#ceo!scott huffman | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jbreenr · 2 years

Text

Perfect Gift

Pairing: CEO!Scott Huffman × Reader

Summary: What do you give to someone who has everything?

Word count: 1,237

Warning: None that I know but I would like to add some in a second part. 🤔

A/N: I decided I'll be posting some drabbles (mhm) throughout the week till Saturday. Hope you like 'em at least a little. Happy holidays, everyone! As always, lack of vocabulary and grammatical mistakes abound. *apologizes in español*.

ᴺᵒᵗ ᵐʸ ᵍⁱᶠ ¯ ᶜʳᵉᵈⁱᵗˢ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜʳᵉᵃᵗᵒʳ

Why? Why, out of all the people you worked with, did you have to buy a gift for the boss?

It's not that you didn't like him. On the contrary, you liked him more than you were willing to admit.

And still, that was not the problem.

When you agreed to be a part of the gift exchange that was organized at the office, you expected to be buying a tie, a Radiohead album, a shadow palette at Sephora… Never would you imagine you'd pick Scott Huffman's name to be his secret Santa.

So, here you were, scrolling through the fifth, maybe sixth website, looking for something good enough to give to your boss. There was a hard fifty dollars limit, and you had no idea how you'd make it work. His suits were made of the finest materials, the little accessories he wore were worth more than all your jewels together, and luxuries were not a problem for him.

Snapping the screen of your laptop shut, you let out a long groan of frustration. What were you going to get him if he already had everything and more?

Good news was, you still had two days to decide on something.

There was always a reunion at the office on Christmas eve. A little party for coworkers to hang and have a pleasant time before heading home to their families and abundant dinners.

It was also tradition to exchange presents as a way to get along with more people and break the routine at least for a night.

“Alright, people!” Sarah, the self-assigned coordinator of the dynamic called, clapping her hands to get everyone's attention. “I hope you all have your gifts ready because the game starts… now.”

And as soon as she said that, everyone was in motion, looking for the person they had to give their present to.

You looked for Mr. Huffman, hands behind your back to hide the bag, even though it wasn't necessary.

“Y/N.” You were a couple of steps away from his office when you heard him, freezing you. Panic running through your veins, realizing now how disappointing your gift could be for a man like Scott Huffman. “I was looking for you.” With a head movement, he asked you to follow him inside the office. From the desk, he took a small white bag with a cute ribbon and handed it to you. “Merry Christmas.”

You took the bag, peeking inside to get a look at whatever it was he got you. “Thank you, Mr. Huffman.”

Smiling at him, you were about to give him his gift, ready to run in the opposite direction, before he spoke, “Aren't you going to open it?” He asked curiously, and to those beautiful blue eyes, you could deny nothing.

“Y-yeah, sure.” Holding your own gift under your arm, you took the red little box out of the bag. Opening it, your eyes went from the content to Scott repeatedly. Your lips were parted, moving and trying to say something coherent, but your brain wasn't working anymore.

“What do you think?” His voice brought you back to reality, finally making you able to speak again.

“It, it's beautiful.” And you were as honest as you were shocked. Inside the box, neatly placed was a silver bracelet with a heart shaped pendant, it sparkled with the reflection of the white lights and if you weren't wrong, it was a real diamond. It was… “This is more than fifty dollars, Mr. Huffman. I can't accept it.”

You tried to return the box to him, but he wasn't accepting it.

“Of course you can!” Scott took the bracelet out of the box to show it to you. “The lady that helped me at the store said that it was the perfect gift for a beautiful woman.” He took advantage of your extended arm to clip the bracelet around your wrist. “But if you don't like it, I can change it for something else.”

As impressed as you were about the gift itself, you overlooked his compliment, certain that he would indeed change it if you asked. As well as you were certain he'd choose something more extravagant and, for instance, more expensive.

“No, no. I love it. It's just…” You feel dumb, knowing what waited in the bag under your arm to be opened.

If you didn't know it was impossible, you could have sworn he heard the sound of gears working inside your brain. Jewelry! There was a jewelry store down the street. It was late but with a little luck they'd still be open and, well, you hoped a watch would do.

“I'm your Secret Santa but I forgot your gift in the car. If you wait just a minute, I'll…” You tried to step back, but stumbled upon a chair, which almost made you fall, if it wasn't because of Scott, who reacted as fast as you closed your eyes, waiting for the impact.

“That's strange.” Only when he was sure you were stabilized was he let go. “I heard you telling Lynn that you had it here, with you.” He pointed to the bag you kept carrying, making it clear that by no chance would you leave the building to get a last minute change.

It was clear why you always lost in hide and seek.

Sighing on defeat, you gave him the bag, explaining why you came up with the idea of it and offering to change it for that watch you had in mind. Scott stared at it for a solid minute, watching the patterns, vibrant colors, and feeling its texture.

A soft smile adorned his face when he said, “I've always wanted one of these.” Scott left the piece of cloth in his chair to take off his jacket.

“Really?” Confusion all over the question.

“Yes,” He put on the ugly sweater with trees and snowmen and reindeer, finding it a bit difficult for it to fit his broad shoulders. "but I never really had a chance or an excuse to wear one.”

Outside, the sky was deep dark, making the large window a perfect mirror.

“It looks good on you.” Having nothing else to say, you decided for honesty. You never thought you'd like an ugly sweater that much.

“You think so?” He has that analytic glint you saw him use so often. “Don't I look…” He thought of the best word to describe it, trying not to offend your present. “unprofessional?”

“Well, I think you need some unprofessionalism in your life.” The words left your lips before you could process them. “I--.”

He turned from the window and made his way, slowly, to you. Only when he was closer than he'd ever been was when you realized you hadn't moved an inch.

The back of his hand brushed delicately your blushing cheek. The warmth in his eyes could melt you even though the air conditioning was on.

“I believe that, too.” His eyes descended to your lips, his face growing closer to yours…

“Everyone get together!” At the sudden sound, you opened your eyes. “It's time to see who won the raffle!”

“We should go.” He said against your lips, minty breath hitting your face. “We can pick this up again when the party's over.”

And as he left to join the rest, you cursed Sarah for not hanging a mistletoe right in his office.

#scott huffman x female reader #scott huffman fanfiction #scott huffman imagine #scott huffman x reader #scott huffman #scott huffman drabble #sebastian stan #sebastian stan drabble #sebastian stan characters #breen writes #christmas drabble #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan imagine #scott huffman au #ceo!scott huffman #ceo au #ceo!au

108 notes · View notes

fxckbuckyscoming · 3 years

Text

Masterlist completed on: 9th January 2021. Day 1 - 31 and the Bonus day were written for @the-ss-horniest-book-club Home For The Holidays challenge that ran during the entire month of December! ❤️

All works below the read more link are SFW.

Day 1 - Advent

Day 2 - The Tree

Day 3 - Decorating

Day 4 - Fireplace

Day 5 - Greeting Cards

Day 6 - Baking Cookies

Day 7 - Holiday Movies

Day 8 - Ice Skating

Day 9 - Gingerbread House Decorating

Day 10 - Tree Lighting

Day 11 - Hanukkah

Day 12 - Elf on The Shelf

Day 13 - Your Favorite Holiday Recipe

Day 14 - Picture with Santa

Day 15 - Holiday Music

Day 16 - Making Homemade Gifts

Day 17 - Holiday Shopping

Day 18 - Office Holiday Party

Day 19 - Ugly Holiday Sweaters

Day 20 - Gift Wrapping

Day 21 - Winter Solstice

Day 22 - Secret Santa

Day 23 - Driving/Walking to Look at Decorations

Day 24 - Christmas Eve

Day 25 - Christmas

Day 26 - Boxing Day

Day 27 - Regifting

Day 28 - Donate To A Charity

Day 29 - Playing In The Snow

Day 30 - Hot Chocolate

Day 31 - New Years Eve

HFTH Bonus Day

39 notes · View notes

darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 3 years

Note

Two Cents Tuesday!!

Your challenge for Tuesday is to read and reblog a story with a comment. Bonus points if it’s a story you’ve never read or a writer you’ve never interacted with. Let’s make leaving our two cents the norm again. So smash those keyboards, leave a gif, and go find your new fave. Send this in an ask to the first 10 people in your notifications. Everyone loves getting asks and comments…it’s win all around.

I will do this when I have a chance, but for now I'll post a few I've been saving to read:

@cherienymphe has an ongoing Peter I'm hearing great things about! All her work is cherished.

@avintagekiss24 best friend's dad? y'all have seen my current descent into dilf!madness so can you be surprised I have this bookmarked for my addled wandering mind. And of course, on of my fave writers.

@lokislastlove siren!Loki. I needa get my head outta my ass and my heart outta my throat and hunker down for this.

@navybrat817 I see my ho mama and I say yes I'm gonna hit the star on this until I can be ho ass. She's a great person and awesome writer.

33 notes · View notes

riricitaa · 4 years

Text

My Stucky / Evanstan Aus gifs

It was finally time to get off my ass and make this masterlist 😆😂😬

*Series

-Gang leader!Steve x undercover FBI agent!Bucky

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Epilogue

-Reclusive movie star!Steve x journalist!Bucky

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

-Slash And Burn (Ransom x Charles)

Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Epilogue

-Trial and Error (Andy x TJ)

Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

Part 18

Part 19

Part 20

Part 21

Epilogue

*KNIFEWOOD

# enemies to lovers

👀👀👀😏

would you please shut up?

# enemies to lovers 2.0

you guys wanted more of this AU 😌

did someone say Ransom x Charles ?

well ... Happy New Year 😌😌😌😳😳

If you think I’m done with these two, you’re mistaking 😌

- I know you’re up to no good Ransom, so, either you do as I say, or I will tell everyone else

Assholes™

Wedding documentary

Knifewood AU in which Charles is the one who technically murdered Harlan but Ransom is the one who got arrested

*TJANDY

Andy Barber x TJ Hammond

Andy Barber x TJ Hammond 2.0

Andy Barber x TJ Hammond 3.0

Andy Barber x TJ Hammond 4.0

🥺🥺🥺🥺

TJ has a meeting with Andy (his lawyer) to discuss a case and he didn’t expect he’d run into the case itself ….

