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vintagegeekculture · 4 years

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Who are the “Venoms Mob?”

Well, first things first: if you go to China and talk about the 5 Venoms, or the Venoms Mob, they’ll have absolutely no idea who you’re talking about there, because that’s a fandom-term among US Kung Fu cult movie fans.

In Hong Kong, the Venoms are known as director Chang Cheh’s Weapons Expert Troupe, a group of five lifelong friends, martial artists, bodybuilders, exotic weapons experts, and trained acrobats who did at least a dozen movies for manly man Kung Fu director Chang Cheh in the 1970s and 1980s. They were the real deal: they usually choreographed their own fight scenes, which often involved flips and crazy stunts due to their acrobat training, high-wire acts, and unusual and exotic weaponry not typically seen even in martial arts movies. It’s like every single one of them drank the Captain America potion. Their films tended to end in heroic sacrifices, and the Venoms, for all their athleticism and daring, tended to be identifiable people on the bottom end of the societal ladder: homeless drifters, refugees, itinerant hobos, traveling performers, or restaurant workers.

The Venoms were stars in the US, particularly among the black community who love Chinese martial arts movies, not just because of their truly breathtaking skill and choreography, but because they are how most people feel they are, secretly, deep down: rams among sheep. They are the poor, downtrodden, or average person who decides “not to take it anymore” after untold indignities. This is also why the Venoms are especially important to the black community. In fact, if you want to know how much the Venoms mean to their fans, just go up to nearly any Black Dad over 45+ and ask about the “5 Venoms.”

Chang Cheh, Director of the Venoms

The best way to describe the director and writer of the Venoms films, Chang Cheh is that he is basically Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia if he decided to make Gladiator and loved Sergio Leone and Kurasawa.

The director and writer of the Venoms movies, and maybe the most significant name in the history of Kung Fu cinema apart from Bruce Lee, Chang Cheh was towering enough that Quentin Tarantino dedicated Kill Bill Part 2 to Chang Cheh in the closing credits. It would not be inaccurate to say he invented the Kung Fu movie as we know it, with its training montages, mentor-student relationships, all cut with themes of vengeance, noble self-sacrifice, and rebellion of poor and ordinary people against unjust authority.

Chang Cheh’s life story is fascinating. His father was a warlord during the Republican Era between the World Wars, which must have made for an interesting school career day. He started as a film critic and became a screenwriter, then from being a screenwriter, became a director. I wonder if that is the reason that Chang Cheh was so fascinated by themes of masculinity and male bonding, as the arty, openly gay movie critic son of a central Asian warlord had a nearly impossible standard of masculinity to live up to.

The two Western movies that are, thematically, the closest to Chang Cheh are Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan, and if you like both of those movies, you’ll probably like him. His heroes are often James Dean-like angry young men, poor and at the outskirts of society. His movies tend to end in heroic self-sacrifice for a noble cause, and tend to have themes of vengeance, arty blood red slaughter, and a distrust of authority and government of any kind. He loves bloodshed and thinks violence is beautiful; an image that comes up often is someone in an all white outfit that gets covered in blood, an arty view of violence similar to his two biggest influences, Sergio Leone and Kurosawa. Like the Shawshank Redemption, Chang Cheh movies are essentially ensemble pieces about the friendships and close comradely bonds of brotherhood between men. Very few women of any kind have extensive speaking parts in his movies.

Another movie that also summarizes Chang Cheh would be 300. Remember that Sarah Silverman bit where she said that “300 is the answer to the question, how gay is this movie on a scale of 1 to 10?” Not just because it is about an entirely male cast, or about finding fulfillment in noble self-sacrifice and heroism Alamo-style against desperate odds, but also because it’s about glorifying the male body, with tons of abs and pecs. I suppose I should mention here that Chang Cheh’s movies are profoundly homoerotic, and discussion of their homoeroticism is the major way film academics talk about these movies. How many scenes in Cheh’s movies are about dudes hanging out with their shirts off, flexing their muscles? Or about “brothers” who clasp each other on the shoulder while looking longingly into each other’s eyes in a shot-reverse shot? The only meaningful relationship in his movies are male ones. I dislike passing on cheap gossip, but by all accounts it’s actually an open secret in the Hong Kong film industry that Chang Cheh was homosexual and lived with other men.

Yi Kuang -Screenwriter of the Venoms

The screenwriter of nearly all the Venoms movies, much like Chang Cheh, Yi Kuang had an interesting life. He was a Communist Party officer who went to Inner Mongolia, where his primary job was writing death sentences for landlords. Once idealistic, he left disillusioned with the Chinese Communist Party, and a remained a die-hard anticommunist. Evil bureaucrats tend to show up in his stories often for that reason, and a common theme of his scripts is the anger of ordinary people against distant, unapproachable authorities. There’s no understanding Venoms films without their screenwriter. Chang Cheh started as a screenwriter and wrote his movies, but Yi Kuang was his most frequent partner.

Interestingly, Yi Kuang got famous long after for writing a series of supernatural and horror novels called the Mr. Wisely books, where a traditional Chinese medicine expert fights for sites of power charged with Feng Shui. It’s interesting to see his turn to the supernatural, sorcery, and ghosts as an overreaction to his distaste for Marxist materialism. Of all the Venoms films, the one that shows his influence the strongest was the one the Venoms fight an evil human sacrifice devil cult, Masked Avengers.

The Hero – Kuo Chui

A guy with a big smile and a body carved out of marble, Kuo Chui started as a circus acrobat before becoming a stuntman and then a leading actor. He was the Venom with the strongest and most natural screen presence, the one that was the most “movie star.” In fact, he was almost always the hero and central character of Venoms movies, usually playing the most levelheaded and strategic minded of the group.

Kuo Chui deserves some credit also for being the one Venom to actually direct a movie himself, Ninja in the Deadly Trap. This sounds like a heck of a leap, but in Hong Kong, nearly all choreographers also direct their fight scenes. It’s no surprise that a common career path in Hong Kong cinema is to go from choreographer to director (see also Chang Cheh’s ex-choreographers, Tang Chia and 36 Chambers director Liu Chia Liang)

The Bad Guy – Lu Feng

Every single movie, Lu Feng was the heel, the bad guy. I mean, heck, in Shaolin Rescuers, he even played the evil apprentice of the supreme supervillain of the martial arts, Pai Mei! But no matter what, Lu Feng was just so cool that you couldn’t help but root for him just a little bit. He was a character type common in pro wrestling: the arrogant “cool heel,” like Rick Flair and the Horsemen.

The Venoms tended to be workaday regular poor guys, but Lu Feng usually played a rich guy who oozed arrogance and menace, rather like the evil rich football player heel in college movies.

The Funny Guy – Chiang Sheng

A guy who usually played the funny young hero or a wisecracking comedy sidekick prone to wiseassery and pratfalls, Chiang Peng was the Venom who most benefited from the rise of Jackie Chan, and his introduction of silent film era inspired physical comedy into the otherwise stale Kung Fu film. Like Robin Williams, Chiang Shiang was someone who made everyone else laugh, but because he had a lot of darkness inside him, which ended up killing him. Chiang Sheng is the only Venom to not be with us, he drank himself to death after his divorce in 1991. Because of this, there can never really be a full Venoms reunion.

One of the most amazing things about Hong Kong cinema in the 70s is that the actors tended to have scraggly teeth that aren’t perfect and that seemed to be Chang Shieng’s defining trait. To be clear, I am not in any way mocking him for having bad teeth. In fact, I think it is rather winsome and endearing, like a teenager with braces.

The Tough Guy – Lo Meng

Known as the “Shaolin Hercules,” the person I’d compare Lo Meng to is Mr. Worf. Ultra-strong, humorless, intimidating, dead serious and never smiling, he was by far the most muscular and powerful of the Venoms, with tons of machismo and swagger, “big dick energy” as the kids say today. The camera tends to linger on his oiled up biceps and chest in extreme close-up…but was also, usually, the first to die in nearly all of these films. Much like how Worf was the toughest guy ever, but usually got beat up a lot so the writers could show that the situation was serious. In fact, Lo Meng, still in great shape, was in Ip Man 4, where, not one to break with a tradition, he was the first guy to get his ass beat in the film, even in a movie made in the Year of Our Lord 2020.

Lo Meng tends to be the “backup main hero” and was even the main character in films like 2 Champions of Shaolin. He had the most impressive “solo” film career apart from the other Venoms. Like Geri Halliwell, he left the Venoms to do his own thing, which is why the defining trait of the later Venom films is that he wasn’t there.

Lo Meng wasn’t Taiwanese like the other Venoms, and was a native of Hong Kong. In fact, he got his start in the film industry not as a stuntman or muscleman, but as an accountant for the Shaw Brothers studios, and he lifted weights and did Praying Mantis Kung Fu as a hobby. That’s…that’s hilarious. Reminds me of that fake Simpsons movie, Undercover Nerd with Renier Wolfcastle:

The Wild Card – Chun Shieng

Would YOU trust this man? I wouldn’t. He betrayed the Toad!

That’s Chun Shieng for you, the wild card Venom who could “go either way” and so wasn’t an entirely trustworthy ally.

Allow me to correct a misconception I’ve seen in a lot of places: Chun is sometimes known as “the one Korean Venom.” He isn’t Korean but Chinese, but he was trained in Korea and is a Tae Kwon Do expert, unlike the other Venoms, who studied Chinese Kung Fu and Peking Opera. And it certainly shows: he always fights with a kick-heavy Tae Kwon Do style that does not look much like any Kung Fu at all.

#kung fu #martial arts #shaw brothers #70s #5 venoms

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margridarnauds · 3 years

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Things I Wish I Had Known About Being A Celticist (Before Becoming One):

1. If you’re North American, you’re going to have to work twice as hard to get the same level of respect as your peers from Europe. Get used to that now, because it won’t get any easier as time goes on. You’re also going to very likely be in classes with people who, while not FLUENT in Gaeilge, have at least some background in it. This can be a blessing and a curse - The curse is that you have less of an idea of what’s going on, the blessing is that the professors will focus a lot of the tougher questions on them, at least at first.

2. “So, do you have any Irish family?” You will be asked that question. All the time. If you’re North American or English. Unless you have, say, a grandma from Tipperary, the safest answer is always “No, not at all! I just love the literature/history/language/etc.”

3. Love languages? You’re going to! On average, depending on your program, it’s likely that you’ll at least be learning two languages. At enough of a level where you can get pretty in-depth when it comes to the grammar. Most Old Irish experts are expected to know Old Irish, Middle Welsh (at least enough for comparative purposes), and German, with Latin often being brought in. You’ll also be expected to be able to comment on the development of Old Irish, Middle Irish, Early Modern Irish, and Gaeilge - It’s essential if you’re going to date texts. There are also multiple other Celtic languages (Breton, Manx, Cornish, Scottish) that, while they might not be ESSENTIAL for whatever you’re doing, are still going to be cropping up at different times for comparison purposes - I’d be lying if I said I knew them WELL, and most people tend to stick fairly firmly to their area, BUT you will probably be learning at least a little of them. (Personally, no one asked me, but I honestly think that I couldn’t call myself a Celticist if I just knew one Celtic language, it’s why a longterm goal of mine is to build up as much knowledge of the others as I can.) I’ve seen quite a few scholars go in thinking that the linguistics part won’t be important, only to be slammed by the program early on. Even if you just want to do literary analysis, you’re going to have to explain the meaning and development of individual words, as well as situating it in the broader scope of the development of your language of choice. (IE “This is a ninth century text, and we know that because it has intact deponent verbs, the neuter article’s dying out, and no independent object pronoun. Also everything’s on fire because Vikings.”)

4. You’re very likely going to have to move. This applies mainly for North Americans who want to do it (unless you happen to live directly in, say, Toronto or Boston, in which case ignore what I said and, Bostonians, polish off your GREs and prepare to listen to Legally Blonde the Musical on repeat because you’re going to be applying for Harvard). There are very few Celtic Studies programs in the world and, in general, most of the major programs, sensibly, are in Celtic-speaking countries - So, if you want to study Scottish, you go to Scotland, you want Irish, you go to Ireland, Welsh in Wales, etc. If you already wanted to move to Europe for a year or two while you’re doing your MA, then great (and for EU students this doesn’t apply, since they can relocate much easier...unless they were planning on going to the UK in which case.....my condolences), but if you didn’t have any sudden plans to move, keep it in mind. From an American perspective, it was literally cheaper to move to Ireland and do my MA there than to deal with the school system here, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other inconveniences associated with moving to another country. Even if you’re European, the field is fickle - An Irish scholar might find themselves moving to Scotland, an English scholar might find themselves moving to Ireland, etc. etc. These things happen when you have to take what you can get.

5. You don’t need Old Irish to go for your MA in Celtic Studies. You do not need Old Irish to go for your MA in Celtic Studies. When I first applied for my MA, I thought I didn’t have a chance because I had a general Humanities degree and didn’t have any formal experience with a Celtic language, least of all Old Irish. As it turns out, most programs do not expect you to have a background in this sort of thing beforehand, and quite a few have different programs for those who have a background in this stuff VS those who don’t, so don’t feel, if this is what you REALLY want to do, like you can’t just because of that. Show your passion for the field in your application, talk a little about the texts you’ve studied, angles you’re interested in, etc., make it the best application you can, and you still have a shot even without Old Irish (or, for non-Irish potential Celticists, whatever your target is.)

6. It’s competitive - Just because you get your MA, PhD programs are fewer and farer between. Academia in general isn’t known for its phenomenal job security, but Celtic Studies in particular is very fragile, since we generally are seen as low priority even among the Humanities programs (which, in general, are the first to be axed anyway.) If you focus on medieval languages as opposed to modern ones, you might very well find your program ranked lower in priority than your colleagues in the modern departments. Especially since COVID has gutted many universities’ income. I found that getting into a MA program was significantly easier than planning on what to do afterwards, since, for a PhD, you generally have to go someplace that can pay you at least some amount of money. Going into your PhD without any departmental funding is a recipe for burnout and bankruptcy, and there are very few Celtic Studies programs that can pay. Doesn’t mean you can’t try, and, when paid PhDs become available, they tend to be quite well publicized on Celtic Studies Twitter/Facebook, but keep in mind that you’ll be in a very competitive market. Networking is key - Your MA is your time to shine and get those treasured letters of rec so that you can get that sweet, sweet institutional funding for your PhD.

7. You’re very likely not actually going to teach Celtic Studies. Because there are so few teaching positions available worldwide, it’s much more likely that you’ll be teaching general Humanities/Composition/etc. This doesn’t mean that you’ll be giving up Celtic Studies (conferences are always going to be open, you don’t have to stay in one department for your entire life and can snag a position when it becomes available, and, even if you go outside of academia, the tourism industry...well, it was looking for Celticists, before The Plague), it just means that if teaching it is what you REALLY want to do with your life, it might be good to check your expectations. A few programs even have an option where you can essentially double major for the sake of job security. (So, if you always wanted to be the world’s first French Revolution historian/Celticist/Gothic Literature triple threat......................the amount of reading you’d have to do would likely drive you insane but................)

