as the cover piece for the Insight commentary section in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle, this op-ed by Eric Siegel points out that, although many believe banning or monitoring Muslims would keep us safer, religious screening compromises the advancements in security we stand to gain from the latest in data science. Click here for additional articles by Eric Siegel on analytics and social justice.

Because some Muslims want to harm Americans, wouldn’t banning or monitoring Muslims keep us safer? This question burns as a white-hot national controversy.

Even though President Trump’s travel ban targets by country rather than religion, the question of religious screening remains open, lacking broad agreement. Many stand behind the president’s campaign pledge to ban Muslims, his support for a Muslim registry, and his consideration of Muslim internment. They believe religious identity predicts risk and reason that adopting religious equality — meaning that religion plays no part in any kind of vetting — would endanger civilians. They see such a policy as overly idealistic political correctness.

What best predicts behavior? Behavior. This stands as a core tenet in my field, predictive analytics (a.k.a. machine learning, a branch of data science), the science of learning from data to drive decisions. As its universal value solidifies, the private and public sectors are rapidly deploying this technology, propelling its market beyond a projected $6.5 billion within a few years.

What do the data tell us? Screening by a demographic category such as religion detrimentally weakens security; screening instead by behavior strengthens it. Religious screening compromises the advancements in security we stand to gain from the latest in data science.

When used most effectively, predictive analytics assesses individuals by their prior behavior. Behavioral data identifies risk more proficiently than demographic data. The reason for this is intuitive: What you’ve done reflects who you are, while the category in which you belong provides much less precise insight.

Religious screening operates like the bluntest of instruments. Banning an entire religious group from entry would eliminate some attacks, but so would banning, for example, all males between 18 and 35 (across religions). Such broad-stroked approaches would serve only as extremely approximate stand-ins for more revealing behavioral indicators, which can include prior online, financial, travel and criminal activities. Factors such as these present the best opportunity to improve security screening.

Predictive analytics automatically discovers effective combinations of predictive factors, i.e., patterns. Companies and governments apply these patterns to screen millions of individuals for risk on a daily basis. They predict whether you will commit fraud, miss a bill payment, default on a loan, cancel as a customer, quit your job, commit a crime, or respond poorly to a medical treatment. Across these domains, the data repeatedly show that your prior behavior provides the most powerful indicator of future behavior.

Admittedly, data analysis itself hasn’t settled the debate as to whether being Muslim is intrinsically predictive of terrorism. One side claims Islamic doctrines are more susceptible to the perversions of extremism. The other, with which I agree, contends that all major religions are susceptible, and that root causes such as geopolitical and socioeconomic factors are the true catalysts, even when terrorists claim they act in the name of a religion.

Tallying up which religion generates the most terrorism has failed to resolve the dispute, because the results vary depending on which attacks are considered true terrorism, which are considered secular, and which time spans are included.

But data analysis does deliver one largely undisputed, critical insight: For no major religion do individual members present a particular danger. Even in the least favorable assessment, individual members of any one religion show an admissibly low risk level, usually below one hundredth of a percent.

As a result, religious identity fails to expose malicious intent. Like any other demographic category, religion places people into broad groups. If religions differ in their overall risk levels, this reflects only general trends rather than absolutes.

I’ve found that even my more conservative colleagues, who feel Islam is culpable, understand the culprits are a minuscule minority for any religion. Those colleagues agree that there are many millions of peaceful Muslims who — at least ideally — should be free to practice their faith without being treated differently. As for the opinion of my colleagues as an overall group, the majority of data scientists polled oppose Trump’s travel ban.

Ultimately, behavioral data always prevail. But only a steadfast investment in this more sophisticated, behavior-based approach delivers the goods. During development, if behavioral data fail to out-predict religious screening, that is not a sign of failure — rather, it is a signal we must continue the efforts by collecting more behavioral data.

This practice pays off handsomely. Behavioral screening built upon enriched data strengthens security. This is the very process of bringing security fully into the Information Age. It’s also the antidote to religious screening, a practice that satisfies the definitions of religious intolerance, discrimination and prejudice (“prejudging” by religion). We can do better for both security and social justice, so we must.

About the Author

Eric Siegel, Ph.D., founder of the Predictive Analytics World conference series and executive editor of The Predictive Analytics Times, makes the how and why of predictive analytics understandable and captivating. He is the author of the award-winning Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die, a former Columbia University professor who used to sing to his students, and renowned speaker, educator, and leader in the field.

Eric has appeared on Al Jazeera America, Bloomberg TV and Radio, Business News Network (Canada), Fox News, Israel National Radio, NPR Marketplace, Radio National (Australia), and TheStreet. He and his book have been featured in Businessweek, CBS MoneyWatch, Contagious Magazine, The European Business Review, The Financial Times, Forbes, Forrester, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek, Quartz, Salon, Scientific American, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and WSJ MarketWatch. Follow him at @predictanalytic

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