TJ ‘insecure’ Hammond

*FRANK²

Frank² 1.0

Frank² 2.0

a Frank² au where Frank is trying to win Frank’s heart by spending time with Mary, playing and building sand castles together 💕

Roberta invited her friend to introduce her to Frank, hoping to set them up, but Frank was distracted the whole time 😌😏

Guess he ended up taking him home after this 😌😏🤫🤫

some Frank² angst requested by anon

↳ some more Frank² because why not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

*Stucky / Evanstan AUs (?/?)

to all the my stuckies/evanstaners out there 😘😘

“I’m ready”

date night 👌😌😌😌👔👔🔥🔥

someone is playing hard to get or what’s going on here? lol

first glance in a locker room maybe lol 👀👀😬

I leave the second gif dialogue to your imagination 😌😌

👀🎹🎶😍

🍻🍷💕😌

🛀🚿🔥😌

an AU where Steve/Chris is hanging out with some friends and Bucky/Sebastian happens to be there and can’t get his eyes off of him 😌😌😌😌😏

an AU where Steve/Chris is doing a photoshoot and impressing Bucky/Sebastian the agency CEO who rarely attends photoshoots 😌

🏋👀😌

🏝🏝🌊⛱💙

The new gardener has a crush on the ‘douche’ son 🤫

this one has been sitting in my drafts for ages, and since I’m not productive lately and I don’t feel like doing anything, here it is, with no context jaja

bonjour ☀️☀️

undercover FBI agent x Gang leader AU 🤫🤫😌😌

*Random

💕💕☀️✨

👀👀❤️️❤️️🤫 (caption this)

- Why Buck? You promised me that you won’t get yourself into trouble again? - Guess I can’t be saved after all Stevie

an AU where Steve/Chris owns a public pool (or works there as a lifeguard or something), and one day he finds a hot guy (Bucky/Seb) trespassing

💕💞💞💕

au where strangers meet at the club on Friday night 😌😌😏😏🌚🌚

Scott x Mike

- Hey, don’t judge tho, it’s my cheat day #meet cute

who else adores Cap!Steve x modern!Bucky AUs?

# Strangers to lovers AU 😌😌

Ransom x TJ Hammond

family sunset at the beach 🌅🌅🌅💕😌👌

single dad!Steve x bad boy!Bucky

single dad!Steve x bad boy!Bucky 2.0

Cap!Steve x modern!Bucky 2.0

Frank Adler x TJ Hammond

Steve x MCU!Sebastian Stan

Andy Barber x Scott Huffman

nomad Steve is following a lead when a handsome stranger flirts with him, a concept … 😌💙

quarentine facetiming 1.0

quarentine facetiming 2.0

quarentine facetiming 3.0

Stucky AU in which FBI agent Bucky Barnes finds himself questionning his morality when a potential suspect, Steve Rogers, takes interest in him.

Suits²

Bodyguard!Steve x rich spoiled brat!Bucky

Stucky AU in which a bad first date might be the best thing to happen to Steve one night

quarentine facetiming 4.0

CACW au

289 notes · View notes

tabloidtoc · 3 years

Text

National Examiner, January 11

You can now buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Why JFK destroyed the Rat Pack

Page 2: The Sky Was Their Limit -- beloved celebs who lost their lives in air crashes -- Patsy Cline, Otis Redding, Rocky Marciano, Kobe Bryant, John Denver, Carole Lombard

Page 3: Ricky Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Glenn Miller, Will Rogers, Audie Murphy, Buddy Holly, Lt. Thomas E. Selfride

Page 4: Cher and her fashion in her movies

Page 6: Albert Bouria the CEO of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Pfizer says he hasn’t taken his company’s shot yet because he doesn’t want people to think he can jump the line

Page 7: The kids of The Waltons are all grown up and share some fond memories -- Michael Learned (Olivia), Richard Thomas (John-Boy), Kami Cotler (Elizabeth), David W. Harper (Jim-Bob), Mary Elizabeth McDonough (Erin), Judy Norton (Mary Ellen), Eric Scott (Ben)

Page 8: Avoid these common laundry mistakes

Page 9: Michael J. Fox: How I survived the darkest days -- Parkinson’s has not destroyed his hope and faith

Page 10: For the second year in a row Florida businessman Michael Esmond has paid the utility bills of families at risk of having them turned off

Page 11: Your Health -- watch for unhealthy buildup of anxiety

* Pantry/Fridge/Countertop -- where to store your food

Page 12: What do you get for a monarch like Queen Elizabeth who has everything including the crown jewels? Why, gag gifts, of course

Page 14: Dear Tony -- past lives you’ve both led have led to the Blame Game, Tony predicts many women worldwide will wear white this winter and he predicts there will be a lot more road rage

Page 15: For more than 15 years Carrie Fisher and her mom Debbie Reynolds lived next door to each other in Beverly Hills -- now Carrie’s only child Billie Lourd is combining the two homes into an estate where she’ll live with fiance Austen Rydell and their newborn son Kingston

Page 16: John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John grew close while co-starring in the hit 1978 musical Grease and that bond has supported them through thick and thin for four decades

Page 18: An Ohio man who lost his high school ring while washing his car in 1967 was reunited with it thanks to a good-hearted guy with a metal detector

Page 19: A whole community in upstate New York had been looking for a lost dog for ten days when a man with a drone stepped in and saved the day

Page 20: Cover Story -- John F. Kennedy and Frank Sinatra, along with the legendary Rat Pack, were the best of friends until JFK was elected president and then he and his powerful clan crushed them -- in early 1960 then-Sen. Kennedy was running for president and associating with the Rat Pack which consisted of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. made him look cool and it also helped fund his campaign -- JFK won the presidency and a thrilled Sinatra built an elaborate communications system and a helipad at his Palm Springs home in expectation of a visit but after the election Sinatra found himself outside the inner circle because Jackie Kennedy despised the singer and didn’t want him anywhere near the White House and Sinatra flaunted his friendships with crime bosses and JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy was the attorney general

Page 22: It’s been a little over a year since Felicity Huffman was released from prison after serving time for her role in the college admissions scandal but she’s starting to get her life and career back on track -- initially Felicity was nervous about working again given the controversy and everything that went down but she shouldn’t have worried so much -- she has landed a part in an upcoming pilot in which she’ll play a widowed owner of a Triple-A baseball team -- Hollywood has a short memory and people have been very forgiving towards her

Page 24: A church in Iowa bought and forgave a staggering $5 million in medical debt for people across the state

Page 25: Myths about digestion revealed

Page 26: 100 ways to 100 years -- you can live longer by following these simple suggestions

Page 32: Star Dreams -- what celebs wanted to be when they grew up -- Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence, Reese Witherspoon, James Earl Jones, Matthew McConaughey, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Tony Danza, Goldie Hawn

Page 35: Winter Beauty Tips -- stay soft and smooth during the cold months

Page 40: Happy birthday to legendary singer Dionne Warwick who turned 80 years old on December 12 and couldn’t be happier

Page 42: Tony’s Mystic World -- the power of people

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Jerry O’Connell with his dog outside his home in L.A. (picture), Gordon Ramsay (picture), when model Lauren Hutton was first starting out she was told to fix her teeth so instead she used a type of wax called mortician’s wax and stuck it between her two front teeth, Dakota Johnson and Chris Martin engaged, two days after the birth of his son Luca Patrick singer Robin Thicke paid tribute to his late dad Alan Thicke, production on Ted Danson’s latest Tinseltown project Mr. Mayor has been disrupted by COVID-19

Page 45: Chrissy Metz singing on the Hallmark Channel (picture), Christopher Walken says he’s never owned a computer or a mobile phone, country icons sing praises of Charley Pride

Page 46: A man in Maine met his biological dad for the first time at 43 years old and decided to recreate the scene from Elf

Page 47: Collect Them All -- weird wonderful passions of the stars -- Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Janet Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Hanks, Claudia Schiffer, Demi Moore

6 notes · View notes

the-ss-horniest-book-club · 4 years

Text

Tuesday 3-3-20 - it's time for another HBC 24 Hour Surprise Drabble Challenge!

The theme this time is AU! Alternate Universe - choose any AU (list below, or create your own) and Seb/Any Seb Character(s) and go wild!

Rules For AU Challenge Drabbles:

You do not need to reserve a prompt.

You do not need to tell us which prompt you're writing.

You can write as many or as few as you'd like, and there is no word minimum or maximum.

Smut/Fluff/Angst/any combo accepted, please adhere to HBC Guidelines.

To get on the masterlist, DM the link to your drabble(s) to HBC - All AU Challenge Drabble links received in 24 hours will be added to the masterlist.

AU Prompts:

Actor

Alpha

Angel

Astronaut

Baker

Barista

Bartender

Biker

Bodyguard

Cam Boy

Captain

CEO

CIA/FBI

Chef

College Student

Cowboy

Dad/Single Parent

Dancer

Demon

Doctor

Fairy Tale

Fireman

Gladiator

Gods/Goddesses

Lawyer

Lumberjack

Merman/Mermaid

Mobster

Musician/Rock Star

Paramedic/EMT

Pirate

Police Officer

Private Detective

Professor

Regency

Royal

Space Opera

Stripper

Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby

Tattoo Artist

Teacher

Vampire

Viking

Warlock

Werewolf

Writer

OR CREATE YOUR OWN!

Character List:

Tony n' Tina's Wedding - Johnny Nunzio

Red Doors - Simon

The Architect - Martin Waters

The Covenant - Chase Collins

The Education of Charlie Banks - Leo Reilly

Rachel Getting Married - Walter

Spread- Harry

Hot Tub Time Machine - Blaine

Black Swan - Andrew / Suitor

Gone - Billy

The Apparition - Ben Curtis

The Bronze - Lance Tucker

Ricki and the Flash - Joshua Brummel

The Martian - Dr. Chris Beck

Logan Lucky - Dayton White

I, Tonya - Jeff Gillooly

I'm Not Here - Steve

Destroyer - Det. Chris

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Charles Blackwood

The Last Full Measure - Scott Huffman

Gossip Girl - Carter Baizen

Kings - Jack Benjamin

Once Upon a Time - Jefferson / The Mad Hatter

Political Animals - T.J. Hammond

Labyrinth - Will Franklyn

I'm Dying Up Here - Clay Appuzzo

Picnic - Hal Carter

MCU - James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes

If you want to do headcanons/moodboards/art instead, PLEASE DO and tag us/DM the link!

Have fun playing!

Love, The HBC 💋

#hbc au drabble challenge #hbc special 24 hour challenge

31 notes · View notes

navybrat817 · 3 years

Note

Ohh the looks he gives. I feel like you either riled him up and he's gonna make you pay or he's about to devour you? Either way I'm down

My lovely! Who do we think this is? Is this mob Bucky or CEO Bucky?

Or what if it's Bucky AND Scott Huffman? 👀 You know I'm a fictional hoe and my hours are 24/7. My body is ready.

Love and thank you! ❤️💙❤️

#navybrat answers #gif ask #bucky barnes #scott huffman #the thirst is strong with this one #dreamlessinparis #asks are always appreciated

62 notes · View notes

jobsearchtips02 · 4 years

Text

How Silicon Valley billionaires ended up being doomsday preppers

Peter Thiel.

Shutterstock and Neilson Barnard/Getty.

A few of the most affluent of Silicon Valley have established a fondness for prepping for the armageddon in recent years.

Lasik eye surgery, multimillion-dollar real-estate investments in New Zealand, “go bags” filled with guns and food– they’re going for it in the event of a catastrophe.

There might be something about lavish doomsday prepping that is special to Silicon Valley culture.

But it also might merely be that investing in preparations for completion of the world is a high-end only for the uber-rich, a number of whom have the lucrative tech economy to thank for their wealth.

Go to Company Expert’s homepage for more stories

Lots of have been encouraged to work from house, if able, to help contain the illness.

But for the end ofthe world prepper neighborhood, they’re continuously preparing for catastrophe situations.