8. Make nice with your department. Make nice with your department. Celtic Studies departments tend to be small and concentrated, so you’re going to be knowing everyone quite well by the end of your first grad degree, at least. You don’t have to like everyone in it, but they aren’t just your classmates, they’re your colleagues. You will be seeing at least some of their faces for the rest of your life. I can say that my MA department remembered students who left the program a decade ago. Your department is supposed to have your back, and they can be an invaluable source of support when you need it the most, since they understand the program and what it entails better than anyone else can. You’ll need them for everything from moral support to getting you pdfs of That One Article From A Long Discontinued Journal From The 1970s. I’ve seen students who made an ass of themselves to the department - Their classmates remembered them five years later. Don’t be that guy. Have fun, go to the holiday dinners, get to know people, ask about their work, attend the “voluntary” seminars and lectures, and do not make an ass of yourself. That is how you find yourself jumping from PhD program to PhD program because your old professors “forgot” your letter of rec until the day after the deadline. Also, since your departments are small and concentrated, it’s a good idea to prepare to separate your social media for your personal stuff vs your academics as much as you can, since it won’t be too hard to track you down if people just know that you do Celtic Studies.

9. Some areas of the field are more respected than others. If you want to do work on the legal or ecclesiastical aspects, excellent. If you want to focus on the linguistic elements, excellent. If you’re here for literature.....there’s a place, though you’re going to have to make damned sure to back it up with linguistic and historical evidence. (There’s less theory for theory’s sake, though theoretical approaches are slowly gaining more acceptance.) But if you’re here for mythography or comparative approaches...there is a PLACE for you, but it’s a little dustier than the others. There are fewer programs willing to outright teach mythology, mainly because it’s seen as outdated and unorthodox, especially since the term itself in a Celtic context is controversial. Pursue it, God knows we need the support, but just...be prepared to mute a lot of your academic social media. And, really, your social media in general. And have a defense prepared ahead of time. With citations. Frankly, I think my Bitch Levels have gone up a solid 50% since getting into this area, because consistently seeing the blue checkmarks on Twitter acting like you’re not doing real work while you’re knees deep in a five volume genealogical tract tends to do that to you. If it ever seems like I go overboard with the citations when it comes to talking about the Mythological Cycle, this is why - I have to. It’s how I maintain what legitimacy I have. I’d still do it if I’d have known, but I would have appreciated the heads up. (On the plus side - It means that, in those few programs that DO teach mythology, you’re golden, because they want all the serious students they can get.)

10. If you really, really love it, it’s worth it. After all this, you’re probably wondering why anyone would sign on for this. The work’s grueling and often unrewarding, you might or might not get respect for what you do based off of where you were born and what your interests are, and you’re subject to an incredibly unpredictable job market so you might never see any material compensation for all of it. But, if you can check your expectations of becoming rich off of it, if all you REALLY want to do is chase it as far as it can go, then it’s worth it. There’s a lot of work to be done, so you don’t have to worry too much about trotting over the same thing that a dozen scholars have already done. You might get the chance to be the very first person, for example, to crack into a text that no one’s read for over a thousand years, or you might totally re-analyze something because the last person to look at it did it in the 19th century, or you might get to be the first person to look at an angle for a text or figure that no one’s considered. If finding a reference to your favorite person in a single annal from the 17th century makes you walk on air for the entire day, then you might very well be the sort of person the field needs.

#celtic studies #long post #school tw

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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Imagine that the US was competing in a space race with some third world country, say Zambia, for whatever reason. Americans of course would have orders of magnitude more money to throw at the problem, and the most respected aerospace engineers in the world, with degrees from the best universities and publications in the top journals. Zambia would have none of this. What should our reaction be if, after a decade, Zambia had made more progress?

Obviously, it would call into question the entire field of aerospace engineering. What good were all those Google Scholar pages filled with thousands of citations, all the knowledge gained from our labs and universities, if Western science gets outcompeted by the third world?

For all that has been said about Afghanistan, no one has noticed that this is precisely what just happened to political science. The American-led coalition had countless experts with backgrounds pertaining to every part of the mission on their side: people who had done their dissertations on topics like state building, terrorism, military-civilian relations, and gender in the military. General David Petraeus, who helped sell Obama on the troop surge that made everything in Afghanistan worse, earned a PhD from Princeton and was supposedly an expert in “counterinsurgency theory.” Ashraf Ghani, the just deposed president of the country, has a PhD in anthropology from Columbia and is the co-author of a book literally called Fixing Failed States. This was his territory. It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.

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Phil Tetlock’s work on experts is one of those things that gets a lot of attention, but still manages to be underrated. In his 2005 Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, he found that the forecasting abilities of subject-matter experts were no better than educated laymen when it came to predicting geopolitical events and economic outcomes. As Bryan Caplan points out, we shouldn’t exaggerate the results here and provide too much fodder for populists; the questions asked were chosen for their difficulty, and the experts were being compared to laymen who nonetheless had met some threshold of education and competence.

At the same time, we shouldn’t put too little emphasis on the results either. They show that “expertise” as we understand it is largely fake. Should you listen to epidemiologists or economists when it comes to COVID-19? Conventional wisdom says “trust the experts.” The lesson of Tetlock (and the Afghanistan War), is that while you certainly shouldn’t be getting all your information from your uncle’s Facebook Wall, there is no reason to start with a strong prior that people with medical degrees know more than any intelligent person who honestly looks at the available data.

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I think one of the most interesting articles of the COVID era was a piece called “Beware of Facts Man” by Annie Lowrey, published in The Atlantic.

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The reaction to this piece was something along the lines of “ha ha, look at this liberal who hates facts.” But there’s a serious argument under the snark, and it’s that you should trust credentials over Facts Man and his amateurish takes. In recent days, a 2019 paper on “Epistemic Trespassing” has been making the rounds on Twitter. The theory that specialization is important is not on its face absurd, and probably strikes most people as natural. In the hard sciences and other places where social desirability bias and partisanship have less of a role to play, it’s probably a safe assumption. In fact, academia is in many ways premised on the idea, as we have experts in “labor economics,” “state capacity,” “epidemiology,” etc. instead of just having a world where we select the smartest people and tell them to work on the most important questions.

But what Tetlock did was test this hypothesis directly in the social sciences, and he found that subject-matter experts and Facts Man basically tied.

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Interestingly, one of the best defenses of “Facts Man” during the COVID era was written by Annie Lowrey’s husband, Ezra Klein. His April 2021 piece in The New York Times showed how economist Alex Tabarrok had consistently disagreed with the medical establishment throughout the pandemic, and was always right. You have the “Credentials vs. Facts Man” debate within one elite media couple. If this was a movie they would’ve switched the genders, but since this is real life, stereotypes are confirmed and the husband and wife take the positions you would expect.

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In the end, I don’t think my dissertation contributed much to human knowledge, making it no different than the vast majority of dissertations that have been written throughout history. The main reason is that most of the time public opinion doesn’t really matter in foreign policy. People generally aren’t paying attention, and the vast majority of decisions are made out of public sight. How many Americans know or care that North Macedonia and Montenegro joined NATO in the last few years? Most of the time, elites do what they want, influenced by their own ideological commitments and powerful lobby groups. In times of crisis, when people do pay attention, they can be manipulated pretty easily by the media or other partisan sources.

If public opinion doesn’t matter in foreign policy, why is there so much study of public opinion and foreign policy? There’s a saying in academia that “instead of measuring what we value, we value what we can measure.” It’s easy to do public opinion polls and survey experiments, as you can derive a hypothesis, get an answer, and make it look sciency in charts and graphs. To show that your results have relevance to the real world, you cite some papers that supposedly find that public opinion matters, maybe including one based on a regression showing that under very specific conditions foreign policy determined the results of an election, and maybe it’s well done and maybe not, but again, as long as you put the words together and the citations in the right format nobody has time to check any of this. The people conducting peer review on your work will be those who have already decided to study the topic, so you couldn’t find a more biased referee if you tried.

Thus, to be an IR scholar, the two main options are you can either use statistical methods that don’t work, or actually find answers to questions, but those questions are so narrow that they have no real world impact or relevance. A smaller portion of academics in the field just produce postmodern-generator style garbage, hence “feminist theories of IR.” You can also build game theoretic models that, like the statistical work in the field, are based on a thousand assumptions that are probably false and no one will ever check. The older tradition of Kennan and Mearsheimer is better and more accessible than what has come lately, but the field is moving away from that and, like a lot of things, towards scientism and identity politics.

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At some point, I decided that if I wanted to study and understand important questions, and do so in a way that was accessible to others, I’d have a better chance outside of the academy. Sometimes people thinking about an academic career reach out to me, and ask for advice. For people who want to go into the social sciences, I always tell them not to do it. If you have something to say, take it to Substack, or CSPI, or whatever. If it’s actually important and interesting enough to get anyone’s attention, you’ll be able to find funding.

If you think your topic of interest is too esoteric to find an audience, know that my friend Razib Khan, who writes about the Mongol empire, Y-chromosomes and haplotypes and such, makes a living doing this. If you want to be an experimental physicist, this advice probably doesn’t apply, and you need lab mates, major funding sources, etc. If you just want to collect and analyze data in a way that can be done without institutional support, run away from the university system.

The main problem with academia is not just the political bias, although that’s another reason to do something else with your life. It’s the entire concept of specialization, which holds that you need some secret tools or methods to understand what we call “political science” or “sociology,” and that these fields have boundaries between them that should be respected in the first place. Quantitative methods are helpful and can be applied widely, but in learning stats there are steep diminishing returns.

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Outside of political science, are there other fields that have their own equivalents of “African witch doctor beats von Braun to the moon” or “the Taliban beats the State Department and the Pentagon” facts to explain? Yes, and here are just a few examples.

Consider criminology. More people are studying how to keep us safe from other humans than at any other point in history. But here’s the US murder rate between 1960 and 2018, not including the large uptick since then.

So basically, after a rough couple of decades, we’re back to where we were in 1960. But we’re actually much worse, because improvements in medical technology are keeping a lot of people that would’ve died 60 years ago alive. One paper from 2002 says that the murder rate would be 5 times higher if not for medical developments since 1960. I don’t know how much to trust this, but it’s surely true that we’ve made some medical progress since that time, and doctors have been getting a lot of experience from all the shooting victims they have treated over the decades. Moreover, we’re much richer than we were in 1960, and I’m sure spending on public safety has increased. With all that, we are now about tied with where we were almost three-quarters of a century ago, a massive failure.

What about psychology? As of 2016, there were 106,000 licensed psychologists in the US. I wish I could find data to compare to previous eras, but I don’t think anyone will argue against the idea that we have more mental health professionals and research psychologists than ever before. Are we getting mentally healthier? Here’s suicides in the US from 1981 to 2016

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What about education? I’ll just defer to Freddie deBoer’s recent post on the topic, and Scott Alexander on how absurd the whole thing is.

Maybe there have been larger cultural and economic forces that it would be unfair to blame criminology, psychology, and education for. Despite no evidence we’re getting better at fighting crime, curing mental problems, or educating children, maybe other things have happened that have outweighed our gains in knowledge. Perhaps the experts are holding up the world on their shoulders, and if we hadn’t produced so many specialists over the years, thrown so much money at them, and gotten them to produce so many peer reviews papers, we’d see Middle Ages-levels of violence all across the country and no longer even be able to teach children to read. Like an Ayn Rand novel, if you just replaced the business tycoons with those whose work has withstood peer review.

Or you can just assume that expertise in these fields is fake. Even if there are some people doing good work, either they are outnumbered by those adding nothing or even subtracting from what we know, or our newly gained understanding is not being translated into better policies. Considering the extent to which government relies on experts, if the experts with power are doing things that are not defensible given the consensus in their fields, the larger community should make this known and shun those who are getting the policy questions so wrong. As in the case of the Afghanistan War, this has not happened, and those who fail in the policy world are still well regarded in their larger intellectual community.

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Those opposed to cancel culture have taken up the mantle of “intellectual diversity” as a heuristic, but there’s nothing valuable about the concept itself. When I look at the people I’ve come to trust, they are diverse on some measures, but extremely homogenous on others. IQ and sensitivity to cost-benefit considerations seem to me to be unambiguous goods in figuring out what is true or what should be done in a policy area. You don’t add much to your understanding of the world by finding those with low IQs who can’t do cost-benefit analysis and adding them to the conversation.

One of the clearest examples of bias in academia and how intellectual diversity can make the conversation better is the work of Lee Jussim on stereotypes. Basically, a bunch of liberal academics went around saying “Conservatives believe in differences between groups, isn’t that terrible!” Lee Jussim, as someone who is relatively moderate, came along and said “Hey, let’s check to see whether they’re true!” This story is now used to make the case for intellectual diversity in the social sciences.

Yet it seems to me that isn’t the real lesson here. Imagine if, instead of Jussim coming forward and asking whether stereotypes are accurate, Osama bin Laden had decided to become a psychologist. He’d say “The problem with your research on stereotypes is that you do not praise Allah the all merciful at the beginning of all your papers.” If you added more feminist voices, they’d say something like “This research is problematic because it’s all done by men.” Neither of these perspectives contributes all that much. You’ve made the conversation more diverse, but dumber. The problem with psychology was a very specific one, in that liberals are particularly bad at recognizing obvious facts about race and sex. So yes, in that case the field could use more conservatives, not “more intellectual diversity,” which could just as easily make the field worse as make it better. And just because political psychology could use more conservative representation when discussing stereotypes doesn’t mean those on the right always add to the discussion rather than subtract from it. As many religious Republicans oppose the idea of evolution, we don’t need the “conservative” position to come and help add a new perspective to biology.

The upshot is intellectual diversity is a red herring, usually a thinly-veiled plea for more conservatives. Nobody is arguing for more Islamists, Nazis, or flat earthers in academia, and for good reason. People should just be honest about the ways in which liberals are wrong and leave it at that.

…

The failure in Afghanistan was mind-boggling. Perhaps never in the history of warfare had there been such a resource disparity between two sides, and the US-backed government couldn’t even last through the end of the American withdrawal. One can choose to understand this failure through a broad or narrow lens. Does it only tell us something about one particular war or is it a larger indictment of American foreign policy?

The main argument of this essay is we’re not thinking big enough. The American loss should be seen as a complete discrediting of the academic understanding of “expertise,” with its reliance on narrowly focused peer reviewed publications and subject matter knowledge as the way to understand the world. Although I don’t develop the argument here, I think I could make the case that expertise isn’t just fake, it actually makes you worse off because it gives you a higher level of certainty in your own wishful thinking. The Taliban probably did better by focusing their intellectual energies on interpreting the Holy Quran and taking a pragmatic approach to how they fought the war rather than proceeding with a prepackaged theory of how to engage in nation building, which for the West conveniently involved importing its own institutions.

A discussion of the practical implications of all this, or how we move from a world of specialization to one with better elites, is also for another day. For now, I’ll just emphasize that for those thinking of choosing an academic career to make universities or the peer review system function better, my advice is don’t. The conversation is much more interesting, meaningful, and oriented towards finding truth here on the outside.

#richard hanania #substack #afghanistan #read the whole thing

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mamthew · 4 years

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I figured for you fine folks playing Persona 5 Royal, I'd take some time to write about some Japanese cultural features I learned while researching the game that might help some folks to contextualize the game's themes. I hope that this knowledge might enhance others' experiences with the game that way it has enhanced mine. Before I start, though, I'd like to start with two disclaimers: First, it's important to remember that while these cultural features might hold different levels of importance in our own respective cultures, that doesn't mean they're entirely alien to us, either. Bong Joon-ho said of the success of his film, Parasite, that "we all live in the same country now: that of capitalism," and that sentiment similarly applies to many of these other concepts. Much of what I'm writing about here are simply the Japanese flavor of power dynamics and societal structures we all live in, and I'm neither looking down on Japanese people nor claiming that my own culture is free of these power dynamics and societal structures when I identify them. Second, I'm not Japanese, and thanks to the Covid outbreak, I actually missed my shot to visit Japan. I have a close friend from Japan with whom I've discussed much of the research I've done, but I'd love to hear from other folks who are more familiar than I am. If I say something here that's inaccurate, or doesn't line up with your own experiences, let me know in the comments, or direct message my page! I've pulled much of this from a bunch of different academic sources, but unfortunately I've only got the one personal source with whom I can regularly discuss what I've learned, and he obviously can't be an expert at everything I've read about. The most central theme to Persona 5 is that of seki, which Joanna Liddle describes in "Rising Suns, Rising Daughters: Gender, Class, and Power in Japan" as "the idea that there is no proper place in society for a person who is not registered in an institution or organisation." Persona 5 is a game in which all of its characters are stuck on the margins of society, and playing it through the lens of seki helps to place this into sharp focus. Seki is best understood as the organization of society into in-groups and out-groups. In Yasuo Aoto's "Nippon: The Land and its People," he notes that this very strong consciousness of who is and isn't in groups can be attributed to historical factors, citing the need for joint cooperation in rice cultivation, the long history of feudalism, and the Confucian emphasis on belonging to a clan. The most clear example of a seki is the koseki family registration system, an outdated holdover from a bygone era, maintained for so long essentially to maintain some form of codified oppression of women after the current constitution bestowed them full rights. The koseki was once a fully public document that displayed the names of every member of a specific family. Women who married were stricken from their family's kosekis and written into their husband's kosekis instead, while women who divorced were stricken from those, finding themselves and any children they took with them without a family to which they officially belonged. Women who married into families without kosekis (to foreigners, for instance, or to a "mukosekisha," a person whose birth wasn't registered) were stricken from their own kosekis but weren't written into new ones, essentially making them less Japanese. Now, kosekis aren't accessible to the public, but they still legally enforce that certain people are less legitimate as citizens. In some ways, not being in a koseki provides similar issues as not having a birth certificate or social security number would in the states. This is a major factor in the stigma against divorcees, as it is common knowledge that a divorced woman and her children are not logged in any koseki. Most of the characters in Persona 5 are from broken families, which means that many of them are not in kosekis, and therefore on a cultural and legal level are less legitimately Japanese for it. Only one of Ann's parents is Japanese; Ryuji's mother divorced her husband; Yusuke, Futaba, and Akechi are orphans. However, seki as a concept is broader than this. One's family is a seki, but so is the company for which they work, their group of friends, their group of coworkers, their classmates, clubs or social groups to which they belong. Sataka Makoto writes in "105 Key Words for Understanding Japan": "There are only a very few people who hop jobs or religions. Job-hoppers are criticized as unstable characters and 'isshakenmei,' [or] devotion to one company, is considered better than 'isshoukenmei,' [or] trying one’s best (....) The Japanese companies are still very much like feudal clans. The top position is often hereditary, like that of a feudal lord, but the employees don’t complain strongly." This strong devotion to one's company has been purposely cultivated to suppress class consciousness. It's commonly believed in Japan that over 90% of Japanese people are middle class. Nakane Chie states that social stratification in Japan is broken up vertically, between companies, rather than horizontally, between classes, saying that, "it is not really a matter of workers struggling against capitalists or managers but of Company A ranged against Company B (...) [they] do not stand in vertical relationship to each other but instead rub elbows from parallel positions." Obviously, it's not true that Japanese is almost entirely middle class; Liddle notes that the economists who argued this defined members of the same class as "homogeneous in lifestyle, attitudes, speech, dress and other status dimensions," but that there is still much variance in assets and vulnerability to economic change. On top of this, the ruling class does still function as a bloc, acting with much more class unity than the working class does. Persona 5 discusses the drastic amount of worker exploitation in the Okumura dungeon. The game shows us "karoshi," a term that literally just means dying from working too much, which is a common occurrence in Japan, and absolutely a result of exploitation of the proletariat by the ruling classes. It's hard to fight back against this exploitation, though, because of the vertical stratification of workers into different corporations. It's a major barrier to class solidarity when workers from two different companies see themselves as being members of different sekis, and therefore not really meant to interact all that much. There's more I'd like to write, especially about the single-party system and just how much Shido is mean to represent Shinzo Abe, but it's almost 4 AM, so I'd better hold off on that. Anyone who's interested in the Koseki can read at least parts of Gender and the Koseki in Contemporary Japan on google books: https://books.google.com/books?id=gR9WDwAAQBAJ This article from 2016 on the koseki system is a quicker read and helps to bring to light some of the system issues: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/07/10/issues/japans-discriminatory-koseki-registry-system-looks-ever-outdated/ Part of Rising Suns, Rising Daughters is on google books, and it's a fascinating read if you're interested in class, gender, and the intersections between the two: https://books.google.com/books?id=X7h_6gCRuAUC This article was a good jumping-off point to start seeing some of the real issues discussed in Persona 5: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-real-world-problems-behind-persona-5

#Persona 5 #Persona 5 Royal

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aaronexplainsitall · 5 years

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Aaron, do you have any advice about how to write papers well (for Uni)? I always get so overwhelmed and then annoyed that my papers always suck, and I don't know how to improve...

Hey! Here are a couple of my Hot Tips for academic writing. I’m not an expert, and it’s been a while since I was in a position where I had to write academically rather than creatively, but these are some guides that hopefully you’ll find useful.

(I ended up waffling on for ages, so I’m putting it below the cut):

1. Deconstruct your question

Whether your essay title is a question that you have to answer or a statement that you have to argue, there will always be a prompt for you to begin with. Start by making a note of what you understand the question to mean, and breaking down each word.

So for example, (and I’m using the title of my dissertation because I know it well), if your title was:

“‘9/11 Fundamentally Changed Dystopian Literature.’ Discuss the ramifications of major world events on western literary landscapes.” I might make these notes:

- essay is discussing the relationship between what happens in the world and how people write about the world - ‘9/11′ - discussion of Sept 11th terrorist attacks - ‘Fundamentally’ - at the route, complete and holistic change - ‘Changed’ - in what way did it change? For better/worse? In tone? In urgency? In focus? - ‘Dystopian’ - what is dystopia? Is the definition widely agreed? - ‘Literature’ - Fiction. Prose/Poetry/Drama? And so on and so forth. 2. Research

Before you put pen to paper, do as much research as time allows you. Don’t begin to construct or marry yourself to your argument until you’ve read as much around the subject as possible. This doesn’t just apply to the arts, in science you want to have a total understanding of the field of research before you wade in with an opinion. Let your research guide your opinion, don’t let your opinion guide your research.

Your opinion will likely change in this part of the writing process, so not only make notes about what you’re writing, have a separate page of notes where you track your opinion/feelings.

3. Write - in no more than 200 words - your answer to the question

Once you’ve done your research, you should have a pretty good understanding of what you think the answer to your question is. A good litmus test is to try and answer the question concisely in roughly 200 words. There’s no need to give examples or rationale, simply write what you feel the crux of the answer to the question is. This paragraph of writing may become part of your intro in your actual essay.

4. Assemble your essay into a series of key points

Your essay can take two basic forms:

i) A thesis statement of opinion or fact followed by three to five pertinent examples which argue for this opinion

ii) A debate which falls into ‘for’ and ‘against’ sections - each one making a case for and against your thesis statement

The former is probably more relevant to a directed essay, the latter to a cautious one, and which one you choose will depend on the question. If you have a ‘discuss’ question, I’d go for option 2. If you have a direct question, I’d go for option 1.

Either way, boil your research down into no more than 5 points which either all argue for the same thesis or which debate the same thesis. Write out a sentence on each one that sums it up - in school, you might have called that a ‘topic’ sentence.

5. Collate relevant examples for each point and form the point into an argument

Go through your research and drag everything you want to talk about into one of your ‘topic sentences’ or argumentative statements. Discard the rest. Now go through each of your statements and reorder the relevant examples so that there’s a natural flow. Begin basic and get complicated.

While you’re reordering your research, begin to interject with your own opinion. This might look like:

[Scholar a] argues that [xxx] but in actual fact this is a limited perception of a complex phenomenon. We may look to [scholar b] who wrote [yyy] for a more nuanced understanding of the question at hand. In actuality what both of them miss is [your opinion]

What you’ll notice is that you’re writing the essay without having actually started writing the essay. You’ll want to order your argumentative statements before you write an introduction or conclusion. This is important.

6. Write your sections up into prose

A couple of key points when writing academically:

- keep the tone formal, but don’t force the issue. Some people don’t like the first person in academic writing, I think it’s fine, but I’d reserve it for your introduction and conclusion. Use phrases like ‘we can see’/’it can be observed’/’we can conclude’, where you’d feel the urge to write in the first person.

- don’t use the passive voice. Be direct. Make a statement and stick to it. The passive voice in academic writing tells your reader that you’re not sure of what you’re asserting. Be sure (even when you aren’t!)

- avoid run on sentences. This is my greatest undoing - because I love a long sentence - but they don’t sit well in academic writing. Be punchy, avoid parentheses, and be assertive.

7. Write your introduction

Based on the argument that you’ve made, write an introduction. Begin by setting the background of the debate or argument that you’ll be making in the essay - include historical context, current academic discussion, any limitations you’ve observed. Don’t go crazy, your intro should be 3 paragraphs max.

You should assertively point out what you’re going to argue. “In this paper, I will...” or if your professor hates the first person, “This paper/essay will argue that...” Be firm, but be brief, you can be more elaborative in your conclusion.

8. Write your conclusion

Do not skimp or half arse your conclusion, this is your opportunity to really get creative. So far you’ve been moderate and assertive but here you can really let your opinion shine. Do you think all the research you’ve read is bollocks? Let rip on those dusty old clowns. Do you think that the question is redundant? Say so! Do you think it’s a question that can’t be answered? Here’s your place to say your piece.

Begin with a reiteration of your thesis statement (the statement you made in your intro about what you’d argue) and then go nuts. Be florid, be memorable, be sensational. A good conclusion is melodramatic.

By writing your intro and conc last, you make sure that the beginning and end of your essay marry up and that they are both informed by the actual content of your paper.

9. Proof read

Always leave yourself at least a day to edit. This can be hard when you’re working to a deadline, but you’ll want to take a few hours off once you’ve finished your first draft (go do something fun) and then come back to edit.

You can sometimes spot monumental errors (like contradictions or entire sections that don’t make sense) when you edit, so you want to have enough time to fix them.

Also, get someone else to read it and get their feedback. Whether that’s a friend or a parent or a significant other, someone who doesn’t have much knowledge of the field will be able to tell you if it makes sense and if not, why not.

I hope that all helps!

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seaside-studying · 7 years

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7 Things I Wish I Knew As a High School Freshman

Hey guys! College sophomore that graduated from an IB high school here! Today, I’m gonna be your big sister and tell you stuff about high school to help you succeed early! I’ve never had a baby sibling (or any siblings for that matter), so I’m just gonna take all of you younglings under my wing for a bit if that’s okay? ;u;

k ty. Now for the prep talk:

Although I went to an IB school, these tips can really apply to pretty much any high school, whether you took AP, early college courses, or if you didn’t even take any high-level classes.

High school can be the first tough hurdle you’ll encounter in your life (it was for me), so you’ve gotta be prepared to handle the stress and upcoming workload that you may not be used to yet.

But don’t stress too much! Your high school days are your last days of bonding with an entire class of people (unless you take classes at a small college). As much as you think you’re ready to just go off into the adult world and live on your own, you’re seriously going to miss your old friends and the life you had at your high school. Hell, it’s why we have high school reunions because we miss those times so bad, haha! But anyways, here’s a list of things I wish I knew as a high school freshman.

1. As soon as you get into high school, you need to start thinking about what you want to do for a career so you can tailor the classes you take towards that goal.

Now, you don’t have to have your entire life planned out, but you should at least be thinking about what fields interest you and what you can see yourself doing in the future.

Volunteer or get experience somewhere (or everywhere) if you don’t have a clue about what you want to do yet. Getting rl experience is the best way to help you decide whether you like the type of work you’re thinking about doing or not. It also exposes you to different experiences that you may not have known you would’ve liked!

Keep your options and your mind open! You are merely a sponge during this point in your life. Take the time while you’re young and not bombarded w/ a heavy workload yet to get in the swing of living your life independently. :)

2. Start creating studying habits that work for you so you can boost that GPA! Colleges look at your entire high school GPA, so you need to hit the ground running as soon as you begin high school.

Creating great study habits now will help you immensely in your junior and senior high school years. Don’t start slackin’ yet! You’ve got a whole 4 years ahead of you (and even then, you prob won’t catch a break in college, especially if you’re a science major lol).

Your junior and senior years will probably be your hardest years for different reasons. Junior year is the year you’ll be showcasing most in your college apps, so you’ve gotta get all your grades up before you apply to make you look like the excellent student you are. As for senior year, the first semester is when you apply for college apps, and you hear back from them at around December or March. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT succumb to “senioritis” (the disease where you magically lose all motivation to do well in your last year of high school because you think the marathon’s over after getting accepted into a college). Well sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s definitely not over. If your GPA spirals down dramatically, the colleges that accepted you can revoke their acceptance of your admission, so just stay in school everyone and make sure your GPA doesn’t drop way below your previous scores because colleges get really alarmed when they see a student’s grade trend drop rather than improve. Do yourself a huge favor and don’t get lazy, please.