And the wealthiest in society, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street and beyond, take it to an entire other level, maybe merely due to the fact that they can manage to.

Survivalism is a motion whose participants actively get ready for a political, social, or natural worldwide emergency by stockpiling food, weapons, and other products.

A prepper in Warrenton, North Carolina on December 13,2012

Chris Keane/Reuters.

It’s more frequently described as “end ofthe world prepping.”

A prepper in Warrenton, North Carolina on December 13,2012

Chris Keane/Reuters.

Source: The New Yorker

There are subreddits and Facebook groups devoted to the community, and it’s perforated pop culture in the last few years, with TELEVISION programs like National Geographic Channel’s “Doomsday Preppers” series that kicked off in 2012.

A bunker at Utah Shelter Systems in North Salt Lake, Utah, on December 12,2012

Jim Urquhart/Reuters.

Source: The New Yorker

There’s a whole “doom boom” market consisting of business that offer emergency situation prep equipment.

Phil Burns pulls a weapon from his knapsack loaded with survival supplies at his house in American Fork, Utah, December 14,2012

Jim Urquhart/Reuters.

Source: NPR

An estimated 20%of Americans take part in some sort of doomsday prepping, according to a study by Finder, which tracks costs habits.

A prepper’s house in Warrenton, North Carolina on December 13,2012

Chris Keane/Reuters.

Source: Finder

However how the average American prepares is going to look a lot different from how the wealthiest in society will go about it.

Prepper Jeff Nice takes a look at his farm in Kinston, North Carolina on December 14,2012

Chris Keane/Reuters.

Buying insurance for completion of the world has actually infiltrated the international elite way of life, and Silicon Valley’s the majority of noteworthy figures are no exception.

Ex-Y Combinator president Sam Altman.

Florence Fu/Tech Insider.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman informed The New Yorker in 2017 that he purchased motorbikes, guns, and ammo for his San Francisco house in the occasion of a disaster.

San Francisco.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Source: The New Yorker

He stated he became motivated to take precautions for prospective catastrophe scenarios after seeing the film “Deep Effect.”

A comet knocks into the Atlantic Ocean in the movie, triggering a tsunami.

Paramount/ “Deep Impact”.

Source: The New Yorker

And while many have at least bikes, weapons, and gold coins stocked up in case of a disaster, that’s at the tame end of the spectrum.

Phil Burns, a guns trainer, holds a pistol that he carries as part of his survival materials at his house in American Fork, Utah, December 14,2012

Jim Urquhart/Reuters.

Source: The New Yorker

Huffman got Lasik eye surgery to increase his chances of enduring some type of world disaster. Yishan Wong, who worked as CEO of Reddit from 2012 to 2014, did the same.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

Zach Gibson/Getty Images.

Source: The New Yorker

The head of a financial investment firm told The New Yorker that he keeps a gassed-up helicopter on standby at all times and has an underground bunker with an air-filtration system.

An example of an underground bunker.

Damian Dovarganes/AP Images.

Source: The New Yorker

Tim Chang, handling director at the equity capital company Mayfield Fund, told The New Yorker that he keeps a set of bags loaded for him and his family in case of a disaster. He also purchases realty for passive income and to have safehouses in location.

A guy drags a travel suitcase.

JGI/Tom Grill/Getty Images.

Source: The New Yorker

Ex-Yahoo officer and existing 500 Start-ups partner Marvin Liao stated he took archery classes to be able to protect his household on the occasion that all hell broke loose.

A Cirque Berserk entertainer in2016

Reuters.

Source: The New Yorker

Doomsday real estate purchases have also end up being a pattern.

The Survival Condo Project, a doomsday development.

Thanks To Survival Condominium Job.

Huffman informed The New Yorker he approximated that more than 50%of his “fellow Silicon Valley billionaires” have actually obtained some kind of doomsday hideaway spot in the United States or somewhere else in the world.

Steve Huffman.

Guru Khalsa.

Source: The New Yorker

Antonio García Martínez, an ex-Facebook product manager who resides in San Francisco, bought 5 acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest. His island house functions generators, photovoltaic panels, and weaponry.

Washington State in2015 Martinez’s land is not imagined.

Ted S. Warren/AP.

Source: The New Yorker

There might be numerous reasons those with cash in the Valley decide to invest in end ofthe world preparations.

Peter Thiel.

Scott Olson/Getty Images.

One, as Huffman informed The New Yorker, could be that Silicon Valley requires an exit strategy for when the angry masses retaliate against them for building the kind of automated technology that is replacing human employees.

A robotic barista at San Francisco’s now-shuttered Coffee shop X coffee shop.

Katie Canales/Business Insider.

Source: The New Yorker

Political discontent is another prospective factor.

Activists oppose the Palantir Technologies software company for apparently assisting ICE and the Trump administration in New York City, U.S., September 13,2019

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters.

Source: The New Yorker

But their simple wealth and situations could also be the most basic description, in addition to the experience that includes operating in the risk-heavy venture capital industry.

Peter Thiel at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in2016

Carolyn Kaster/AP Image.

As Wong, the former Reddit CEO, informed The New Yorker, “The tech preppers do not always think a collapse is likely. They consider it a remote occasion, but one with an extremely severe downside, so, offered just how much money they have, investing a fraction of their net worth to hedge against this … is a logical thing to do.”

Thiel’s net worth is an approximated $2.3 billion.

Andrew Harnik/AP.

The most popular location for buying up apocalypse land has actually become New Zealand.

Palmerston North, New Zealand, in2011

David Gray/Reuters.

” New Zealand is already utopia,” Silicon Valley billionaire investor Peter Thiel told Organisation Insider in 2011.

Christchurch, New Zealand, in2011

Rob Griffith/AP Image.

Source: Service Expert

Thiel owns 2 New Zealand properties and ended up being a citizen in 2011.

Then-President-elect Donald Trump shakes the hand of Peter Thiel at Trump Tower, December 14, 2016 in New York City.

Drew Angerer/Getty.

Source: Company Insider

Ex-president of famous accelerator Y Combinator Sam Altman said he likewise has his eyes trained on New Zealand in case of a catastrophe.

Altman in Sun Valley, Idaho, in2018

Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Source: The New Yorker

He informed The New Yorker that he and Thiel had an escape path to New Zealand planned in case of some kind of catastrophic collapse, like a nuclear war or a viral outbreak.

Altman.

Drew Angerer/Getty.

Source: The New Yorker

The fixation on New Zealand could originate from among Thiel’s favorite books.

A view of Lake Wanaka in the Otago region of New Zealand.

Ariel Schwartz/Business Expert.

According to the Guardian’s Mark O’Connell, Thiel has actually long cited “The Sovereign Person: How to Make it through and Prosper During the Collapse of the Well-being State” as one of the most influential in his life.

Thiel speaks at a Republican National Convention in2016

J. Scott Applewhite/AP.

Source: The Guardian

At its core, the book basically information how a civilizational collapse would give way to the increase of the enduring “cognitive elite” who would then restore a brand-new world after idling standing by– and hiding– as the existing way of living collapsed to pieces.

The front of a doomsday shelter.

Courtesy of Survival Condominium Project.

Source: The Guardian

The book’s authors likewise determined New Zealand as the prime area to hole up till the dust settled following a fallout.

Lake Tekapo, New Zealand.

Reuters.

That reality, coupled with Thiel’s longtime fanaticism of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy– which was filmed in the nation– is how Thiel and the rest of the tech elite made New Zealand their target apocalyptic hideout.

Peter Thiel.

Shutterstock and Neilson Barnard/Getty.

Source: Organisation Expert

According to The New Zealand Herald, Thiel purchased a Queenstown estate in2011 He turned one of the home’s walk-in closets into a panic space.

Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown in New Zealand in2011

Alastair Grant/AP.

Source: Company Insider

Thiel acquired private citizenship of New Zealand in 2011 too, regardless of just having actually spent 12 days in the country.

Peter Thiel.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images.

Source: The Guardian and The Guardian

And in 2015, he purchased an estate on Lake Wanaka valued at around $10 million.

Lake Wanaka in2008

Mark Baker/AP.

Source: The New Zealand Herald

Buying up New Zealand real estate ended up being so popular among execs in the Valley that acquiring a home in New Zealand ended up being Silicon Valley code for getting “apocalypse insurance,” as Service Expert’s Melia Russell reported in 2017.

Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand in2013

New Zealand Herald, Mark Mitchell/AP.

Source: Organisation Insider

And some in New Zealand resent that a lot of the nation’s property has gone to wealthy foreign purchasers who do not live there completely.

Peter Thiel resides in Los Angeles, California.

Tristan Fewings/ Getty.

Source: The New Yorker

So in 2018, the New Zealand Parliament passed a law disallowing most foreign visitors from acquiring homes or land within the country, which had actually begun intensifying an across the country housing crisis.

Lake Tekapo, New Zealand, in2018

Mark Baker/AP.

Source: Organisation Expert

” If you’ve got the right to reside in New Zealand completely, you’ve got the right to buy here. However otherwise it’s not a right, it’s an advantage,” New Zealand’s minister for economic advancement and trade David Parker stated in 2018.

David Parker in2019

Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters.

Source: Company Expert

The country of New Zealand requires foreigners who purchase land there to be “of excellent character,” a provision that affected previous NBC host Matt Lauer when sexual-misconduct allegations developed in 2017.

Matt Lauer.

Slaven Vlasic/ Stringer/Getty Images.

Source: Service Expert

Lauer acquired a 16,000- acre cattle ranch valued at $9.1 million in early 2017 prior to the accusations were made public. New Zealand ultimately allowed the previous TELEVISION host to keep his land.

Matt Lauer in2016

Mike Sega/Reuters.

Source: Business Expert and The New York City Times

The provision still uses to all New Zealand homeowner– good character is “actively confirmed” throughout ownership durations.

Lake Rotoiti on New Zealand’s South Island in2016

Henning Gloystein/Reuters.

Source: The New York Times and Business Insider

Visual Slideshow Functions San Francisco San Francisco Bay Location

Chevron icon It shows an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous/ next navigation choices.

%%.