To study for midterms/finals, make sure you review old notes every day for at least 2 months before the test so you’re not cramming everything a week before.

3. Make friends! Surround yourself with people that will motivate you to be successful!

High school is the chance for you to mature and meet a variety of people. Take your chances now to network and get to know people in your classes. Know that everyone there has the potential to do great things, so be nice to everyone (especially to that lonely kid that no one talks to). You’ll never know who exactly will be your next partner in whatever amazing thing you discover in life or who you could be saving by flashing a smile their way or a starting a conversation.

It’s okay if you’re not in the “popular” clique. Honestly, the best thing I ever did was have a small circle of friends who were considered “nerds.” They were the people that encouraged me to achieve more than what I thought I could achieve academically and in life generally. You become who you surround yourself with, and by surrounding myself with smart people, I too began to think about life like them. So moral of the story, try to find a group of people who will raise your potential and make you feel good about yourself.

That being said, there’s no need to try to join a group just to “fit in.” Do your best to not to fall into the wrong crowd.

And stay away from drinking or drugs! I know it’s a social activity sometimes, but those substances are definitely not going to help you out on your journey. You can be happy without them!! Don’t use them to cope with any stress or existing problems you have. I guarantee you it’ll make them worse!

4. Befriend your teachers! You’re gonna need it later!

When you apply to college, you’re going to need 1-3 letter of recommendations from your teachers for college applications, scholarships, or even recommendations for jobs/summer internships, so you seriously need to give them a great first impression day 1 and maintain it for as long as you have that teacher. That means going to class on time, asking thought-provoking questions, participating in class regularly, getting good grades on your tests/projects/reports, etc.

Your teachers are also your most trusted resources! If you ever have any questions, feel free to talk to them after class or during lunch. If your teacher is an expert in the field you want to get into for a career, interview them about their experiences and ask how you can get involved at an early age. Who knows, your teachers might actually have connections to people or companies they can hook you up with so you can get out in the field and learn first hand! Seriously take advantage of your resources.

5. Do some extracurricular activities!

Join a sport, club, volunteer organization, or anything really to give your future college application some color. Colleges LOVE well-rounded students who can juggle school on top of other time-consuming activities because it shows that you’re not only disciplined enough to manage your time wisely, but you’re also very diverse in your interests, and colleges want diverse/unique people!

If your school doesn’t have any clubs, start one! It looks really good on your college app too if you say that you “established” a club on your own and got people really involved in the activities you coordinated.

While this is not going to apply to all colleges or fields, some recommended activities that appeal to top-tier colleges are:

Doing volunteer work for a cause (charity work); Eg: National Honors Society looks great for college apps!

Joining clubs that show you’re a good public speaker/intellectual (science, debate, drama clubs, etc depending on the degree you’re interested in applying to for college). But also, don’t turn away from clubs that genuinely interest you, even if they’re hobby clubs that don’t relate to your intended college major. Do what YOU want. :)

Joining a sport (or multiple sports) for several years— shows you’re committed and a team player. Plus, colleges give tons of scholarships to sports players!

Tutoring people in difficult subjects.

Summer learning programs for your intended college major. I personally took an environmental science summer program at my dream college to “put my foot in the door.” It lets the college know that you were involved with them and were on your mind since your early high school days. They like dedication, but know that this isn’t a guaranteed way to get into your dream college.

If you can’t find anything you like, start something of your own! Whether you invent something, create your own organization or even business, colleges love seeing you take initiative into your own hands and start a large-scale project at an early age.

6. Strive to be at the top of the class!

Now it isn’t necessary to absolutely be #1 in each of your classes, but at least aim to be in the top 25% so you reap the benefits of a good letter of rec from your teachers and have access to them as resources.

At the end of each year, sometimes teachers give out awards to the best students in the class. These awards look super awesome on your college apps, so please try your best to get that gold star (but also don’t stress yourself out a ton to try to get it)!

And most of all…

7. Have fun!!!!!!

Like I said, high school will probably be one of the most memorable times of your life. Those 4 years become your essential transitional period from being a kid to a budding adult, so be responsible and make the most out of the time and people you meet at your high school. All they want is for you to succeed and do great things!

Other miscellaneous tips:

Don’t get too invested in relationships during your hs days. I know I used to be an obsessive romantic hoping that I’d find love in high school, but really, just know the time will come when you find love. Most relationships during this time aren’t serious anyway, but if they are, do your thing! Just be sure to hang out in moderation since s/o’s can be distracting and ruin your time managing habits & schedule.

Hang out and socialize with people but in moderation!

Find an effective coping mechanism when you’re upset or stressed out from school, whether that be a sport, your pet, talking to the high school counselor, going out with friends, etc. Sometimes you need a break from your hectic studying schedule, so be sure to give yourself one every now and then! You deserve it.

I know you’re going through that stage where you feel like you can’t do anything because your parents are super overprotective or w/e, but seriously don’t treat your parents like crap because they’re doing what they can for you and have been for 14 years prior. When you’re in college living in a dorm somewhere far far away from them, you’re seriously going to regret all those times you yelled or said mean things to them. Going off to college marks the end of your days living with your parents (it’s pretty sad tbh), so just remember to cherish the time you have left with your family because your parents are getting older too.

Well, I hope this was helpful! If you have any tips you want to add or any questions, feel free to contact your big sis! :) I’d love to help anyone out with their problems or questions. Life is weird and doesn’t come with an instructions manual, so the best way to learn how to navigate through it is to ask the veterans, haha.

Since I graduated from an IB school, I’m probably going to make a “how to survive IB high school” post to give my tips + tricks on how to get good grades in some high-level classes and other miscellaneous IB projects (EE, Group 4, TOK essay), etc., but only if I get a high demand for it because that post is gonna take a lot of time to write out, so send me asks or reply to this post letting me know if you guys want it.

Wishing everyone a great school year filled with awesome grades, fun times with friends, productive study sessions, and success!

~Seaside Studying (Steph) xo

Check out my other original text posts here!

#high school #study #studyspo #studyblr #college #text post #seasidestudying

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ruffsficstuffplace · 7 years

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The Keeper of the Grove (Part 32)

Weiss had another dream her second night in the Valley.

She was sitting in a classroom this time, the esteemed halls of the Arcturus Institute of the Arts and Sciences, the school for children of the rich, the famous, and the ridiculously smart as Lumania continued to lose scholars, funding, and prestige to Candela. Her classmates were all the same: beautiful, fashionable, and bored out of their skulls.

The presentation going on at their respective HV receivers was yet another lecture of the history of Candela, specifically about one of its chief founders: her maternal grandfather, Nicholas Schnee. She used to love watching this video just for fun, until it reminded her far too much of how far everything had fallen the moment “Ole Nick kicked the bucket, and left it all to Jack.”

She knew the narration by heart:

“Ever increasing demand for raw materials and power, and ever dwindling natural resources and overloaded wellsprings. Overpopulated and fatally congested cities, and with yet more citizens being born and moving in every day. Rampant corruption, social unrest, city states at war, driven by survival, greed, and just pure, unbridled hate towards anyone deemed the ‘Other.’

“The world of Avalon seemed on the brink of collapse, brought down by the blinding speed of its technological advancement, scandal after scandal in the Church of the Holy Shepherd, the splintering of Captain Piorina 'Piper' Nikos’ once-unified people into the three distinct regions of the Nexus, Solaris, and Zeal.

“It was a time of strife, of uncertainty, of fear; all over, citizens cowered, crushed by the weight of anxiety; fought and killed each other over the scraps; or did their best to hold together a society that was fast falling apart at the very seams.

“And in these darkest hours, when all hope seemed lost, a hero emerged, a man who could not just stand by and let the light of humanity starve itself to death.

“Born in the cutthroat, dog-eat-dog streets and canals of Valentino, trained with the Armed Forces of Avalon in the Nexus, the leader that put an end to the petty in-fighting of Lumania’s academics and scientists, who united the best of the Triumvirate and formed a brave band of scouts, soldiers, settlers, and scientists to venture off into the barren wastelands of the Acropolis, and found our salvation:

“Nicholas Schnee!”

The holo went on to a cliched shot of her grandfather, standing on a mountain top, his energy sword in one hand and his lucky plasma pistol in the other, looking proudly over the foundations of what was to become Candela.

Then, he looked over to Weiss, sheathed his weapons, and stuck out a hand through the holo.

Weiss didn’t even blink as she took it and pulled him out.

“Ah, much better!” Nick said as he climbed out, onto Weiss’ desk. “Thanks, sweetheart; been doing that same stupid pose for far too long...” he grumbled as he climbed down to the floor.

Desensitized and apathetic, no one else noticed.

“Come on, Weiss, let’s get out of here,” Nick said, putting a rough, calloused hand on Weiss’ back.

She happily got up and followed him outside of the classroom, to a giant expanse of pure white.

“Are you actually the spirit of my grandfather, or just my subconscious personified as him?” Weiss asked as they walked.

Nick shrugged. “Who knows! I'd say ask an expert, but if there’s one thing any person who actually knows their stuff will tell you, it’s how much shit they don’t know about. I’ve talked to and learned from enough to know the difference between the real deal, and a phony talking out of their ass.”

Weiss nodded. “So what are you here for, anyway?”

“To give you a pep-talk!” Nick replied, stopping and gently poking her in the chest. “What happened to you, Weiss?”

“Where do I start?” Weiss chirped, smiling. “Shall it be the night I learned that the Keeper of the Grove is actually real and my entire life began to collapse right before my very eyes? Will it be finally getting my sister back after so many years, for all of three days before she was taken away from me again, probably for forever? Ooh, ooh, can it be when I faked my own death because apparently my father considers his stupid ego more important than his own daughter’s life?”

“Wow, keeping it light, aren’t you?” Nick replied flatly.

“Forgive me, but for these past few weeks, life has been repeatedly chewing me up, spitting me out, setting me on fire, then putting out the flames by peeing on me for shits and giggles!”

Nick raised his hands in surrender. “Okay! I get it! I’m sorry! Wrong way to to start off a pep-talk right there!” he yelled. He sighed, and they walked in silence for a few moments. “Let me try again: what does the name ‘Schnee’ mean, Weiss?”

“Unsafe labour conditions? Unethical practices and rampant corruption? Profit over the lives of people?” Weiss replied.

Nick scowled. “Let me be more specific: what did the name ‘Schnee’ mean, before that jackass I regret is my son-in-law and I regret even more is your father went and fucked it up for everyone?”

Weiss sighed. “It meant determination. Quality. Hard work, top-notch service, and cutting-edge technology, all with the goal of making the world a better place to live in for everyone, not just the guys at the top.”

“Exactly! And how did it come to mean that way?”

“You went off on an expedition and found Candela.”

“Wrong. What happened was that I saw the shit all around me, had nothing to my name but washing out at Rank 5 with the Queensguard, and decided if I was going to die penniless and starving on a cold, hard floor, it may as well have been while I was trying to do something to not be poor, hungry, and homeless.

“Me and the original crew, we had no idea what we were looking for, where we were going to find it, or what we’d have to do to get it back to our friends and families back home; all we knew was that we were sick and tired of standing around doing nothing, or spinning our wheels and spraying mud all over ourselves.

“The history books keep skipping to the part where we somehow, magically found ourselves the biggest damn wellspring of raw magic in the history books, one that also happened to sitting over a shit-ton of precious minerals, as if somehow, I had a vision and I just knew we’d have to cross a giant-ass blacktop by night and avoid getting turned to people-jerky by day to get to it.”

His face softened. “But it wasn’t that way, Weiss. You’ve read my journals, haven’t you?”

Weiss nodded. “The ones that didn’t get eaten, destroyed, or lost in some way, at least.”

“What’d they say? What’d I talk about?”

“About how much all of your lives sucked. About how you were constantly cold, hungry, starving, lost, had absolutely no idea what any of you were doing, and kept discovering new levels to the ‘How-Fucked-We-Are-O-Meter’ every day. And about the many, many, many times you got sick from trying to purify bad water and testing the results on yourself, even when you recruited grandma whose doctorate was entirely about that.”

Nick pointed a finger at her. “Exactly. And on a related note, make sure to keep on drinking that purified water from Penny and shut your mouth in the hot springs; all those hours I spent on the crapper could have been spent on something infinitely better, I tell ya.”

Weiss winced. “I will. Believe me, grandpa, you made VERY detailed notes.”

“You’re damn right I did! And what else did I do?”

“You trained hard and fought smart—talk first, shoot last, threats never. You made friends wherever you could find them, whoever they were because you never knew who was going to stick around when times got rough. You learned about everything you didn’t know, and were always ready to admit you were wrong so you could start being less wrong.”

Nick put his hands on Weiss shoulders. “And what are you going to do, sweetheart?” he asked softly.

Weiss sighed and looked away. “Spend the rest of my life as paid test subject, I guess...”

Nick shook his head. “Wrong answer, sweetheart, and I know you didn't need me to tell you that.”

“Well what am I supposed to do, huh?” Weiss snapped as she began to tear up. “I’m not you, grandpa!”

“True...” Nick smiled as he put his finger over her heart. “But you’re still a Schnee.”

The white light began to fade.

“Turn this shit life of yours around, Weiss,” he said as he began to disappear, too. “For me, for Ruby and all the other Fae, and most importantly, for yourself.”

Weiss woke up.

She opened her eyes, before she shut them in a hurry. It was morning in the Valley once more, and the light of Avalon’s suns were still as painfully bright as ever. She turned to her other side and started climbing out of her hammock.

Ruby looked over her shoulder from where she was sitting at her terminal. “Oh, hey! You’re awake!” she said as she sat up and dashed over. “You ready to get started on my new super awesome idea?” she said as she helped Weiss out. “I promise it’s better than the last one!”

Weiss nodded sleepily. “Where do I have to go this time?” she asked as she stretched.

“Just outside! Oh, and skip breakfast for now and change into one of your work dresses—they’re the ones that feel a little rougher compared to the rest.” She thumbed to the door. “I’ll leave and get things ready!”

“Wait! Ruby, before you go: have you ever eaten so many cookies and milk that you had a REALLY weird dream afterward? Like, ‘seeing and talking to your dead relatives’ weird?”

Ruby chuckled. “Oh my gosh, like ALL THE TIME! There was one like a week back where I dreamed you, me, my sister Yang, and Blake were like a team of Watchers fighting off these monsters made from hate, jealousy and Mondays, and we all went to this special school together just for that!”

Weiss stared at her. “What is IN those cookies?”

“Uh, milk, flour, eggs, butter, sugar, vanilla, chocolate chips, and a little salt? Why do you ask?”

Weiss groaned. “Nevermind...”