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/how-silicon-valley-billionaires-ended-up-being-doomsday-preppers/

0 notes

networkingdefinition · 4 years

Text

Mom Quotes

Official Website: Mom Quotes

• A small gold plain cross was passed down from my grandma to my mom, then to me, and now to my daughter. It is always nice to own something that connects you to the women who made it possible for you to exist. – Liya Kebede • Agent Mom is a perfect opportunity for me to do what I love… develop characters, act and take incredible stories to my fans. So yes, I can absolutely see myself cast as Agent Mom. – Alaina Huffman • Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom’s apple pie. In fact, now that Mom’s apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn’t Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not. – William Zinsser • America isn’t Congress. America isn’t Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger. – Barack Obama • And last, my mom. I don’t think you know what you did. You had my brother when you were 18 years old. Three years later, I came out. The odds were stacked against us. Single parent with two boys by the time you were 21 years old. Everybody told us we weren’t supposed to be here. We went from apartment to apartment by ourselves. One of the best memories I had was when we moved into our first apartment, no bed, no furniture and we just sat in the living room and just hugged each other. We thought we made it. – Kevin Durant • At one point in my 20s, I was about to quit acting. I’d had a crappy couple of years and I was depressed. My mom said, ‘Don’t give up! You’ll be so mad at yourself.’ – Janel Moloney

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Mom', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_mom').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_mom img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Being a mom has made me so tired. And so happy. – Tina Fey • But my friends are happy for me. The people who know me are happy. My mom is happy. My family is happy. – Tom Cruise

• Christmas was always a big holiday in our family. Every Christmas Eve before wed go to bed, my mom and dad would read to us two or three stories and they would always be The Happy Prince, The Gift of the Magi and Twas the Night Before Christmas, and I would like to keep that alive. – Cameron Mathison • Dad needs to show an incredible amount of respect and humor and friendship toward his mate so the kids understand their parents are sexy, they’re fun, they do things together, they’re best friends. Kids learn by example. If I respect Mom, they’re going to respect Mom. – Tim Allen

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Every year, my family and I would go visit my moms family in Texas. We would drive from Chicago to Texas, and once we started to get towards San Antonio, everyone looked like me! It was such a great feeling. Everyone had the same brown skin that I did. – Marisol Nichols • Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes. – P. J. O’Rourke • Having children is a huge responsibility, and I just don’t want to hand them off to a nanny or my mom to take care of them. – Thalia • I always wanted to be a young mom, but generations of women have worked so hard so we can have a career and wait to have children. So I say carpe diem – take advantage of that. – Brittany Murphy • I appreciate your giving my book — and in no small way, me — a chance. To thank you, I really wanted to acknowledge all of you in the book. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough room for each name. So I’ve put in a code name that stands for all of you reading this book. The name is ‘Mom.’ It will be our little secret. So when you see ‘Mom’ in the acknowledgments, you’ll know I’m really talking about you. And don’t let my mother try to tell you otherwise. – Ellen DeGeneres • I asked mom if I was a gifted child. She said they certainly wouldn’t have paid for me. – Bill Watterson • I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues. – Angelina Jolie • I didn’t have an imaginary childhood friend, but I did one day imagine somehow tiny green men, and they were only tiny and green because my brother had a ton of toy soldier toys that came on a skateboard plank type of thing, and I just envisioned in this car driving to church with my mom, they were there. – Jim Parsons • I do a little sign on the court every time i make a shot or a good pass and i pound my chest and point to the sky – it symbolizes that i have a heart for God. It’s something that my mom and I came up with in college and I do it every time I step on the floor as a reminder of who i’m playing for. – Stephen Curry • I do doubles on Monday and Thursday, take Wednesday off or do easy cardio, do doubles on Thursday and Friday, and the weekend I just get outside and get active – jog or bike ride, or play tennis with my mom. – Mikaela Shiffrin • I don’t like sex … I’m a single working mom with nine cats, a dog-shark, a lizard, and a bunny. I don’t go to bed, I pass out. The idea that I’d get to my bed and there’d be someone in there with whom I was supposed to have an activity is horrifying to me. – Paula Poundstone • I don’t remember the first poem that I wrote because I’ve been creating poems since I was around 2 or 3. I don’t have any memory of that but my mom has written evidence of it. I’ve always liked playing with words so when I was younger it had a lot more to do with rhyme and sounds. – Sarah Kay • I don’t, as my mom would say, sweat the small stuff in our relationship. Because when I think of day-to-day irritations that you might have with the one you love, they’re nothing compared to the bigger task at hand. – Michelle Obama • I felt bad about myself because certain people were relentlessly attacking me and my reputation. My mom kept saying ‘Let it go, Lauren, It doesn’t matter’ … [I] realized I had to stop worrying about what other people think. The next day I got a tattoo on my lower back that says ‘sticks and stones’, because they may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. – Lauren Conrad • I got a call from my mom today, she says, ‘Well, David, I see you didn’t get the ‘Tonight Show’ again.’ – David Letterman • I got a lot of grief from my teammates about that. It might backfire on my mom. Hopefully, my brother will have another chance somewhere down the road. – Scott Niedermayer • I have a son who’s been raised Jewish because his mom is Jewish. I have a whole different set of holidays to celebrate. Everybody is thrown together with their family in such an intense way, opening all of that stuff again. You’re cooped up with everybody and forced to exist with them, and you’re forced to try to relate to them in this way that’s more open. I guess that just doesn’t work for a lot of people. – Paul Giamatti • I have a ton of cousins on my moms side of the family, and we would put on shows together all the time and put on costumes, and we even charged our parents money. – Maulik Pancholy • I have always stressed to my girls that outer beauty fades but inner beauty lasts forever. Simple things like smiling and looking people in the eye could change someone’s bad day into a good one. My mom always said that beauty is as beauty does, and I’m sure it will pass along to all the future generations of our family. – Tina Knowles • I have an incredible role model in my mom. She was a single mother raising two kids in New York. – Kim Raver • I have no regrets. I had an amazing surrogate who carried my son for me. I am so grateful to her. I can even say I am grateful for having cancer. I was always meant to be a mom, but if I didnt have cancer, I never would have had Zev. I would have had a kid, but not Zev, and I want Zev – tantrums and all. – Marissa Jaret Winokur • I hope telling the story of how I went from being a single mom to serving in the Texas State Senate to running for governor will remind others that with the right leadership in government, where you start has nothing to do with how far you go. – Wendy Davis • I know how to do anything, I’m a mom. – Roseanne Barr • I like to think there are a lot of balls in the air, and the kids are not one that I choose to drop. They have been a priority and I have a career that allows for a little more flexibility at times and hours that are quite mom-friendly. – Elisabeth Hasselbeck • I lived in South Africa until I was 11 when we first immigrated. My mom had sent me back there when I was 14 for summer vacation. I wasn’t doing very well in school, my grades were slipping. I called my mom one day and told her that I wasn’t coming back. I ended up staying there until I was 17 before coming back to North America. – Kandyse McClure • I lost my mother two years ago to cancer. But the greatest gift she gave to me was showing me how to be a wonderful and loving mom to my two sons, even now that they are grown men. – Carla Hall • I love being a single mom. But it’s definitely different when you’re dating. – Brooke Burns • I love doing TV. It’s so great for my world as a mom, as someone who likes to have a steady job and go to work feeling secure because I’m with a family. – Ming-Na Wen • I love my body as it is. People in the industry have been telling me to lose weight for years but I like the way I look. I give credit to my mom for helping me feel good about my appearance – for making sure I never felt embarrassed about my body, because she was never worried about looking too big. – Christina Hendricks • I notice that if there are some times I’ve been stressed, because I’m human and stress about things, that affects your kids. So you have to make sure you’re a happy mom so they can be happy. – Britney Spears • I obviously love to sing, it’s my passion, as is being a mom. Those are the two things that pretty much consume my every day and so I want to keep doing that as long as I can. – Martina McBride • I only do private room karaoke where its just me and one of my closest girlfriends. My mom always said I could really belt songs out, and the Dixie Chicks feed that encouragement. – Chelsea Peretti • I painted my toenails before Dennis Rodman. One time at training camp, I stubbed my toe and the nail came loose. My mom gave me some toenail hardener, and I painted over it. I scored 40-something points that night, so it became a ritual. Paint my toenails, score 40 points. – Shaquille O’Neal • I started acting when I was five years old. I found it randomly, through listening to my brother study monologues. I auditorally started memorizing them for no reason, and started repeating them to anyone who would listen to me. And then, I begged my mom to let me do whatever that meant because I couldn’t put into words exactly what that meant. It just meant me happy. And then, when I was 11 years old, I realized what I was doing and I looked to my mom and said, “Can I make this something I can do for the rest of my life?” She was like, “Yeah, sure, if you want to.” And I was like, “Okay, great! I think I might want to do this forever.” – Chloe Grace Moretz • I started acting when I was, like, three. My brother was really smart, and he wasnt being challenged enough, so my mom put him in the theater class. And I obviously followed him. – Nolan Gould • I suppose all moms have an idea who they hope their daughters will be. Like a connect-the-dots picture where you think you know what shape it will become. But then it’s the daughter who draws the lines, and she might connect the dots you didn’t intend, making a whole different picture. So I’ve gotta trust the dots she’s given me, and she’s gotta trust me to draw the picture myself. – Laura Lee • I think maybe my mom thought that Katharine Hepburn would be a good role model of, like, a strong, smart, independent woman. Maybe she steered me in that direction. You know, because she was really so ahead of her time. – Gillian Jacobs • I think the metaphysical world is something Lisa and I have always been interested in. We were encouraged from a very young age to believe in magic. Our mom used to take us to fairy parties. As we got older, I was always very drawn to manifesting my own destiny…learning how to do spells and personal ritual. – Jessica Origliasso • I thought my mom’s whole purpose was to be my mom. That’s how she made me feel. – Natasha Gregson Wagner • I told Grant Hill back there – I just got done playing against him – as a second grader I had a Pistons Grant Hill jersey. That was the first time I walked into a gym. That’s when I fell in love with the game. My mom, I think she just wanted to get me and my brothers out of the house for a few hours. When I walked into the gym, I fell in love with the game. – Kevin Durant • I used to be embarrassed by my mom, but now I know what she is-she’s a hero. – Carrie Jones • I used to have a blankie, and when my mom had to wash it, I would sit outside the dryer and watch it go round and round, and cry. – Drew Barrymore • I want to be playing music, and I want to be a great mom, and I want to do everything. – Emily Robison • I was always at peace because of the way my mom treated me. – Martina Hingis • I was raised in a spirit of the importance of service to your fellow man. My mom is a senator back home in South Africa. My father is a very caring and generous individual. – Adhir Kalyan • I was taught very well. My mom raised me very well, and so did my dad. I’ve been very blessed to have great parents that cared about me. – Justin Bieber • I wish I had read Sacred Pregnancy when I was pregnant instead of the dozen books I had to piece together to try to make sense of it all. Anni Daulter has created what should be the new standard for today’s mom: birth journals, labor workbooks, pregnancy memoirs, and holistic wisdom. It is gentle and enlightening, and lays the foundation for what we know helps women have the labor and birth they want and deserve: support, self-knowledge, and empowerment. – Mayim Bialik • I wonder if I love the communal act of eating so much because throughout my childhood, with four older brothers and a mom who worked in the restaurant business, I spent a lot of time fending for myself, eating alone – and recognizing how eating together made all the difference. – Thomas Keller • If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not already been. – Robert Breault • I’m a huge breast cancer awareness advocate because my mom went through breast cancer recently. It really brought our family closer. – Brenda Song • I’m a long way from being evicted [at the age of 14], but I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget the feeling. I’ll never forget my mom crying and I’ll never forget the thought I had: ‘Well the only thing I can do is just go build my body,’ because the men who were successful that I knew of – Stallone, Arnold, Bruce Willis – they were men of action. – Dwayne Johnson • I’m a mom. I’m from Ethiopia. I gave birth in the U.S. and had all the proper care available to me. If I had given birth in Ethiopia – I don’t know if I might have even survived it. – Liya Kebede • I’m a real stay-at-home mom. I’m really hands-on. Everything else became secondary. – Drew Barrymore • I’m a working mom, not a professional athlete, but I am a runner and that’s a special club. – Alison Sweeney • Im married to a white man, and then my daughter came out looking like the whitest white child with blonde hair and blue eyes. And Im like, Omigosh, now what am I going to do? She has my moms features and is lighter than my husband. And my boy is browner than I am. Brown eyes and really tan. – Karyn Parsons • I’m somebody who doesn’t work with a stylist. I’ll be honest with you, I’m a mom and it’s just not something I want to put money toward because it’s expensive to have somebody who helps dress you and I feel like I have to pay for preschool and so many things so I don’t have a stylist. – Busy Philipps • It doesn’t matter how old you are, or what you do in your life, you never stop needing your mom. – Kate Winslet • It needs to be said that sometimes my mom forgets important details when she talks. Like the time she told us she was considering leather (couches, it turns out), or when I was little and she said, “Here’s a napkin to put your balls in” (the Atomic Fireballs that I was eating, she meant). – Bill Konigsberg • It’s about prioritizing. Just take it one step at a time. Do the best that you can. I’m a mom and I have two husbands – an ex husband and a next husband. It’s a blended family and it’s very hard to keep things together, but we’re happy and we live in love. Djimon and I are so happy. – Kimora Lee Simmons • It’s always been my mom and I against the world. – Brittany Murphy • It’s fun to play mom. Last I knew I was playing a 17-year-old who graduated. – Selma Blair • I’ve got three kids. I worry about them but the gospel freed me and freed my wife. We are not trying to make our kids think that we’re super spiritual or we’ve got it all together. They see mom and dad being real people. What they hear dad talking about at home is not different from what they see from dad [at church]. That won’t guarantee that they’ll avoid the whole PK, MK thing. But we are hopefully not contributing to what normally produces that crisis, which is pretending. – Tullian Tchividjian • Like many other moms out there, I try to buy safe products for my family, but that can’t be the only solution. You can’t hire a team of scientists to do your shopping for you. At some point the government has to step in and ensure that chemicals are safe before our children are exposed to them. – Jessica Alba • Maybe we ought to look at a guy’s response to our microwave from now on.” Aunt Annie said. Really.” Mom said. “The narcissist looks at his reflection in it. The OCD guy thinks you don’t keep it clean enough.The antisocial–” Puts his fist through it because it reminds him of his father.” Annie said. She’d read all of mom’s books, too. And the paranoid one would be jealous of the amount of time you spend cooking.” Mom said Were you using that microwave again? Is something going on between the two of you? I caught you looking right at its clock.” Annie said. – Deb Caletti • Mom takes all the credit for my success. Now Mom says, ‘I read your face when you were a baby, and it said you were going to be a star. That’s why I named you Ming – because it’s all about the sun and the stars and enlightenment.’ – Ming-Na Wen • My dad had limitations. That’s what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm. – Gillian Flynn • My dad is funny in his own way, and so is my brother, but in terms of legitimately making a lot of people laugh, that’s my mom. I inherit my sense of comedy from her. – Mindy Kaling • My family and my friends-they keep me grounded. Especially my mom, because she would kick my ass if I was to change. – Lil Wayne • My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish. – Jencarlos Canela • My life isn’t interesting! It’s my mom. You need to write her life and put me in it. I’m a cameo in her life. – Carl Lewis • My mom always said fighting with me as a kid was like going to court. I’m trying to realize that being right is not the most important thing. – Gillian Jacobs • My mom and my stepdad are both therapists. – Jennifer Westfeldt • My mom dressed me in silk to go to elementary school. – Allegra Versace • My mom had the breakdown for the family, and I went into therapy for all of us. – Carrie Fisher • My mom has always been a huge inspiration. She was a single mom raising two kids in New York. Now that is full-on all the time. – Kim Raver • My mom has obviously had a powerful influence on my life and her voice can describe certain things that I couldn’t see in myself. – Common • My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years. But as I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family, my aunties, grandparents, is in Africa. – Nipsey Hussle • My mom is my heart. She was a rock for me even though she was not around as much as dad. – Sunidhi Chauhan • My mom is one of those people that you feel honored to meet. And no matter who you are, you fall in love with her because she is spiritual, she’s inspiring, she’s strong, she’s funny, she’s creative, she’s talented… she’s everything that I want to be. – Beyonce Knowles • My mom is really skinny, too. I got it from her. Ive never done yoga before. – Bregje Heinen • My mom makes something called green pie, which I thought was a delicacy that many people only had at Thanksgiving, but it turns out it was just Jell-O with whipped cream on it. And it’s delicious. – Bobby Moynihan • My mom pushed me to take drama class. – Michael Steger • My mom says I have to be more positive, and I say life has to be more positive too or it’s just not going to work. – Jane Wagner • My mom was always a fan of just really elegant, sophisticated pieces. I mean we grew up in Maine, so we didn’t have a lot of call for black tie or anything, but I think I definitely got that sensibility from her. – Anna Kendrick • My mom was always like, “If you love it, do it. If she’s actually having fun, and I know that my kid is having fun, she’s gonna do whatever she wants. Whether that’s gymnastics, learning the car, acting or just being a normal kid, she’s gonna do what makes her happy.” That’s how I’ve always lived my life. – Chloe Grace Moretz • My mom was an environmental activist in Australia in the late ’60s and ’70s and I guess I’ve inherited that awareness from her. – Robin McLeavy • My mom wouldn’t know Tom Cruise if he punched her in the face. – Gillian Jacobs • My mom wouldn’t let me buy clothes she didn’t like, so I dressed like a middle-aged woman in high school. – Gillian Jacobs • My mom, she’s like Why can’t you just do a nice romantic comedy like Jennifer Love Hewitt? And I’m like: Mom, look at me. They just don’t put me in those movies. – Norman Reedus • My mother was a single mom, and most of the women I know are strong. – Regina King • My nana was an actress, my mom was an actress, and my sister, too. So because I was surrounded by it, it really came naturally. – Chris Pine • My parents were pretty open about a lot of things, especially my mom. And any kind of little crazy thing I was into, she was very supportive of. You know, whether it was BMX bike racing or being in the Boy Scouts or surfing or anything else, she always seemed to sort of support it. And I think it’s because she was an immigrant and that idea of sort of having her kids be able to have access to their dreams and whatever they wanted to follow was very important to her. – Terry Gross • My parents were very young when they had me. They were still growing up and learning themselves. They did the best they could, but my mom and dad split up when I was little… So that kind of made me stronger. – Justin Bieber • Never eat in a place called ‘Mom’s’. – Nelson Algren • No mom has it all together. We’re all dealing with loose ends when it comes to motherhood and our children. Some of us are just better at keeping up appearances, that’s all. – Julie Ann Barnhill • On a strained relationship between a tennis champion and her mother: There comes a time when it’s probably not cool for your mom to be your best friend. – Lindsay Davenport • On turning down an invitation to appear for four minutes on the Ed Sullivan Show: Honey, it takes Moms four minutes just to get on the stage. – Moms Mabley • One thing my mom didn’t want any of us to do was to cry or to complain about life. Every day and night, even when we didn’t have much food, we would pray together. And that for me was a beautiful moment. The fact of being poor didn’t really hurt me. – Riccardo Tisci • Parents may be always working, parents may be in and out. When you’re dropping them off with coaches, the first thing kids should be coming back and saying is, ‘Mom, guess what I learned today? Guess what coach taught me today?’ – Ray Lewis • Sending a handwritten letter is becoming such an anomaly. It’s disappearing. My mom is the only one who still writes me letters. And there’s something visceral about opening a letter – I see her on the page. I see her in her handwriting. – Steve Carell • So long, Mom I’m off to drop the bomb So don’t wait up for me But while you swelter Down there in your shelter You can see me On your TV – Tom Lehrer • So why you pushin’ it? Why you lyin’ for? I know where you live, I know your folks, you was a sucka as a kid. Your persona’s drama that you acquired in high school in actin’ class, Your whole aura is plexiglass. What’s-her-face told me you shot this kid last week in the park; That’s a lie, you was in church with your moms. – O.C. • Stay away from drugs and alcohol. Listen to your moms and dads. In this great country of ours you do whatever you set your mind to. Make us proud of you. – Mickey Mantle • The most dangerous action a woman can take when faced with a criminal is to resist with her fists: That tends to annoy violent criminals, and the woman will very likely be seriously injured. But a woman who takes the advice of Handgun Control Inc. and passively submits is 2.5 times more likely to be injured than a woman who resists with a gun. So if you don’t want to lie back and enjoy it, get a gun. Otherwise you may never become a mom. – Ann Coulter • The most inspiring piece of advice I’ve gotten is simply to persevere. My mom taught me to always keep going no matter what from an early age. When it feels too difficult to push forward, I always remind myself, ‘This too shall pass,’ and then I redouble my efforts. – Liya Kebede • There appears to be a disturbing trend in this nation to try to force single moms to choose between their children and their careers. If they take their careers seriously, they are labeled as bad mothers. If they spend time with their children, they are labeled as people who can’t be serious about careers outside the home. This is a sexist double standard. No such guilt trip is imposed on men, who are generally not forced to choose between their children and their jobs. – Gloria Allred • There was a nobility in poverty when I was growing up. My mom was poor but she was planting roses and she was cleaning the steps, you know what I mean. You didn’t feel sorry for yourself. – Ricky Gervais • There were definitely bands and musicians I liked that drove my mother insane. I probably liked them all the more for it! Bjork drove my mom nuts. What I listened to was actually pretty mom-friendly for the most part. I wasn’t very rebellious. – Gillian Jacobs • Treat a woman how you’d want someone to treat your mom. – Mario Lopez • When I have children that go home and mom and dad are not home because they’re working, they’re trying to get food on the table, and they come home to an empty house and they go to sleep in an empty house, there is no way that child can compete against a child from the west side of Los Angeles who both parents went to Stanford. Well, good for them, God love them. That’s not an equal playing field. – Rafe Esquith • When I was 11, I moved to the United States with my two brothers and my mom. We moved to northern New York, up near the Canadian border, from Argentina, and there was nobody there that spoke Spanish, and because there was no internet at the time, not even cable TV yet, I lost the connection with my childhood friends and the culture I had been brought up with for my first decade completely. – Viggo Mortensen • When I was a kid I didn’t feel like I fit in because – this is really silly and I probably shouldn’t say it, but, I didn’t think anything was funny. So I used to go home and literally cry to my mom and my step-dad at the time and I didn’t think anything was funny. I couldn’t laugh. – Courteney Cox • When my husband won the Palme d’Or in 2002, I wore the same dress two days in a row. My daughter said, ‘Mom! Did you sleep in your dress?’ But I think it’s cool to wear the same thing. I have to feel comfortable. – Emmanuelle Seigner • When my wife and I met, I couldn’t talk to her – and my defense mechanism is sarcasm. I belittle someone with verbal pokes and prods. I did it to her out of complete awe. When friends introduced us, I said ‘Hi’ – and turned my back. Later, I called my mom and best friend and said, ‘I think I just met my wife.’ – Mike Vogel • When you can impress your mom by saying you’ve been to someone’s concert, you know you’re pretty lame. – Gillian Jacobs • You didn’t want to bring home anything but an A or a B. To my mom, a C was like an F. – Calvin Johnson

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'a', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_a').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_a img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'e', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_e').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_e img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'i', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_i').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_i img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

0 notes

equitiesstocks · 4 years

Text

Mom Quotes

Official Website: Mom Quotes

0 notes

flauntpage · 5 years

Text

Your Tuesday Morning Roundup

Flyers fans:

youtube

The Flyers officially fired Dave Hakstol on Monday in probably the worst way possible. The assistants ran the practice, but an official announcement had yet to be made. Anthony mentioned this would happen Sunday.