The house was completely empty save for Blake in the kitchen, entirely focused on slicing up her tuna with loving precision; Weiss ignored the growling of her stomach as she headed out the front door and down the elevator.

Ruby was waiting by a giant patch of land infested with weeds, rocks, trees, and all manner of debris that had washed in during the Flood. Beside her was a rack of tools, mostly for farming and some for construction.

The wood was all aged and worn, probably centuries-old like everything in Keeper’s Hollow, but the metal parts were brand new, freshly sharpened and shined.

“You want me clean up your yard?” Weiss asked, eying the overgrowth dubiously.

“No, I want you to try and bring the old farm back to life!” Ruby replied, holding up a bag of seeds. “Starting with these sweet potatoes!”

Weiss turned to the barn in the distance, the one with the tree growing right through its roof. “This place used to be a farm?”

“Yep! Way back when, Gabija’s husband, wife, or whatever they were started a garden here, and it kept on expanding until it became a full-on farm, with Tenders and animals and everything!

“My family’s been kinda on-and-off about it, because Keepers only tend to ever have the one kid, and even then we’re more Watchers than Tenders, but the land’s always good. My dad grew a LOT of great things here—well, before he got banished, anyway.

“So, what do you say? Want to get to work?” Ruby asked, holding up her scythe.

Weiss nodded. “On one condition: I do all of it.”

Ruby blinked, then frowned. “You sure about this, Weiss?”

“Yes,” Weiss said as she walked up to the rack, and picked up a machete.

It took a few hours, but Weiss managed to beat back a little patch of ground, just enough to plant three neat rows of five seeds each, with a little buffer to build a fence in the future. She watered her crops with a giant, 10-liter can, before set it down in the dirt, and followed it soon after.

She sat on the ground, panting, sweating, covered in mud, arms and legs aching, yet feeling better than she had in a while.

Ruby handed her a bottle of purified water and a towel; Weiss thanked her, before she dumped all of the former over her head and wiped herself up with the later, as the suns were already well-up in the sky.

“So how many weeks am I looking at here?” Weiss asked as she caught her breath.

Ruby snorted. “Weeks? Weiss, these are sweet potatoes, they’ll be ready to harvest in three days.”

“Three days?!” Weiss cried. “How is that even possible?”

“Uh, because this is the Valley? Haven’t you noticed how things tend to grow super big and super fast here...?”

“Right...” Weiss muttered.

The two of them stayed there for a few moments, looking at the tiny garden Weiss had started, the many acres more of debris and overgrowth around it.

“It’s going to be a LONG time before I can hope to get this farm up and running again...” Weiss said.

“Yeeep,” Ruby replied. She smiled at her. “But it’s a start.”

Weiss smiled back. “Yeah. It’s a start.”

Beat.

“Do you need me to carry you back home?”

“Yes please...”

#white rose #rwby #the keeper of the grove #fanfic

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judefan848-blog · 4 years

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ecoorganic · 4 years

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'The Most Intriguing Battle in NCAA History': As College Football Fragments, What Next?

The Big Ten and Pac-12 canceling their fall season has left college football officially divided—and not just among conferences.

At 9 a.m. on what would be an unprecedented day in college football’s baroque, bewildering and bellicose history, a text dropped in from a TV executive who was watching the tumult unfold:

“It’s athletic directors, coaches and players vs. presidents, trustees and lawyers in the most intriguing battle in NCAA history.”

It was the perfect summation of the underlying tension of this Summer of COVID-19.

At that point, nobody was sure who was going to win that epic confrontation. By the end of the day, it was a split decision. Presidents, trustees and lawyers scored two early victories in the Big Ten and Pac-12; athletic directors, coaches and players got an apparent late win in the Big 12.

The first two leagues formally

canceled fall sports, which means for the first time in the 124-year history of the Big Ten and 61-year history of Pac-12, no school in either league will play football. There were Big Ten football champions during World War I, the depths of the Depression and World War II. But there won’t be in 2020.

The Big 12, meanwhile, emerged from a league call Tuesday night saying that it will continue on a path toward playing in the fall. It was a less-than-total declaration, with one league source telling colleague Ross Dellenger: “This doesn’t mean we’re going to play. Students are coming back to campus.”

BARNHART: If ACC, Big 12 Also Bail, Would SEC Go It Alone?

Still, this was big news—and not just for those 10 Big 12 teams and their fans. It was a necessary threshold to reach for the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conferences as well. If what had been described by sources as a “split” Big 12 stays the course, it means that a majority of the Power 5 is going forward—which was the assurance the ACC needed to stay in the fold.

So it is increasingly likely that college football will happen in the fall—diminished and divided though it will be. This is how it works for the oligarchy that runs the sport. There are alliances at times, but no true solidarity and no central leadership. The prevailing ethos: every rich league for itself. (And in this instance, find a few cardiologists who align their thoughts on COVID-19-related heart issues with what your league wants to do.)

But for those pressing forward to play, heed one warning: The lawyers will be circling. Not the ones counseling conferences to avoid trifling with players’ health, but the ones who will be doing the suing if, God forbid, a player dies, has long-term damage or career-threatening complications. In an email to Sports Illustrated, prominent college sports attorney Tom Mars offered this chilling view of what the Big 12, ACC and SEC could be getting into:

“Whatever conference(s) decides to play football this fall will be taking a ridiculously high risk they may soon regret. I know and have talked with some of the best plaintiff’s lawyers in the country this week, and they’re praying the SEC, Big 12 and/or the ACC are greedy enough to stay the course. If things go sideways, the plaintiff’s Bar will immediately get their hands on the internal financial analyses of the schools (a FOIA layup), get the conference financials through the discovery process, and then just stand in front of the jurors and point to the conferences that decided not to risk the health of their student-athletes. Good Lord, I’d hate to be the lawyers defending those cases.”

And the attorneys lining up to represent plaintiffs? “These are lawyers who’ve already slain bigger dragons than the SEC, and they can afford to finance the most expensive litigation on the planet. As a coalition, they’d be the legal equivalent of the Death Star.”

Sleep well, Big 12, ACC and SEC leaders.

Obviously, the fervent wish is for those who do play to suffer no ill effects. For those who don��t play, there is ample empathy.

It’s heartbreaking for all the Big Ten and Pac-12 athletes, in all the fall sports. It’s brutal for all the thousands of people whose jobs revolve around fall Saturdays in college towns like Ann Arbor and Champaign and Corvallis and Pullman. It’s a sad day for all of us who love college football.

It also could have been avoided, if the U.S. hadn’t blown off its collective responsibility to combat the COVID-19 scourge for much of the summer. The responsibility for that failure starts at the feckless, reckless top, but doesn’t end there. Before we get mad at our local university president or regional conference commissioner for taking away football, we should all grade our own virus film, to use a football term.

DELLENGER: Big 12 Keeps Hope of Fall Season Alive—for Now

Currently, the score in the most intriguing battle in NCAA history is 2–0 in favor of those who have something bigger to worry about than whether their team wins on fall Saturdays. But back to the skirmish results from Tuesday: The university presidents, who are tasked with thinking about the greater good of an entire campus, did something they rarely do—they said no to big-time athletics. Did they want to? Of course not. It’s unpopular, and it exposes their athletic departments to massive financial hardship. But they made the hard, proper call in the midst of a pandemic that remains difficult to understand and harder to predict.

“There is simply too much unknown risk for us to proceed with the confidence we need to launch our sports seasons,” said Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez.

These decisions were made under considerable pressure, during a rare public showdown between the academic heads of major universities and their more famous (and often more popular) athletic subordinates. Sports fans are loud enough, but the noise in the system at the conference and university leadership level went up several decibels when the players themselves cranked up hashtag movements on social media, and then famous coaches chimed in, and then here came the politicians. When the president and vice president of the United States are both lobbying to play ball, that has to be considered.

The folks in athletics did their part to move the goalposts. Penn State coach James Franklin, in May: “I'm a believer in science. I'm a believer in medicine and listening to the experts.” James Franklin on Twitter this week, when it looked like the Big Ten’s scientists and doctors and experts were favoring postponement: “I love our players & believe it is my responsibility to help them chase their dreams, both collectively & individually. I am willing to fight WITH them & for our program!”

What had been a swift Big Ten progression toward a decision was slowed in the final hours. What had been considered a formality took on a tinge of drama. Would the league really tell a grandstanding Ryan Day, an angry Jim Harbaugh and a forceful Franklin to hang up their whistles until spring?

Yes it would, as led by a rookie commissioner. Kevin Warren, leading the Big Ten, stood in what looked like a collapsing pocket and delivered an accurate (if unpopular) decision. "This is a very, very trying time,” he said Tuesday. “It’s one of those days you hope in your career you don't have to deal with. But that's not the case in life—we have to deal with what's in front of us.”

For so long throughout this staggering journey toward kickoff, college football’s leadership has been embarrassingly weak. The NCAA and president Mark Emmert are virtually absent. Conferences have been fickle and slow, waiting for someone else to lead. It’s gotten so bad that one FBS athletic director stood in front of his football team Monday and apologized for the terrible leadership in college sports. “You deserve better,” he told them.

The collateral damage during all this dithering has been the athletes themselves, left twisting for weeks while trying to maintain focus on workouts for a season that may not arrive. Now that decisions are being made, universities owe them rapid answers on two fronts:

If your team is playing, what will the testing protocols and other safeguards be throughout the season?

If your team is not playing, what will the school do to support you in terms of scholarship, eligibility, access to facilities and mental health?

The split in college football is a microcosm of the split in our society, and much of it falls along the same lines. As a colleague said, a Venn diagram of those angry about canceled football seasons and those angry about wearing masks might be one circle. It’s exhausting—and also not over.

The SEC, ACC and Big 12, along with, potentially, the American Athletic, Conference USA and Sun Belt, still have to get to kickoff. There likely are many more skirmishes ahead in the battle of athletic directors, coaches and players vs. presidents, trustees and lawyers.

Read more of SI's Daily Covers stories here

More From NCAA Coverage From SI.com Sites:

Ohio State Players' Twitter Reaction to Big Ten's Decision ASU's Herm Edwards Talks Pac-12 Football Cancellation Iowa's Ferentz Delivers the News on the Loss of a Season January Football Games Are Nothing New to UW—Just Husky Stadium What Would a Spring College Football Season Look Like?

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josephborrello · 5 years

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Magnitude and Direction, Issue #40 | 23 Aug 2019

Hardware, Prototyping, and Fabrication

Via The Prepared: The VertiWalk is essentially a human-powered elevator (it's not as hard to operate as it sounds) that can improve mobility for people struggling to get up and down stairs. Blaser Hub has scientifically tested which nerf darts are best, so you know what to stock up on before the next office war. 🧲 This 252-segment ferrofluid display is part digital clock, part lava lamp.

Software and Programming

🤬 Try to play this horrible-UI game without losing your mind. 🔊 There's been speculation of secret codes and messages hidden in songs for generations. Now, though, it's finally come to pass. Not only does this article provide an informative and interactive breakdown on what a JPEG really is and how it works, it also provided this somewhat disturbing factoid: "...in the same way you confuse your brain when you rub your eyes too hard andstart to see blotches of dimness and color! These blotches you see—known as phosphenes—don’t come from any light stimulus, nor are they hallucinations made up in your mind. They arise because your brain assumes that any electrical signal arriving through the nerves in your eye is conveying light information. The brain needs to make this assumption because there’s no way to know whether a given signal is sound, sight, or something else. All the nerves in your body carry exactly the same type of electrical pulse. When you apply pressure by rubbing your eyes, you’re sending non-visual signals that trigger the receptors in your eye, which your brain interprets—incorrectly, in this case—as vision. You can literally see the pressure!" This new knowledge makes me wonder all kinds of things about brain-computer interfaces I wasn't thinking about before!

Science, Engineering, and Biomedicine

As climate change causes the loss of glaciers around the world, more than environmental issues are being precipitated. In the case of Italy, it means they have to keep redrawing their borders. 🥑 Rest easy, folks, we've sequenced the avocado genome. It may seem like just a white orb, but the eye is one of the most complex organs in the body and notoriously hard to replicate in vitro, which makes this tear-shedding artificial eye all the more impressive.

Mapping, History, and Data Science

I came across an interesting article by Jeff Sisson on the BetaNYCSlack Group the other day investigating how a section of Queens most people would probably indentify as Maspeth ended up getting labeled "Haberman" on Google Maps. The conclusion he arrived at, while not 100% confirmed, does seem likely and serves as a reminder that our data is only as good as we are, the topic of this week's Moment of Inertia. "There will probably never be a year in which no one dies in an aviation accident, but there will definitely never be a year in which 10 percent of the global population dies in a single plane crash. Yet that could happen with a supervolcano, an asteroid strike or a nuclear war." The New York Times on why our perceptions of probability make us woefully under-prepared for existential threats (ourselves included). Much to my chagrin, you can't technically ride the entire NYC subway system in alphanumeric order (i.e., 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-A-B-C-D-E-...-Z) with a single metro card swipe (the lack of transfer between the G and J trains is what does you in, in case you were wondering). You can however, travel 154.6 miles in the system without ever doubling back on yourself with a single swipe, as this WNYC article explains. (Also, in case you were curious 154.6 miles is roughly the distance from New York to Baltimore.)

Events and Opportunities

Remember two weeks ago when I said this section was the longest it had ever been? Well, the community may have one-upped itself yet again this week.

TONIGHT, 8/23 Join the New York Academy of Sciences for a brainy comedy night where local scientists will attempt to confirm the hypothesis that science does indeed have a sense of humor.

Tuesday, 8/27 The New York 3D Group hosts their first meetup at The World Bar, where participants can learn about 3D scanning technologies and even how to get a scan of themselves.

Wednesday, 8/28 The NY/NJ chapter of the Society for Conservation GIS are gathering for an informal chat over snacks and drinks. Come network with the organizing committee and other members of the chapter. If your map-minded data enthusiast like myself, they're always looking for volunteers, presenters, and suggestions for activities.

Wednesday, 8/28 The Hardware Startup meetup may not be having formal events over the summer, but that's not going to stop the community from getting together for their second happy hour of the season.

Tuesday & Wednesday, 9/3-4 If you've got some time to take a trip up to Cambridge, join the Harvard Biotech Club for their 20th anniversary Bridging the Gap symposium, annual Career Fair, or both. Students from all academic institutions are welcome and dozens of companies will be on hand for networking and recruiting.

Wednesday, 9/4 The Transit Techies meetup is back with all of your favorite transit-and-data-related projects. If you like trains, data science, and/or the view from Hudson Yards, I highly recommend you check out what is one of my favorite meetups.

Wednesday, 9/4 NYDesigns is hosting is next Women in Tech Happy Hour at Bierocracy in Long Island City. As always, individuals who identify as female and men are also welcome to attend.