However, Joel Quenneville was not hired as head coach. He’s skiing in Colorado enjoying funemployment. And it doesn’t sound like he’s in a rush to coach again while getting paid $6 million to do nothing. And GM Chuck Fletcher hasn’t even talked to Q in two years.

Even worse, from later in the day, Fletcher wasn’t prepared to fire Hakstol:

A source close to the situation says Hakstol wasn’t initially going to be fired, but the head coach wanted a reassurance from his GM when he arrived at Flyers Skate Zone early Monday morning.

So with no Quenneville, Phantoms head coach Scott Gordon will lead the team for the rest of the year unless Fletcher makes another change. Gordon was the former head coach of the Islanders for two and-a-half years before he was fired. Kerry Huffman will be the acting head coach of the Phantoms.

Now comes the start of a new era in two ways. Post-Hakstol is one of them, but also the debut of Carter Hart. He’s expected to start tonight against the Red Wings at 7 PM on NBC Sports Philadelphia. I don’t like the move and would have rather had him spend more time with the Phantoms. But with the start, the Flyers will become the 2nd team in NHL history to have six goalies play before Christmas, joining the 2002-03 St. Louis Blues.

After you watch Gritty (or while you watch him), listen to a brand new episode of Snow The Goalie.

The Roundup:

After crushing the Cavaliers on Sunday, the Sixers got crushed by the Spurs last night 123-96 in San Antonio. Ben Simmons and JJ Redick led the team with 16 points, while Joel Embiid had 13 points and 11 rebounds. But a 21-point outing from Rudy Gay and 20-point nights from LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan pushed the Spurs to a win.

The Sixers will host the Knicks on Wednesday.

In Fultz news, could Ebony Fultz, Markelle’s mother, be a huge problem?

After the big upset win over the Rams Sunday night, which resulted in a ton of celebrations and Doug Pederson going Stone Cold Steve Austin, Pederson held his day after press conference. And not surprisingly, Nick Foles will start on Sunday against the Texans.

Meanwhile, video of Marcus Peters confronting a fan was posted.

The Phillies remain a betting favorite to land Bryce Harper, but this is something interesting:

It seems to me that the #Phillies interest in Bryce Harper is overblown if in fact they did not meet with him and Scott Boras in Las Vegas. If a player is one of your primary offseason targets and he is taking visitors down the street, you stop by and say hello.

— Steve Phillips (@StevePhillipsGM) December 18, 2018

In other sports news, Jose Mourinho has been sacked by Manchester United. I also enjoyed this tweet:

Hi @ManUtd, we've received a CV from Mr J Mourinho. He's just applied for a job as pizza chef. Please can you send through a reference. Thanks.

— Pizza Hut Restaurants (@pizzahutuk) December 18, 2018

The Saints edged the Panthers on Monday Night Football.

The Astros agreed to a two-year deal with outfielder Michael Brantley.

In the news, CBS is denying former CEO Les Moonves’ $120 million severance payout.

Alfonso Ribeiro is suing Fortnite and NBA 2K for overusing his “Carlton” dance.

The post Your Tuesday Morning Roundup appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Your Tuesday Morning Roundup published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

0 notes

theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

Link

A month and change after I/O, Google convenes a meeting of a few small groups of journalists at an upscale Thai restaurant in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It’s an unusual locale for one of the world’s largest companies.

The tables are cleared out to make room for nine chairs, in three rows of three, facing a large, brightly lit display. To the side, four Google employees sit behind a desk at a makeshift control center. The company is finally ready to offer a little more insight into Duplex, the most widely discussed — and controversial announcement during a rapid-fire keynote.

It’s a 180-degree shift from that sun-drenched day at Mountain View’s Shoreline Ampitheatre. All by design, of course. The cozy New York restaurant makes as much sense as any for such an event, as the company pulls back the curtain on the AI-based reservation service. Thep Thai’s owner insists that such a service would be something of a godsend for the 100-plus reservations the restaurant fields on a daily basis.

For Google, it was clearly time to offer some more transparency into both the purpose for such a system and the workings behind it. The brief demo presented by CEO Sundar Pichai raised far more questions than it answered. The think pieces began to flow, exploring the ethical ramifications for a system that appeared to be designed to fool a business into believing they were talking to a fellow human being.

Duplex represents a rare early look into an ongoing project from a company notorious for playing it close to the vest. But disclosure is key. As with self-driving cars, rigorous real-world testing is required to iron out all of the kinks in the system.

“While we’re not widely launching this feature yet, we’re sharing more information about this technology to provide transparency and encourage feedback,” the company writes in a blog post today. “It’s important that we get the experience right both for people and for businesses, and we’re taking a slow and measured approach as we incorporate learnings and feedback from our tests.”

The nature of Google’s process was likely to get out some way or another, so announcing it at I/O served the dual purpose of getting in front of that narrative and offering an early look at an ambitious project on one of the company’s largest stages.

“What you’re going to hear is the Google Assistant scheduling an appointment at a real hair salon,” Pichai said to tentative applause during the keynote:

Hi, I’m calling to book a women’s haircut for a client. Um, I’m looking for something on May 3. – Google Assistant

Sure, give me one second. – Receptionist

Mm-hm. – Google Assistant

It was here the audience laughed, unbelieving. Then applause. Sure, the audience was in on the joke, but it was still hard to believe that what we were hearing was a purely automated version of Google’s AI assistant. The “mm-hm” was icing on the cake — a subtle vocal tick included to further conversation, all while leaving the other party none the wiser that she was speaking to a ‘bot.

Those vocal breaks, known as “speech disfluencies” in linguistics, are a normal and frequent part of speech, and a key part of the secret sauce that makes Duplex such a remarkable product. Among other things, they’re a polite workaround for the system.

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DMS03IIQXU3TY2FD6DLPLOMBBBJ2CH188143148.mp3

If Duplex is confronted with an uncertain response after requesting a reservation for a party of five, for example, it will reiterate with the slight variation, “um, for five.” That, hopefully, will resolve potential confusion on the part of the receptionist, while including a subtle linguistic tick that lends a further sense of reality to the conversation.

These elements are a very real part of the way Duplex works. I can confirm this, having stood in for the role of the receptionist during a demo at the Thai restaurant. As for the two demos played over the big screen at I/O, they were, in fact, real. Even more interestingly, the company says it informed the businesses after the calls were placed, seemingly to lend an extra level of authenticity to the process.

Duplex was — and still is — very much a work in progress. Among other things, the system didn’t provide a disclosure in the early days, a fact that could potentially violate the “two-party consent” required to record phone calls and conversations in states like Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington and Google’s own home base of California.

Going forward, the system will be confined to those states where the laws make it feasible. That also applies to interstate calls, so long as both sides are covered. “We want to make sure it operates in a way that’s governed by whatever the laws are that are appropriate for that call,” Google Assistant VP, Product and Design Nick Fox says.

While the disclosures weren’t there in the earliest stage, the company has said since the beginning that it intended to add them. The motivation, however, wasn’t due to feared legal repercussions, so much as common robot/human etiquette.

“The Google Duplex technology is built to sound natural, to make the conversation experience comfortable,” the company wrote in a blog post tied to the announcement. “It’s important to us that users and businesses have a good experience with this service, and transparency is a key part of that. We want to be clear about the intent of the call so businesses understand the context. We’ll be experimenting with the right approach over the coming months.”

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/KOK4HAMTAPH5Z96154F6GKUM74A3Z1576269077.mp3

Pressed by the media about what form such “transparency” would ultimately take, a spokesperson for the company added later, “We understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex — as we’ve said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important. We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we’ll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product.”

In its current form, that plays out thusly:

Hi, I’m the Google Assistant calling to make a reservation for a client. This automated call will be recorded.

Duplex doesn’t let on the fact that it’s an AI — but if you have some familiarity with Google Assistant, you can probably put that part together yourself. It does, however, let you know that the call is being recorded. Google records these conversations for both voice to text processing and quality assurance purpose, so the company can continue to revise and refine the system.

In my test call, I attempt to get Google Assistant to repeat that bit — it’s easy enough to not hear that opening line, particularly when you’ve got the phone up to your ear inside a crowded restaurant. But the AI just barrels on with the reservation. If you miss the disclosure, you’re out of luck — for now, at least. At present, the only way to opt out of being recorded is to just hang up the phone — not the best way to get repeat visitors.

“We do have a mechanism that will say ‘okay, I won’t record you,’ ” Google Assistant VP Engineering Scott Huffman explains. “I think we’re still figuring out what’s the right thing to do there. Is the right thing bow out? To basically throw away the recording?”

Like just about everyone else getting a demo that day, I try my best to throw the system off. Assistant asks for a booking at 6PM. I tell it we’re not open until 11 — this is Manhattan, after all, the best/most exclusive places keep the most insane hours, right? Assistant politely ends the call — or “bows out,” as Google puts it.

The Holy Grail here is attempting to Turing test the shit out of Duplex. If you succeed, one of Google’s human operators will take the controls and land the plane. These human operators are an integral part of testing for Duplex, and Google says it plans to keep them around in some form going forward, to assure that things never get too out of control. How large a group that will ultimately take remains to be seen.

No one in our small group succeeds in invoking a real-life human during our brief chats, though we learn some important insights into the systems’s limitations. For instance, asked to “repeat the last four numbers,” it restates the phone number in its entirety. It’s not a flaw, exactly, but it does show a simple place where the system is pushed to its limitations with regard to the understanding of the the subtle nuances of human conversation.

Asked for the user’s email address, on the other hand, the system simply says it doesn’t have the permission of its “client” to disclose such information, maintaining the whole “assistant” relationship. Google says that, in testing, the system has also gotten tripped up encountering another machine by way of a phone tree. Listening closely because our menu options have changed doesn’t appear to compute just yet.

At present, Google says Duplex is able to complete four out of five fully automated tasks, according to the company. Eighty-percent is pretty good, but Google is pushing to make things better. “We want to make sure that we’re not wasting the business’s time,” Fox says. “We want to make sure throughout everything we do here, that this is good experience for the business and that they’re not getting frustrated talking to an assistant while they’re trying to run their business.”