Thursday, 9/5 Join Columbia Nano Labs for their annual Industry Day conference. Learn how you can use and leverage the Nano Labs facilities, hear from a panel of entrepreneurs who have done just that, and listen to faculty and technical experts discuss the way these sophisticated tools contribute to cutting-edge research.

Thursday, 9/5 The HAX hardware startup accelerator is journeying east from their usual haunts of San Francisco and Shenzen for a visit to New York to connect with the local hardware community with a special after-work hardware meetup and a night of socializing, drinks, and bites.

Friday 9/6 I'd like to say Nanotech NYC scheduled their next nanonite happy hour in honor of my birthday, but I don't think Jacob or the other organizers know when my birthday is! (Although they do now.) At any rate, NYC's nanotech community (practitioners and enthusiasts alike) will be getting together at Clinton Hall in east Midtown.

Some other upcoming events to keep on your radar...

Monday, 9/9 Small science gets a big showcase at Nano Day at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. Learn about some of the most exciting nanotechnology research and innovations coming from the NYC area and meet other technologists working in the field.

Wednesday, 9/11 Scientists, researchers, cartographers, artists, andeveryone in between will be gathering together at Peculier Pub for the next SciArt mixer.

Friday, 9/13 The Nanotech NYC meetup hosts Kendra Krueger, the founder of 4LoveandScience, a research and education platform that inspires new modes of working and learning in a complex world. An electrical engineer with nanotech experience in academia and the photonics industry, Kendra is also a trained facilitator in mindfulness, sustainable design and social justice.

Thursday, 9/19 LiveIntent is hosting their first tech happy hour at their office in lower Manhattan. The event promises to be a great opportunity for New York tech professionals to network, share ideas, meet our team, and learn all about LiveIntent and how their re-imagining email. There will be food, beer and wine provided, along with video games andboard games available!

Tuesday, 9/24 Join GeoNYC and Doctors Without Borders for a special map-a-thon to fill in missing geospatial data for underserved regions in order to provide international and local NGOs and individuals with the data they need to better respond to crises.

Wednesday, 9/25 Coming off their 1st birthday party, the NYC JLABS crew is taking a short break for the summer but will be back in September for their next Innovators and Entrepreneurs mixer.

Wednesday, 9/25 The RobotLab meetup's September event focuses on the good, the bad, and the ugly of Industry 4.0 and autonomous manufacturing.

Saturday, 9/28 Admission is just the swipe of a metro card for the Parade of Trains at the Brighton Beach station. Vintage train cars from all periods of the subway's history will be on display, as well as taking passengers on short trips around south Brooklyn.

Tuesday, 10/1 The next stop on Ogilvy's healthcare innovation pop-up series takes them to Hudson Yards, where they're teaming up with the HITLAB and SAP.iO Foundry for an event that will focus primarily on the female and underserved health innovators who are disrupting healthcare today.

October 11-16 Innovation Week at Mount Sinai. What started as just the SINAInnovations conference is now a week's worth of activities dedicated to bringing New York's biomedical innovation communities together. Here's the full lineup:

Friday-Sunday, 10/11-13 Mount Sinai Health Hackathon. The 4th annual Mount Sinai Health Hackathon will be an exciting 48-hour transdisciplinary competition focused on creating novel technology solutions for problems in healthcare. This year’s theme is Artificial Intelligence – Expanding the Limits of Human Performance.

Tuesday, 10/15 Careers & Connections 2019. October may feel far away, but I promise you it's not and you'll want to be sure to mark your calendars for GRO-Biotech's next big event, the Careers & Connections mini-conference and networking event, held concurrently with emerging healthcare technologies conference, SINAInnovations.

Tuesday & Wednesday, 10/15-16 SINAInnovations Conference. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is hosting its eighth annual SINAInnovations conference around the theme of Artificial Intelligence. A range of talks andpanels will focus on the explosive growth of AI in our society and in particular in medicine, featuring international thought leaders across the range of relevant domains.

Saturday, 10/26 The Future of Care conference is back at Rockefeller University featuring some of the latest breakthroughs in clinical care and the innovators helping shepherd them from bench to bedside. Apply to attend the conference by September 6th.

Map of the Month

What will the climate in your city feel like in 60 years?

Odds & Ends

Meteor showers are amazing from earth, but they're even more breathtaking from space.

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claracussonseo · 5 years

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12 Things You Really Should Know About SEO

The article 12 Things You Really Should Know About SEO is available on: SEO experts in Chicago area

12 Things You Really Should Know About SEO

From the very beginning of the Internet, the number one challenge which all of us have faced is how to attract qualified visitors to our websites. Throughout the boom years, one of the most popular solutions was to get massive funding, relatively easy to get in those days, and “buy” traffic, by various means. As an iconoclastic young developer, with ambitions of beating the “big boys” at their own game, more time than money or the connections to get it, I sought a less capital intensive methodology to achieve the same results. Years of study and rapt attention to the pertinent forums, trying everything that even seemed to make sense (making many mistakes along the way, and learning much from each one), then carefully monitoring the results, has lead to many highly workable tools in our SEO bag of tricks. The outcome of these trial and error methods, (lots of both) lays the foundation of our SEO services and the basis for the ongoing growth of traffic to your website and ours. The simple fact of the matter is this: Expertise in any other form of writing in no way qualifies one for the type of writing required to optimize a website for the Internet. There are many sites which have less than correct punctuation, grammar, and even spelling which rank #1 in their optimized search phrases. This is not to say that I don’t think these things are important, only that to be found in the search engines, they are not the most important consideration. The flip side of this argument is equally true. Just because someone knows all the ins and outs of all of the search engines, can write algorithms in their sleep, has lunches with Dr. Eric Schmidt and is on a first name basis with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, does not, in any way, make them a writer. All of the writing on this site was done as a collaborative venture between Susan K. Thompson, a professional writer with strong academic credentials and real world experience, in both business and marketing, and myself. Was there a lot of editing and re-write? Yes. Were there disagreements? You bet! Was it worth it? Look at the record. Emerald Coast Entrepreneur was launched on May 1, 2005 with most site optimization in place and submission to the directories just beginning. With a total monetary investment of less than $100.00, and a time investment, I’d rather not think about, but which approached 300 hours, the site was given a PR5 ranking by Google on it’s first update, less than 2 months after our launch. Studies show that over 90% of all online users use search engines to find what they are looking for, whether products/services, or just plain old information. The following twelve points will, I hope, summarize a philosophy, approach and methodology to the SEO question which is both sound and effective, along with giving some helpful insight into the industry itself. 1. Content. Content. Content. Effective, professional, optimized Copywriting is the single, most important factor in any SEO campaign. Search engines index websites based on the content found on each page of the site. With a thorough understanding of the language and grammatical conventions combined with intensive research, to find and exploit the market focus, one can move a website to the upper echelon of the “SERP’s” (Search Engine Results Page) in a methodical as well as ethical manner. 2. Analyze Web Logs. Measure everything, at least twice, and then check again. While I would be the first to say that many of the procedures that make up website optimization are more art than science, one needs to take a very scientific approach to the results of the effort. This is done by methodically keeping a record of, and making an analysis of the sites web logs. There are a number of specialized software which make the job easier but at the bare minimum, one needs to keep a close eye on the site visitors and their activity while on the site. No matter how well planned the strategy, it is largely theoretical until proven by the results, which can only be measured by the logs, and a thorough analysis of their content. 3. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, or any other search engine. Those who promise such feats will either optimize for such vague search term phrases (such as, “green stunted widgets with purple Polka-dots and icing”) that no one will ever likely look for, or they are making a false claim, which they have no intention of keeping, or they have an inside edge at Google, something which they will loose, quickly, when the honest folks at Google find out about it. The other option, that they will take the money and run, is worth mentioning here but I’ll be polite. 4. Some things are just plain silly. You don’t need to submit your site to 50,000 search engines. Businesses which offer this service are suspect, at best. 85% of the search results on the Internet come from one search engine, which, if you have one link from an established website, or better yet, a directory, will find your site just fine, on it’s own. Four (4) search engines account for over 90% of the traffic on the web. As for any supposed benefit which may accrue from being listed in an obscure search engine in Botswana which specializes in safaris to the Kalahari Desert and receives 7 hits per day; well, you figure it out. 5. SEO is not Pay-per-Click. While no one would argue the effectiveness of getting increased traffic and sales, through a well planned, pay-per-click campaign, the fact remains that the conversion rates are generally low and they cease the moment the “pay” stops. With a well planned and executed SEO campaign, while results may take a bit longer, they continue to produce, and in fact grow, long after the work is done and paid for. Quite often we have found that after a thorough optimization of a site, only minor adjustments are needed on an ongoing basis, primarily related to new content and/or new items of sale or service. 6. SEO is not witchcraft, Druidism, shamanism. Neither does it require any special chants, ceremonial fires, or vestments, though some of us do like to howl at the full moon, on occasion. There are no “Top Secret” practices which a reputable SEO can not tell a client, a judge, or his mother, for that matter. The very nature of the Internet has always been cooperative and there is nothing about SEO that can’t be learned, with a heavy dose of time and money. A reputable SEO firm will give you an item per item breakdown of just where the money goes. Be wary if you sense a secretive atmosphere or any unwillingness to answer questions. While there are technical points which might take some background to fully understand, if one has a solid overview of the entire situation, a simple explanation should be easy enough to come up with. 7. Do-it-yourself SEO. Yes, you can execute your own SEO campaign and find a reputable SEO firm to help plan and organize it for you. About one half of my own clientele do some part of the actual work themselves, or have their in-house dedicated personnel do it, after discussion of the goals and aims of the business/website, a thorough website analysis, comprehensive search phrase research, and focused instruction on the ways and means of achieving high SERPs. These preliminaries are followed up with a detailed program of suggestions and methods which the client can then implement themselves or hire others to perform. Average savings; 30-40%. 8. Phased Implementation. While many companies spend thousands of dollars per month on Search Engine Optimization, an alternative is available which will pay dividends to you in increased sales and leads without the high initial investment. The most important consideration is to have a reputable firm handle the initial evaluation and suggested optimization planning first. The trial and error method will cost much more, in the long run, with or without the desired result. After studying the plan and establishing a workable budget you may implement the plan as finances allow. 9. Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Never was this more true than in the realm of SEO. While concrete and measurable gains will always come from a well thought out and executed optimization strategy, the Internet is a competitive media and we all want to be number one. Accept that a steady upward movement, over time, will place you worlds ahead of a flash followed by a crash. 10. A thought to ponder. At stake, in the race for the top, is the very existence of your website, your business, and quite possibly your reputation. Beware of any “shortcuts” or less than ethical schemes that anyone might suggest to further your business goals. When it’s all said and done it is you, the business owner, who bears the responsibility for any company or individual you hire. Insist on knowing exactly what the strategy is and what steps are being performed to implement it. If it seems, in the least, suspicious, ask for and get an explanation. In this case, not only is Ignorance not bliss, it could very well be the beginning of the end for your business. 11. All incoming links are not created equal. Both the relevance to your line of business and website subject matter and the PR value of the incoming link determine how valuable they are to your own PR ranking. With Google starting the trend, nothing new there, and most of the others following close behind, the days of grabbing all the inbound links, in any way possible, are gone. Not only will low ranked and/or irrelevant inbound links not help, they will, in fact, cause a penalty. Link farms, free-for-all link schemes, automated link accumulation software, or any other fad that doesn’t carefully screen the links and websites they are coming from will, in the long run, do more harm than good. 12. It’s more than just facts and figures. The relationship between an online business and SEO is, perhaps, one of the closest of business relationships. In order to be effective, a SEO must know not only the facts and figures pertaining to the endeavor, but s/he must know something of the dreams and aspirations of the business principals. Things which don’t normally come out in a prospectus are often invaluable information when searching for the “right fit” into the complex world of the Internet. My own clients sometimes ask, due to the frequency of my calls and email in the early phases, “Am I your only client?” I usually laugh and say something to the effect that until I know your business almost as well as you do, yes, you are the only one that counts.

The following review 12 Things You Really Should Know About SEO click: Chicago Website Design SEO Company

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gyrlversion · 5 years

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Ex-Big Brother Caroline Wharram should not have been allowed on show

Any suicide is a tragedy, so the two deaths linked to the reality show Love Island should shock me. But the awful truth is this: I’m not surprised at all.

It is seven years since I appeared on the 13th series of Channel 5’s Big Brother, and in that time, I’ve become ever-more convinced that the type of person who wants to hand themselves over to a TV production team is especially vulnerable.

I know quite a few people who’ve appeared on shows like this, and they all have a horrible story to tell.

They’ve become alcoholics, turned to drugs, lost themselves to depression or anxiety, developed eating disorders or pursued obsessive, attention-seeking behaviour on social media.

Caroline Wharram struggling to cope in the Big Brother diary room during her time on the show in 2012

Of course, these tendencies existed before – the problems weren’t created by programme makers, but they were certainly made worse.

The toxic nature of reality TV, the manipulation by producers who are little more than puppeteers, and the instant, snarling effects of fame, can have a devastating effect.

It is a world of self-obsession driven by insecurity – and I should know. It happened to me.

I was an anxious, lonely and sad young girl with a crippling eating disorder and a family history of mental health problems when, at the age of 19, I applied to join Big Brother 2012.

What then took place could – and should – have been predicted.

I crumbled in front of the nation, exhibiting increasingly erratic behaviour. Then, excruciatingly, I was branded a racist after referring to a fellow contestant as a gorilla.

The four years that followed were among the worst of my life as I struggled to rebuild my shattered world.

How I passed the psychological assessments to get on the show continues to baffle me. I should never have been allowed on. And yet, staggeringly, I was. I can only conclude the producers just didn’t care so long as I was entertaining.

I have wonderful, supportive parents and enjoyed an upbringing that most people would call privileged, including a place at a private boarding school in Surrey.

Since the age of nine, however, I had suffered chronic anxiety.

I’m quite academic and had ambitions to be a writer, I’d dropped out of my university degree – after failing to attend a single lecture for six weeks.

Instead, I spent the time in the comfort of my student bedroom, alone, eating masses of food while crying and obsessively weighing myself. I was an anxious, paranoid mess.

None of my peers suspected a thing. When they saw me, I exuded confidence and charisma. I was so good at hiding my misery that when, in January 2012, Big Brother held auditions for a new series, a fellow student told me I’d be perfect because of how ‘wild and fun’ I was. I lapped up her advice.

But today, pictured with her dog Theo, she says: ‘I’ve come through it and am genuinely happy. At weekends, I enjoy walking my dog and writing’

Today it sounds incomprehensible, but I genuinely believed that appearing on television would answer all my problems. I thought it would open a door into a world of celebrity parties, boys, popularity and fame – things I coveted.

More importantly, I could prove to everyone, including myself, that I was the carefree party girl I had always wanted to be. It felt like my happiness depended on getting on that show.

I queued for hours at Wembley Stadium, where the auditions took place among thousands of hopefuls. And I was pleased to find the producers wanted to talk to me, zoning in on my ‘posh’ accent. In fact, it was all they cared about.

A few months later, after more interviews, I was called in for a psychological assessment.

Yet, in my view, the programme makers had little interest in assessing my mental suitability. They failed, for example, to ask me a single question about any mental health problems I might have had.

They didn’t ask whey I’d left university, why I wanted to go on TV or what I thought it would provide for me.

Would I have been honest had they asked these things? Would I have jeopardised my chances of appearing on the show? Probably not. But to me it remains mind-boggling that even the basics were ignored.

‘You’re thick skinned,’ I was told. ‘You don’t care what people think.’ It was so inaccurate I could have laughed. When, finally, the producers told me I’d been successful, I’d never felt so appreciated, so confident and so completely understood.

My parents, though, were devastated. They warned me I wasn’t strong enough, that it would ruin my chances of a career and that the broadcast footage would be manipulated. I didn’t care.

Sure enough, the anxiety and depression returned almost as soon as I entered the Big Brother house.

My behaviour was bizarre. I was eating entire pots of Nutella with a spoon in the morning. At one point, I stuck a toothbrush down my throat to make myself sick in clear view of the cameras. No one on the production team asked if anything might be wrong, or if I needed to speak to someone. Yet, the producers were all too eager to pay attention when I made a casual and thoughtless comment likening another contestant – who was black – to a gorilla.

It was unacceptable, yes. I was perturbed by the fact that he had spent time in prison for robbing elderly ladies and holding them at gunpoint.

But, however stupid I had been, the remark was not intended to be malicious.

The producers, meanwhile, were delighted and played it repeatedly on adverts and on the spin-off show.

After that, I could hear the crowds shouting their hatred for me at each eviction, and I started to hate myself so much that I believed they might be right.

During the week leading up to my departure, the binge-eating escalated. I was crying every day. I couldn’t sleep. My heart palpitations were unbearable. Still there was no offer of psychological help.

When, after seven weeks inside, I was propelled in front of the booing crowds, I was completely unprepared. I was so unwell, in fact, that I couldn’t answer the most basic questions as I was interviewed on live TV.

My attention span had diminished. People assumed I was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Next, I was ushered into a meeting with someone from the ‘care team’, but no one mentioned that I’d gained two stone in seven weeks, that my behaviour was extremely odd, or that I was now a public hate-figure. Instead, they said: ‘You’ve provided us with so much entertainment.’ A pile of articles featuring my name was thrown at me. Then, that was it.

After three days of interviews, I was released back into the real world to fend for myself. It would be months before I heard from the programme makers again.

And now I became completely reckless and wild, attending all-night parties, drinking so much I was barred from three nightclubs.

Hoping to prove that I’d risen above the abuse I was receiving on social media, I started re-tweeting the death threats that flowed in.

In private, however, I was in a dark place where nothing mattered, where I would cry hysterically into a pillow. Each day I took enough laxatives to give me crippling stomach cramps. My eyes were bloodshot, my cheeks marked with burst blood vessels.

There was one follow-up meeting with the Big Brother care team, six months later. I acted extraordinarily, yet still nothing was said.

I went back to university but was thrown out as I couldn’t stop interrupting lectures.

I was still living in a fantasy world where I was watched by 44 cameras and five million viewers.

Relations with my parents took a turn for the worse when, at my 21st birthday party, I vomited over the dinner table and passed out. Any chance of rebuilding a normal life had gone.

Online footage from the show was all over the internet, portraying me as a crazy person even though I was clearly unwell. My reputation meant there was no prospect of a job.

I called the production team and begged them to delete the clips. But the woman on the other end of the line said: ‘Nothing has changed. You have always been that person. That is just who you are.’

Huge changes are needed if we are to continue broadcasting reality shows without ruining yet more young lives or devastating families. The programme makers must ensure their ‘care teams’ work in the interests of the vulnerable applicants, for example, instead of serving the interests of the producers.

The psychiatrists and health experts should be truly independent of the production companies.

Psychological assessments must involve a thorough examination of contestants’ mental state and their emotional history.

I’m convinced people who want to go on reality shows are, in fact, the last people who should appear on TV because they’re so insecure, so much in need of validation. Those brave enough to take part must be reminded – and often – that they are free to leave. Today I’ve come through it and am genuinely happy. At weekends, I enjoy walking my dog and writing. I am incredibly grateful to those who have stuck by me. But it could have been so different. Had my parents not been there to pick up the pieces, I dread to think where I would be now – if anywhere at all.

This exploitation has to end.

l In a statement, Big Brother production company Endemol Shine said: ‘We do not recognise Caroline’s account of our support processes. Big Brother has always taken contributor welfare extremely seriously and had a robust assessment and welfare system in place.

‘All contributors were thoroughly assessed by an independent psychiatrist and a psychologist before being considered for the show and a thorough evaluation of a potential housemates’ health and medical history taken into consideration.

‘A team dedicated to contributor welfare, including mental health experts, was on hand to support housemates both during and after transmission.’

The post Ex-Big Brother Caroline Wharram should not have been allowed on show appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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zipgrowth · 6 years

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Life at an Edtech Startup: Six Lessons for Educators

If you would have told me a year ago that I’d be working for an edtech startup in San Francisco, I would have thought you were crazy. I’ve had many jobs as an educator over the past 16 years, but at my core, I’m a 7th-grade middle school teacher. Nonetheless, here I sit in the heart of Silicon Valley ingenuity and innovation, exactly where I’m supposed to be—surrounded by engineers, business gurus, and dozens of fellow educators who have also made the switch.

For any educators who are considering a switch from education to edtech, here are six lessons I’ve learned from my first year since the transition.

1. Pick a Company That Shares Your Passions and Values

Not all edtech startups are created equal. Some startups are focused on improving niche areas, like virtual reality. While others tackle more meta issues, like building learning management systems to support the entire classroom. What are you most passionate about and qualified to advise on? Start looking at companies that reflect that passion.

When considering a company, ask yourself how does the company approach the problem it’s trying to solve? What intrigued me about AltSchool was how the team is working to achieve its vision of enabling all children to reach their potential. Instead of developing technology apart from teachers and then pushing it into schools, AltSchool brings experts—including teachers—together to co-create the tools in real classrooms. That means I’m not sitting at my desk all day theorizing about what might help teachers. I work alongside educators and students in various public and private schools. I also work with product designers and engineers to prototype new features based on real-time feedback from those teachers and students.

2. Get Ready to Embrace Constant Change

Education and edtech are both trying to help children get a better quality of education. But where education is mired in bureaucracy, edtech moves at the speed of light. That means you’ll likely set aggressive objectives each quarter. Colleagues and supervisors will expect you to tackle simple problems in hours and larger problems in weeks. Emails get answered in minutes, not days.

Where education provides stability and routine, edtech is fraught with risk and routines can change daily. It can be a shock for seasoned educators to enter a lifestyle without tenure or even retirement plans. And your goals may very well change next quarter as the company constantly reevaluates its game-plan. Being able to embrace the spirit of iteration and adjust to a faster pace is essential. It takes practice.

3. Expect a Little Culture Shock

Step inside any startup and the differences are apparent immediately. Imagine the cliche Silicon Valley set-up -- open floor plans, informal attire, glass-walled conference rooms and ping-pong tables. Every component is designed based on research about how to increase collaboration and productivity. It’s normal to experience some culture shock.

School and district offices are inherently (and often rigidly) hierarchical. Superintendents and principals generally have the biggest office with their own reception area and designated parking spaces. In a startup, it’s not uncommon for the CEO to sit at a desk next to the IT person and Uber in each morning with colleagues. In a lot of startups, performance is deemed more important than status. The lack of “authority” empowers every team member to assume responsibility for his or her own actions.

Startups also use a unique combination of resources and policies to incentivize staff. Coming from an academic setting, expect a brief learning curve with the abundance of new technology, from video conference software to internal communications apps. At the same time, be ready to experience a far greater degree of autonomy and flexibility in your workday, whether you’re setting your own goals or simply taking a break whenever you want. A good edtech startup will surround its team with the scaffolding necessary to sustain the high productivity demands.

4. Be Open to Exploring a Whole New Way of Thinking

You are entering a whole new world full of techies, business minds and visionaries. Given the professional landscape they’ve steeped in throughout their careers, just imagine how your startup colleagues might approach things like deadlines and goal-setting and problem-solving. I continue to be awed by the sense of possibility pervasive in AltSchool’s product team.

But also be wary of mindsets that are too focused on the “what” (technology) instead of the “how” and “why” (teaching and children). What is possible in our world continues to evolve because of how technology enables us to connect, learn and do more than ever before. Yet, the focus on integrating technology or adding specific tools is the wrong focus. We should not use new tools because we can; we should use them because they are integral to improving our lives -- in how we interact with people, gain new knowledge, and create. Nowhere is that more true than in schools.

5. Your Educator Experience is a Huge Asset in Edtech

To encourage meaningful change in education, we must understand and communicate how any new technology can create opportunities for powerful learning. If we don’t focus on how it will be new and better for learners, we run the risk of burning out teachers by adding more and more to their plates without a clear understanding of why these new approaches are important. That is a fine edge to balance. Anyone who has not stood in front of a class of 30 students for days and weeks and years, can’t possibly understand the struggles and opportunities that exist in diverse classrooms and school systems. This is where your experience is priceless.

Smart companies value and act on your input as an expert. Your guidance is golden to your company’s bottom line. If the voices of educators and students are not at the very heart of decision making, then I fear you are not in the right place. I highly recommend you push deeply on these areas in any interview processes.

6. Don’t Lose Sight of Why You’re There

If you are like most educators, you went into education to make a positive impact in the lives of kids and set them up for success, now and in the future. Keep that mission central to the work that you do every single day. It will make your company’s product development more valuable and make your days so much more meaningful. Over the years, I’ve evaluated each job through this lens: does this opportunity fuel my passion to teach, to learn and to make a positive impact in children’s lives? I use this lens as a decision making test before saying yes, and as a barometer to ensure I’m still on the right track down the road.

The bottom line is edtech needs visionary leaders like you who will create the conditions for meaningful change. That is imperative to support the monumental transformation our education system is currently undergoing, as it attempts to shift from an industrial era model to a learner-centered model that can meet the demands of our post industrial world.

But we also need passionate and talented educators like you in the classroom and leading our schools, people who are empowered to meet the needs of those they serve. There is no substitute for a teacher who designs authentic, participatory, and relevant learning experiences for her unique population of students. The role of the teacher is to inspire learning and develop skills and mindsets of learners. We don’t necessarily need to transform the role of teachers, but we do need to create a culture that inspires and empowers teachers to innovate in the pursuit of providing optimal learning experiences for their students. Educators who get to know the learners and build relationships and help learners see how they are, where they can go, and develop the skills and mindsets to get there are critical.

So whether you stay in education or make the leap to edtech, you have the incredible opportunity to change lives. I encourage you to take whatever you know to be the challenges that exist in education and lean into the possibilities.

Life at an Edtech Startup: Six Lessons for Educators published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MATTER

Nowadays a lot of time doing it. It would feel unnatural to him to behave any other way. People who worry about the increasing gap between rich and poor generally look back on the default explanation of people living in fallen civilizations. We can of course counter by sending a crawler to look at what you've done in the cold light of morning, and see all its flaws very clearly.1 If a language had twenty separate users, meaning twenty users who decided on their own to use it. And someone has to argue with you, because everyone has base impulses, and if you have a statically-typed language without lexical closures or macros. Perhaps the most successful countries, in the future.

Common Lisp has neither. Which means, interestingly, that determination tends to erode itself.2 Email is not just classification, because false positives are my bug list. I count them as false positives because I hadn't been deleting them as spams before. It might even be possible to write a dissertation. Later, when you want to work for will be as impressed by that as good grades on class assignments. A survey course in art history may be worthwhile. Oddly enough, it won't pay for spammers to spoof: just add a big chunk of random text to counterbalance the spam terms. But that's like using a screwdriver to open bottles; what one really wants is a bottle opener. The idea of them making startup investments is comic. Smart people will go wherever other smart people are.3 Everyone likes to believe that's what makes startups succeed.

What, another search engine? They don't need that much money, and they don't want the hassles that come with it. You have to be. Generally, the garage guys envy the big bang guys. Nerds are a distinct subset of the creative class, they want to live somewhere, you could create in a couple minutes. But it's the bold ideas that generate the biggest returns. When they go to VC firms. They're hard to filter based just on the headers, no matter what they say in the body.

And yet I think they are often mistaken to feel sorry for themselves. So if you want to attract nerds, you need more than a question of just solving a problem. If you wanted to park it. Hackers at every college learn practical skills, and not by accident. There is a kind of pleasure here too. Boldness pays. The opinion of expert hackers is not the same as most language designers'. Ruby on Linux. Apple is in the suburbs.4

Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?5 It's also more formal and distant, which gives the reader's attention permission to drift. Is life actually short, or are we really complaining about its finiteness? You have to be new. A round. The good news is that the initial seed can be quite small. People who worry about the increasing gap between rich and poor generally look back on the default explanation of people living in fallen civilizations. By delaying learning VRML, I avoided having to learn it at all.6 Things that lure you into wasting your time on that's bullshit, you probably already know the answer. VCs aren't interested in such small deals. Make a good car? If you've lived in New York, where people walk, but not smiling.

And such an algorithm would be easy for spammers to send it, and the cost of typing it.7 When they first start working on something, you must have it, no matter what. C, MIT's dialect of Lisp, called MacLisp, was one of those that exploit an insecure cgi script to send mail to third parties.8 The last ingredient a popular language needs is time. Howard Aiken said Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. Using big abstractions you can write the first version of a program very quickly. Google survived to become a big, independent company is the same reason their joinery always has. One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter and things that don't, and only gradually learn to distinguish between them.9 I've read was not in a book, and something to hack. So these five false positives so far, startups that turn down acquisition offers is not necessarily that all such offers undervalue startups. What does it mean, exactly?

This really is kind of a bug. FREE Free free If you do this, be sure to consider versions with initial caps as well as money. If everyone's filters have different probabilities, it will make a very big difference to the bottom line how many users make a critical mass of experts in an important new technology together in a place they liked enough to stay. But often memory will be the limit; the number of temptations around you. One way to describe this situation is to say that a language has to be planted in the right soil, or it will be a good thing when it happens, because these new investors will be compelled by the structure of the investments they make to be ten times bolder than present day VCs.10 Prose can be rewritten over and over until you're happy with it. When specialists in some abstruse topic talk to one another; but you can learn how to predict which startups will succeed.