As announced at I/O, more testing will commence this summer. Over the “coming weeks,” the next round will find Assistant inquiring about business hours. And in the next few months, it will expand to restaurant reservations and hair salon appointments. Unlike those I/O demos, these will occur with “a limited set of trusted testers and select businesses,” who will be in on it.

Companies thus far seem eager to get on-board. As Google notes, according to a customer survey it conducted back in April, “60 percent of small businesses who rely on customer bookings do not have an online booking system set up.”

For users who simply don’t want to pick up the phone, Duplex provides a compelling alternative. For those businesses, it means adding more potential customers. Those who’d rather not get on-board for any number of reasons, on the other hand, will be able to opt out through their Google Business listings (assuming they have one).

The box reads:

Let customers use the Google Assistant to book with you. Also, quickly update your listings by getting occasional calls to confirm your detail.

The system has come a long way since it began life as a jury-rigged demo with an office phone placed gingerly atop a MacBook. Duplex operates through a complex combination of speech to text, text to speech and Google’s own WaveNet audio processing deep neural network. The early demos weren’t live as some speculated, but they were, in fact, real — and things are only getting more impressive from there.

Like it or not, Duplex is coming soon. And the only way to stop it is to hang up the phone.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

iyarpage · 6 years

Text

Google I/O 2018 Keynote Reaction

Google I/O 2018 began this week at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. The I/O conference is Google’s annual opportunity to set a direction for the developer community as well as share with us the technologies and development tools they’ve been working on in the past year. The conference features presentations on Google products and services such as Google Assistant, Google apps like Google Maps and Google News, Chrome and ChromeOS, Augmented Reality, and of course, lots of Android. :]

The conference starts each year with two keynote presentations, the first a feature-focused presentation led by company CEO Sundar Pichai, and the second a developer-focused keynote. One of the first sessions after the two keynotes is What’s New in Android, often called “the Android Keynote”.

The opening keynote focused primarily on Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) advancements, and had recurring themes of responsibility and saving time. The Google Assistant was one of the main technologies discussed, and another recurring theme was using the Assistant to improve your Digital Wellbeing.

The Developer Keynote started with a review of new Android features such as App Bundles and Android Jetpack. It then moved on to developer-oriented discussions of Google Assistant, Web apps and running Linux on ChromeOS, an expansion of Material Design called Material Theming, and new Firebase and AR advancements.

The What’s New in Android session gave a brief introduction to each of the topics that were being announced or covered at the conference for Android, and along the way pointed you to the sessions you need to see to learn more.

The most exciting announcements from the keynotes were:

Google Duplex: Google demoed the Google Assistant literally making a phone call for you. Google said that they’re “still working” to perfect this capability, but the the sample calls they played were jaw dropping in their naturalness and possibilities. Google is planning on simple use cases in the near future. A use case I could imagine would be having the Assistant call a number to talk through an automated system and stay on hold for you, and then notify you when the person on the other end is ready while telling them you’ll be right back.

Computer Vision and Google Lens: A pretty sweet AR demo in Google Maps was shown. The demo overlayed digital content on the real world over your camera feed from within the Maps app, while still showing you directions at the bottom of the screen, making it much easier to find your way in unknown places.

Android Jetpack: The Jetpack incorporates a number of Google libraries for Android into one package, including the Support Library and Android Architecture Components. Having them all under one name should simplify discoverability of the features and encourage more developers to use them in their apps.

MLKit: MLKit is a library that is Firebase-hosted and makes it easier to incorporate Google’s advanced ML into your apps, including text recognition and image labeling. There was a pretty sweet demo of grabbing the name of an item off a menu, which you could then search for a description of. And its available for both iOS and Android. MLKit, CoreML, ARCore, ARKit: hey what’s in a name? :]

App Actions and Slices: These will increase engagement with your app by helping you embed pieces of the app into other parts of Android like Search and Google Assistant results. The options go far beyond a simple icon for your app on the system share sheet.

ARCore and Sceneform: The original ARCore API required either using a framework like Unity or working with lower level OpenGL code. Sceneform promises to make it easier to code AR interactions into your apps.

New Voices for Google Assistant: ML training has advanced to the point that less work is required to incorporate new voices, and Google’s working with John Legend to create a voice for him. In the future, you may be able to use your own voice or select from popular celebrity voices. Would love to have a Google Assistant voice for James Earl Jones! :]

The rest of this post summarizes the three keynotes, in case you may not have had a chance or had time to watch them. At the bottom of the post are links to the actual keynote videos on the Google Developers YouTube channel, and I encourage you to watch them for yourself. And then also dive into the session videos on YouTube, once they’re available.

Opening Keynote

The keynote began with a video of little multi-colored cube creatures with some type of glow inside them. Kind of like intelligent building blocks. The video ended with the banner “Make good things together”.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai then took the stage and announced that there were over 7,000 attendees and a live stream, as well as a lot to cover. He joked about a “major bug” in a key product, getting the cheese wrong in a cheese burger emoji and the foam wrong in a beer emoji. :]

He then discussed the recurring Google theme of AI being an important inflection point in computing. He said that the conference would discuss the impact of AI advances, and that these advances would have to be navigated “carefully and deliberately”.

The AI portion of the keynote started by reviewing some key fields in which Google has made advancements:

In healthcare, not only can retina images be used to diagnose diabetic retinopathy in developing countries, but the same eye images can also non-invasively predict cardiovascular risk. And AI can now predict medical events like chance of readmission for a patient. The possibilities for AI in the healthcare world seem to be just scratching the surface of using big data to improve the medical industry.

Sundar showed two impressive demos of using AI to improve accessibility. In the first, those with hearing impairments can be helped in situations like people talking over each other on closed-captioning, as AI can now disambiguate voices. The second was using AI to add new languages like morse code to the Google keyboard Gboard, helping those that require alternative languages to communicate.

Gmail has been redesigned with an AI-based feature called smart compose, which uses ML to start suggesting phrases and then you hit tab and keep autocompleting. The short demo in the presentation was pretty impressive, with Gmail figuring out what you next want to write as you type.

Google Photos was built from the ground up with AI, and over 5 billion photos are viewed by users every day. It has a new feature Suggested Actions, which are smart actions for a photo in context, things like “Share with Lauren”, “Fix brightness”, “Fix document” to a PDF, “Color pop”, and “Colorize” for black and white photos. All in all a very practical example of the combination of computer vision and AI.

Google has also been investing in scale and hardware for AI and ML, introducing TPU 3.0, with liquid cooling introduced in data centers and giant pods that achieve 100 petaflops, or 8x last year’s performance, and allow for larger and more accurate models.

These AI advancements, especially in healthcare and accessibility, clearly demonstrate Google taking the AI responsibility in a serious way. And features like those added to Gmail and Google Photos are just two simple examples of using AI to save time.

Google Assistant

Google wants the Assistant to be natural and comfortable to talk to. Using the DeepMind WaveNet technology, they’re adding 6 new voices to Google Assistant. WaveNet shortens studio time needed for voice recording and the new models still capture the richness of a voice.

Scott Huffman came on stage to discuss Assistant being on 500M devices, with 40 auto brands and 5000 device manufacturers. Soon it will be in 30 languages and 80 countries. Scott discussed needing the Assistant to be naturally conversational and visually assistive and that it needs to understand social dynamics. He introduced Continued Conversation and Multiple Actions (called coordination reduction in linguistics) as features for the voice Assistant. He also discussed family improvements, introducing Pretty Please, which helps keep kids from being rude in their requests to the Assistant. Assistant responds to positive conversation with polite reinforcement.

Lillian Rincon then came on to discuss Smart Displays. She showed watching YouTube by voice and cooking and recipes by voice on the smart display devices. They’ll also have video calling, connect to smart home devices, and give access to Google Maps. Lillian then reviewed a reimagined Assistant experience on phones, which can now have a rich and immersive response to requests. These include smart home device requests with controls like adjusting temperature, and things like “order my usual from Starbucks”. There are many partners for Food pick-up and delivery via Google Assistant. The Assistant can also be swiped up to get a visual representation of your day, including reminders, notes, and lists. And in Google Maps, you can use voice to send your ETA to a recipient.

Google Duplex

Sundar came back on stage to discuss using Google Assistant to connect users to businesses “in a good way”. He noted that 60% of small businesses in the US do not have an online booking system. He then gave a pretty amazing demo of Google Assistant making a call for you in the background for an appointment such as a haircut. On a successful call, you get a notification that the appointment was successfully scheduled. Other examples are restaurant reservations and making a doctor appointment while caring for a sick child. Incredible!

The calls don’t often go as expected, and Google is still developing the technology. They want to “handle the interaction gracefully.” One thing they will do in the coming weeks is make such calls on they’re own from Google to do things like update holiday hours for a business, which will help all customers immediately with improved information.

Digital Wellbeing

At this point the keynote introduced the idea of Digital Wellbeing, which is Google turning their attention to keeping your digital life from making too negative an impact on your physical life. The principles are:

Understand your habits

Focus on what matters

Switch off and wind down

Find balance for your family

A good example is getting a reminder on your devices to do things like taking a break from YouTube. Another is an Android P feature called Android Dashboard, which give full visibility into how you are spending your time on your device.

Google News

Trystan Upstill came on stage to announce a number of new features for the Google News platform, and the focus was on:

Keep up with the news you care about

Understanding the full story

Enjoy and support the news sources you love

Reinforcement learning is used throughout the News app. Newscasts in the app are kind of like a preview of a story. There’s a Full Coverage button, an invitation to learn more from multiple sources and formats. Publishers are front and center throughout the app, and there’s a Subscribe with Google feature, a collaboration with over 60 publishers that lets you subscribe to their news across platforms all through Google. Pretty cool!

What’s going on with Android?

Dave Burke then came on stage to discuss Android P and how it’s an important first step for putting AI and ML at the core of the Android OS.

The ML features being brought to Android P are:

Adaptive Battery: using ML to optimize battery life by figuring out which apps you’re likely to use.

Adaptive Brightness: improving auto-brightness using ML.

App Actions: predicting actions you may wish to take depending on things like whether your headphones are plugged in.

Slices: interactive snippets of app UI, laying the groundwork with search and Google Assistant.

MLKit: a new set of APIs available through Firebase that include: image labeling, text recognition, face detection, barcode scanning, landmark recognition, and smart reply. MLKit is cross-platform on both Android and iOS.

Dave then introduced new gesture-based navigation and the new recent app UI in Android P, and new controls like the volume control.

Sameer Samat came on to discuss in more detail how Android fits into the idea of Digital Wellbeing. The new Android Dashboard helps you to understand habits. You can drill down within the dashboard to see what you’re doing when and how often. There is an App Timer with limits. And Do Not Disturb improvements like the new Shush mode: turn you phone over on a table and hear no sounds or vibrations except from Starred Contacts. There’s a Wind Down mode with Google Assistant, that puts your phone in gray-scale to help ease you into a restful sleep.

Lastly, an Android P beta was announced, for Pixel phones and devices from seven other manufacturers, and available today. Many of the new Android P features introduce ways to keep your mobile phone usage from taking over your entire life but still being meaningful and useful.