I've proposed to several VC firms that they set aside some money and designate one partner to make more, smaller bets, and they don't want the hassles that come with it. They're the ones that set the trends, both for other startups and for VCs. Starting a startup is like science in that you have to follow the model of Tcl, and supply the Lisp together with a complete system for supporting server-based applications, it will stay.11 Well, maybe. People should be able to charge for content when it works to charge for content without warping society in order to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. Remember, hackers are lazy. But an illusion it was.

Notes

Some of the increase in economic inequality—that an idea where the richest country in the country it's in. No.

Unfortunately these times are a hundred and one kind that evolves into Facebook isn't merely a better strategy in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to lie to adults. This approach has not worked well, but no more than the founders lots of potential winners, from which I deliberately pander to readers, though sloppier language than I'd use to calibrate the weighting of the young Henry VIII and was troubled by debts all his life. By your mid-game. The trustafarians' ancestors didn't get rich will use this thing yourself, if you like a conversation reaches a certain city because of the word content and tried for a really long time?

A startup's success at fundraising is because their company for more than clumsy efforts to protect one's children seems weaker, judging from things people have told us that the only reason I say the rate of change in the bouillon cube s, cover, and a back seat to philology, which is the new economy during the entire cross-country Internet bandwidth wasn't enough for one another directly through the buzz that surrounds wisdom in this algorithm are calculated using a dictionary from scratch is not just something the telephone, the only significant channel was our own startup Viaweb, which is the most useless investors are just not super thoughtful for the popular vote he would have been the fastest to hire a lot of companies to do tedious work. This was made a lot of the next three years, maybe you don't see them, not eating virtuously. The best investors rarely care who else is investing, which are a hundred years ago. It's hard for us to Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, both of whom have become direct marketers.

Some find they have that glazed over look. Please do not do this right you'd have to disclose the threat to potential speakers. The Sub-Zero 690, one could aspire to the environment. Some VCs seem to be the model for Internet clients too.

Tell the investors.

This has already happened once in China, during the Ming Dynasty, when I read most things I write. The only reason you're even considering the other becomes visible. False positives are not very discerning. But while such trajectories may be a quiet, earnest place like Cambridge in that so many people work with the exception of the Industrial Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Not in New York the center of gravity of the anti-dilution provisions also protect you against tricks like a month might to an employer hired men based on that.

Median may be enough to absorb that. At the time quantum for hacking is very long: it favors small companies. When Harvard kicks undergrads out for here, which shows how unimportant the Arpanet which became the Internet, like selflessness, might come from meditating in an urban legend. Adam Smith Wealth of Nations, v: i mentions several that tried to be the next Facebook, if you seem like a little more fat, and all the page-generating templates are still a dick move.

So it's a collection itself.

Gauss was supposedly asked this when he was otherwise unoccupied, to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to private schools that in practice is that you're being gratuitously troublesome. I used to reply that they got to see if you include the cases where a lot about how to be careful. But should you do if your school, and everyone's used to say whether the 25 people have for one video stream.

If you want to create a web-based applications. It will also interest investors. After a while ago, the world wars to say that it sounds like the Segway and Google Wave. In 1995, when the audience at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they only even consider great people.

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lisarprahl · 6 years

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Preparing Accounting Graduates for a Complex Profession

The accounting profession is ever-changing and rapidly evolving. Advances in accounting technology have increased the rate of innovation, providing immense digital implications on traditional accounting processes. How will these changes affect the accounting profession and, more specifically, how do we prepare our next generation of CPAs to embrace and successfully navigate this changing landscape?

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Yvonne Hinson, CPA, CGMA, from the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), to touch upon some of these issues and get her take on what skills accounting graduates will need to be successful in their careers and how the profession can nurture that success.

Roger CPA Review: As I was researching your academic and professional career, I started to wonder: What inspired you to major in accounting as an undergraduate student?

Dr. Yvonne Hinson: My father was very influential in my decision to go into accounting. He was an accounting professor in both Finance and Managerial/Cost Accounting. I remember sitting in a classroom at around the age of 5 years old, so the academic setting is a comfort zone for me.

Dr. Howard Godfrey, Professor of Accounting at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, had the greatest influence on my decision to go into Tax Accounting. He is such a passionate and energetic professor and made tax incredibly interesting.

Going the academic route is a very appealing lifestyle if you enjoy teaching and research. Plus, you have a great deal of flexibility with your schedule. If you want to prepare for a class or research at night rather than the middle of the day you can do that.

RCPAR: After graduating from college, you went to work for Arthur Andersen. Did you obtain your CPA credential while working there and did you leave Arthur Andersen to pursue your PhD in Accounting?

YH: I was very upfront with the accounting recruiters about my desire to obtain a PhD in Accounting, so the recruiters for Arthur Anderson knew my intent when hiring me. I wanted to have practical experience, but my long-term goal was always to get a PhD. However, I wish I would have taken the CPA Exam earlier in my career. Instead I took it a couple years after graduation. I’ve always encouraged my students to sit for the Exam right after graduation or as soon as possible. There is an inherent advantage to taking the exam when you’re still accustomed to studying and because your knowledge from school is still fresh, you’ll still be very clear on topics that are tested. So, why not take it right away?

RCPAR: What is your opinion about introducing CPA Exam review materials into the classroom to further facilitate the transition from student to CPA professional?

YH: Accounting textbooks typically have CPA Exam questions and materials included, so you’re already introducing Exam concepts into the classroom through the textbooks your students are reading. Also, if you’re in tune with what’s going on in the accounting profession, you’ll know what you need to include in your curriculum to bring real world applications into the classroom. As an accounting professor, it’s important to continually work towards your own professional development by attending accounting conferences, staying in touch with your department’s accounting advisory board, and remaining on top of the news of the day within the accounting profession and bringing those topics into the classroom for your students to discuss.

RCPAR: You are currently the Academic in Residence with the AICPA. How does this position help foster closer relationships with universities and faculty?

YH: We are evolving the position to ensure it’s a position that is all encompassing when it comes to university and faculty relationships. I came into the AICPA position from a tenured faculty position with many strong relationships in the academic world. I’ve always been active in the academic community through the American Accounting Association (AAA), the Federation of Schools of Accountancy (FSA), the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and the AICPA.

In this newly created position, I’m translating my experience, network and understanding of the academic community into projects and actions that recognize and promote accounting faculty as influencers, provide more resources and create a closer link between practice and academe. I use my previous work experience with students to inform our programs. I know firsthand how accounting students and faculty think, and I’m able to translate that into programs and projects that make a difference.

As an accounting professor, I obviously worked closely with the accounting student population and aimed to inspire them to continue in the field of accounting. When I was the accounting department chair at Wake Forrest University, one of my focuses in the position was to inspire students to continue accounting at the graduate level by showing them the value add of obtaining a graduate level degree. Having a graduate degree in accounting makes it easier for a student to start working towards the CPA credential and adds value over your entire career.

In 2017, I began working with teams at the Association across what we call our CPA Pipeline initiatives. These are the projects that work with high school programs, teachers, faculty and students to engage them in the accounting profession and inspire them to consider accounting at the university level. Our team is very passionate about growing the CPA Pipeline and the overall accounting profession.

Our team is very passionate about growing the CPA Pipeline and the overall accounting profession. Tweet This

When we scan the current academic environment, we see advocates for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) out there with very strong messaging to students. The profession needs to ensure that talented and motivated students are also hearing the value proposition of the accounting profession and all the benefits that a CPA license can provide them in their careers.

RCPAR: I’d like to talk about your recent presentation, “AICPA Trend Discussion: Hiring/ Number of Accounting Majors,” you presented at the 2018 Accounting Programs Leadership Group & the Federation of Schools of Accountancy Annual Joint Seminar in San Antonio. You mentioned the top 10 Skills Needed for Accountants in 2020. What are your thoughts on those top skills?

Yes, that came from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report. In my opinion, I don’t see anything new on this top 10 skills list that we haven’t been talking about in the accounting profession. We know that students need technical accounting knowledge, soft skills and the understanding of the higher order skills that are now tested on the CPA Exam. It’s not about just memorizing information; it’s about thinking more critically and creative problem solving.

Students also need communication and people skills. As a professor I always tried to balance what the accounting market is saying students need to be successful as CPAs with what students need to know to pass the CPA Exam. CPA Candidates need to understand both, and I tried to integrate that knowledge into my classroom because firms hire based on those needs.

At Wake Forrest University, virtually 100% of our accounting students took the CPA Exam and 75-85% of them went to work at a Big 4 firm when I was on faculty there. Our school was highly aligned with the accounting profession’s needs of graduating accounting students and I think that’s important to not only continue to grow the CPA Pipeline, but to help students be successful when they start their careers as CPAs.

We are living in a world that is more and more complex and very gray when it comes to defining answers to complex problems. There are a range of correct answers that a CPA will come across in their career. So much problem solving is based on assumptions and I think there is an increased awareness in the profession that critical thinkers have a leg up at providing solutions. Firms don’t want someone who has memorized and answered mathematical questions. Instead, they want someone who can think on their feet and solve complex problems.

Future CPAs need to know the right questions to ask and have an agile and adaptive learning mindset. They need cognitive flexibility to consider alternative solutions and ways to get to those solutions. What’s exciting about an accounting career is that you can have multiple careers within a firm and the profession. The profession is changing rapidly and the opportunities for CPAs are so vast, that the only limitation is the person themselves. It’s not scary, it’s called opportunity, and it’s ready to be grabbed by those who want it!

Future CPAs need to know the right questions to ask and have an agile and adaptive learning mindset. Tweet This

An accounting graduate can leave college and, depending on how much they open their minds to learning new things in their first couple of years at a firm and on their own, they can easily put themselves in a position to be a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in a room full of firm partners. CPAs can really shine by continuing to learn and educate themselves and becoming an expert within their team or firm.

RCPAR: Do you think most accounting graduates have these skills coming out of the universities and going to work in firms? If not, is there a way for universities to help accounting students obtain these skills before they launch their careers?

YH: The accounting profession is changing so rapidly. Academia is trying their best to keep up with the pace of change. Thankfully, firms are great in providing resources to universities. The AICPA and the American Accounting Association foster relationships in accounting education, research and practice. So, accounting graduates are coming out of college with a good set of skills going into the CPA profession. But, firms are saying that stronger skills in technology and data analytics are needed. It’s about how to use data and analytics to answer the right questions and to aid in understanding the overall accounting context and analysis of a problem.

The question is, what do we need to put on the CPA Exam in the future to test the ever-evolving skill sets of the future accountant? What are the core competencies needed when such rapid change is a constant in the profession? As an academic I think about what my students need to know to be successful practitioners. As educators, we need to teach them skills that firms are looking for, while simultaneously preparing them for the CPA Exam. It’s a true balancing act.

RCPAR: In your APLG Presentation, you discussed that there was a 19% downturn of U.S. public accounting firms hiring new accounting graduates from 2014 to 2016. Why do you think this is happening and do you foresee an uptick in firms hiring in the future?

YH: When I was at Wake Forest University we saw this same trend in the early 2000s due to tough economic times. In addition, in the 2006 /2007 timeframe firms were just starting to ramp up consulting arms again, from what we have heard in the market, so firm hiring increased due to this expansion as well as a strong economy. Then in late 2007 and 2008, the economic recession began, and consulting hiring was one of the first service lines that firms cut and so once again, we saw a decline in firm hiring. During this same time and up until about 2014, we saw an increase of accounting students going into graduate programs. It’s not surprising to see an increase in graduate enrollments when you’re in, or have been in, an economic downturn as accounting is a “safe” profession with low unemployment. In 2010, 2012 and 2014 we also saw a spike in firm hiring after the decline in 2008.

Traditionally, there has always been a bit of an ebb and flow in hiring, depending on the state of the economy and the firm environment. It’s important to note that the recent dip was from a record high in the previous report. And despite the slowdown, the report still found firm hiring of new accounting graduates at one of the highest levels on record. While our Trends data does not tell us the reasons for the decline, we are hearing anecdotally that overall firm hiring has not declined and that there has been a shift to recruiting more experienced employees in the technology and advisory areas. This led to a decline in hiring of new accounting graduates from 2014 to 2016 but keep in mind, 2016 is still the highest hiring year we have on record for new accounting graduates in our Trends report since we began the Trends projections in 1971.

While it is too soon to make many concrete statements about firm hiring, Trends data projections show that 59 percent of all firms that hired one or more accounting graduate in 2016 planned to hire the same number of graduates or more in 2017. And it’s important to note that there are many opportunities for accounting graduates in business and industry – which are not captured in the Trends data projections.

RCPAR: Finally, regarding the CPA Pipeline issue, what steps are being taken by the AICPA to help continually grow the pipeline?

YH: The AICPA works closely with state societies to promote the CPA profession with a data-driven strategy and touchpoints all along the pipeline from high school to CPA candidates. We are currently increasing our focus on the high school area. We acquired the Accounting Pilot and Bridge Project (APBP) and renamed it the AICPA Accounting Program for Building the Profession (AICPA APBP). This is a program that trains high school teachers to teach a college level accounting principles course in high schools. Several universities are already accepting credit for the students who pass a qualifying exam after taking an APBP course. We are also working to increase the number of universities accepting this for credit.

It’s important to remember that school faculty and career advisors are tremendous influencers to students, so we continue to work with them to help facilitate the best messaging to students about the accounting profession

It’s an extraordinary time in the world right now and a great time to go into accounting. At the AICPA, we’re always looking for new ways to promote the profession and ensure the messaging is getting to our students in a way that resonates with them.

In closing, I’d like to share this AICPA-produced video that showcases what will be required for businesses to thrive with all the new complexities and challenges in the world today and what new accountants can expect on the horizon. The challenge of the AICPA is to reimagine the profession and ensure we continue to empower opportunity, prosperity and trust. We actually see this as an opportunity for our members and are working with them to seize these opportunities.

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Thank you to Dr. Hinson for this incredibly insightful interview.

About Dr. Yvonne Hinson, CPA, CGMA

Yvonne Hinson, CPA, CGMA, Ph.D. is currently the Academic in Residence with the AICPA; a newly created position to foster closer relationships with universities and faculty. She began her accounting career with Arthur Andersen in Charlotte, NC. After returning to the University of Tennessee to pursue her Ph.D., Yvonne accepted a position with Wake Forest University. During her 18.5-year career at WFU she served as a faculty member, Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Accountancy and Dean of Charlotte Programs. Yvonne has served on numerous academic and community committees and nonprofit Boards and is a past President of the Federation of Schools of Accountancy and past Chair of the AAA Membership Advisory Committee. She currently serves on the AACSB Accounting Accreditation Committee and the federal Cost Accounting Standards Board. Her research has been published in both academic and practitioner journals. She earned her undergraduate degree in accounting and MBA from UNC Charlotte.

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