Google Maps

Jen Fitzpatrick gave demos of the new For You feature in Google Maps, which uses ML to see trending events around you, and also a matching score that uses ML to tell you how well a suggestion matches your interests.

Aparna Chennapragada then gave a pretty cool demo of combining the device camera and computer vision to reimagine navigation by showing digital content as AR overlays on the real world. You can instantly know where you are and still see the map and stay oriented. GPS alone is not enough, instead it’s a Visual Positioning System. She also showed new Google Lens features that are integrated right inside the camera app on many devices:

Smart Text Selection: Recognize and understand words and copy and paste from the real world into the phone.

Style Match: Give me things like this.

Real-time Results: Both on device and cloud compute.

Self-Driving Cars

The opening keynote wrapped up with a presentation by Waymo CEO John Krafcik. He discussed an Early Rider program taking place in Phoenix, AZ.

Dmitri Dolgov from Waymo then discussed how self-driving car ML touches Perception, Prediction, Decision-making, and Mapping. He discussed having trained for 6M miles driven on public roads and 5B miles in simulation. He noted that Waymo uses TensorFlow and Google TPUs, with learning 15x more efficient with TPUs. They’ve now moved to using simulations to train self-driving cars in difficult weather like snow.

Developer Keynote

The Developer Keynote shifts the conference from a consumer and product focus towards a discussion of how developers will create new applications using all the new technologies from Google. It’s a great event to get a sense for which of the new tools will be discussed at the conference.

Jason Titus took the stage to start the Developer Keynote. He first gave a shoutout to all the GDGs and GDEs around the world. He mentioned that one key goal for the Google developer support team is to make Google AI technology available to everyone. For example, with TensorFlow, dropping models into your apps.

Android

Stephanie Cuthbertson then came up to detail all the latest and greatest on developing for Android. The Android developer community is growing, with the number of developers using the Android IDE almost tripling in two years. She emphasized that developer feedback drives the new features, like Kotlin last year. 35% of pro developers are now using Kotlin. Google is committed to Kotlin for the long term. Stephanie walked though current focuses:

Innovative distribution with Android App Bundles that optimizes your application size for 99% of devices and are almost no work for developers.

Faster development with the Android Jetpack that includes Architecture, UI, Foundation, and Behavior components (see more below in “What’s New in Android”) with new features including WorkManager for asynchronous tasks and the Navigation Editor for visualizing app navigation flow.

Increased engagement with App Actions and Slices, interactive mini-snippets of your app.

Stephanie then mentioned that Android Things is now 1.0 for commercial devices, and that attendees would be receiving an Android Things developer kit!

Google Assistant

Brad Abrams discussed Google Assistant actions. There are over 1M actions available on lots of categories of devices. He described a new era of conversational computing, and mentioned the Dialogflow library that builds natural and rich conversational experiences. He said you can think of an Assistant action as a companion experience to the main features of your app.

Web and Chrome

Tal Oppenheimer came on stage to discuss the Web platform and new features in ChromeOS. She emphasized that Google’s focus is to make the platform more powerful, but at the same time make web development easier. She discussed Google’s push on Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) that have reliable performance, push notifications, and can be added to the home screen. She discussed other Web technologies like Service Worker, WebAssembly, Lighthouse 3.0, and AMP. Tal then wrapped up by announcing that ChromeOS is gaining the ability to run full Linux desktop apps, which will eventually also include Android Studio. So ChromeOS will be a one-stop platform for consuming and developing both Web and Android apps. Sweet!

Material Theming

There was a lot of discussion prior to I/O about a potential Material Design 2.0. The final name is Material Theming, as presented by Rich Fulcher. Material Theming adds flexibility to Material Design allowing you to distinguish your brand to provide customized experiences. You can create a unified and adaptable design system for your app, including color, typography, and shape across your products.

There’s a new redline viewer for dimensions, padding and hex color values as part of two new tools:

Material Theme editor, a plugin for Sketch.

Material Gallery, with which you can review and comment on design iterations.

There are also now the open source Material Components for Android, iOS, Web, and Flutter, all with Material Theming.

Progress in AI

Jia Li came on to give more developer announcements related to AI. She discussed TPU 3.0 and Google’s ongoing commitment to AI hardware. She walked through Cloud Text-to-Speech, DeepMind Wavenet, and Dialogflow Enterprise Edition. She discussed TensorFlow.js for web and TensorFlowLite for mobile and Raspberry Pi. She finished up by giving more information on two new libraries:

Cloud AutoML, which can automate the creation of ML models. For example, to recognize images unique to your application without writing any code.

MLKit, the SDK to provide Google ML to mobile developers through Firebase, including text recognition and smart reply.

Firebase

Francis Ma discussed the Firebase goals of helping mobile developers solve key problems across the lifecycle of an app to build better apps, improve app quality, and grow your business. He mentioned that there are 1.2M active Firebase apps every month. He discussed the following Firebase technologies:

Fabric + Firebase. Google has brought Crashlytics into Firebase and integrated it with Google Analytics. Firebase is not just a platform for app infrastructure, but also lets you understand and improve your app.

MLKit for text recognition, image labeling, face detection, barcode scanning, and landmark recognition.

He mentioned that the ML technology works both on device or in the cloud, and that you can bring in custom TensorFlow models too. You upload to Google cloud infrastructure, and you can then update your model without redeploying your entire app.

ARCore

Nathan Martz came on to discuss ARCore, which launched as 1.0 three months ago. There are amazing apps already, like building a floor-plan from walking around a home. He announced a major update today, with three incredible new features:

Sceneform, which makes it easy to create AR applications or add to apps you’ve already built. There’s a Sceneform SDK, an expressive API with a powerful renderer and seamless support for 3D assets.

Augmented Images, which allow you to attach AR content and experiences to physical content in the real world. You can compute 3D position in real time.

Cloud Anchors for ARCore, where multiple devices create a shared understanding of the world. Available on both Android and iOS.

What’s New in Android

As is tradition, the What’s New in Android session was run by Chet Haase, Dan Sandler, and Romain Guy. They describe the session as the “Android Keynote”. In the session, they summarized the long list of new features in Android and directed you to the sessions in which you can learn more.

The long list of new features in tooling and Android P is summarized here:

Android App Bundles to reduce app size.

Android JetPack includes Architecture, UI, Foundation and Behavior components. Mainly a repackaging and you’re already familiar with most of what’s in it, but they’re adding to it, and also refactoring the support library to be AndroidX. New features are Paging, Navigation, WorkManager, Slices, and Android KTX.

Android Test now has first class Kotlin support, with new APIs to reduce boilerplate and increase readability.

Battery Improvements include app standby buckets and background restrictions that a user can set.

Background Input & Privacy, where in background there is no access to the microphone or camera.

Many Kotlin performance improvements from ART, D8 & R8. Increased nullability annotation coverage in the support library and libcore, and easier to use platform APIs. Android KTX, to take advantage of Kotlin language features in Android APIs.

Mockable Framework, and Mockito can now mock final and static methods.

Background Text Measurement which offloads and pre-computes text measurement on a background thread so there is less work done on the UI thread.

Magnifier for text but also an API for other use cases.

Baseline Distance between text views for easier matching with design specs.

Smart Linkify to detect custom link entities using ML in the background.

Indoor Location using android.net.wifi.rtt.* for WiFi Round-Trip-Time APIs.

Accessibility app navigation improvements.

Security improvements via a unified biometric dialog, stronger protection for private keys, and a StrongBox backend.

Enterprise changes that include switching apps between profiles, locking any app to the device screen, ephemeral users, and a true kiosk mode to hide the navigation bar.

Display Cutout, aka the notch, using WindowInsets. There are modes for “never”, “default”, and “shortEdges” with variations

Slices are a new approach to app remote content, either within an app or between apps. They use structured data and flexible templates and are interactive and updatable. They’re addressable by a content URI and backwards-compatible in Android Jetpack all the way back to API 19.

App Actions are related to slices and act as deep links into your app. They are “shortcuts with parameters” and act as a “visible Intent”.

Notifications have a new messaging style and allow images stickers and a smart reply UI.

Deprecation Policy has been updated and apps will soon be required to target newer versions of Android, for security and performance. As of August 2018 new apps must target API 26 or above. November 2018 for app updates. And in August 2019, 64-bit ABI will be required.

App Compatibility means no more calls to private APIs.

NDK r17 includes the Neural Network API, JNI Shared Memory API, Rootless ASAN, and support for UBSAN. It removes support for ARMv5, MIPS, and MIPS64. NDK r18 will remove gcc support, instead you must use clang.

Graphics and Media changes include camera API improvements like OIS timestamps and display based flash, support for external USB cameras, and multi-camera support. There is an ImageDecoder, support for HDR VP9, HDR rendering on compatible hardware, and HEIF support the HEVC/H.265 codec, a container for multiple images.

Vulkan 1.1 has lots of improvements to the graphics API, including multi-GPU support and protected content.

Neural Network API 1.1 is a C API for ML and on-device inference. TensorFlow is built on top of it, and it’s hardware-accelerated on the Pixel 2.

ARCore additions such as Sceneform.

ChromeOS now allows Linux apps and soon Android Studio on ChromeOS, for a full-blown Android development environment.

Summary

Overall, the keynotes saw Google proudly representing their AI prowess. They are making incredible and futuristic advances while also attempting to ensure that the advances in AI are used in responsible ways for the benefit of all (except maybe certain competitors :] ).

Google is spreading their AI capabilities and expertise across the entire business, and at the same making it easier for developers to use in their own apps.

Google AI is clearly ahead of competitors in terms of performance and accuracy. By helping developers integrate the technology into more and more apps, Google and its platforms like Android will maintain their lead and keep bringing these futuristic features to more and more people around the world.

Where to go from here?

There was so much to digest in just these three sessions! You can see them for yourself at these links

Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogfYd705cRs

Developer Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flU42CTF3MQ

What’s New in Android: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMHsnvhcf78

There’s a nice short introduction to Android Jetpack here:

Introducing Jetpack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8U5Rtcr5UU

And here are some links given out during the keynotes to various new technologies:

http://g.co/androidjetpack

http://g.co/androidstudio for 3.2 Canary

http://g.co/slices

http://actions.google.com

http://g.co/cloudtpu

https://github.com/material-components/

http://developer.google.com/ar

Some condensed versions of the opening keynote are here:

Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeF0zpT4gNE

The Verge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRUvbiWLwFI

Finally, you can see the full Google I/O 2018 schedule here, with descriptions of the various sessions that you may want to later check out on YouTube:

https://events.google.com/io/schedule/

Two which you definitely want to see if your an Android developer are:

Modern Android Development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrMw7MEgADk

What’s New in Android Development Tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxAZk7A7OkM

What did you think of all the announcements made on the first day of Google I/O 2018? Share your thoughts in the forum below.

The post Google I/O 2018 Keynote Reaction appeared first on Ray Wenderlich.

Google I/O 2018 Keynote Reaction published first on https://medium.com/@koresol

0 notes