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#not remotely to the degree I was talking about in both cases aka the degree I was as a small kid but still
elainemorisi · 3 years
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I’ve now had two of my closest friends say, almost verbatim, “hah, I can’t even imagine you socially anxious”, which is... very strange, but also hey, three cheers for adequate coping mechanisms?
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jungshookz · 3 years
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omg cee for a holiday drabble request can we get some shy!jungkook who’s had yn in his class all semester and is partnered up with her for a final project and he’s like !!!!!!!! AAAA!!!!!!!!!
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➺ pairing; jeon jungkook x reader
➺ genre; sfw!! university!au!! fluff!! jungkook is shy!! y/n is friendly!! pocky sticks and goldfish crackers are exchanged!!
➺ wordcount; 4.9k
➺ what to expect; if he thought the back of your head was pretty... did that mean that he thought the rest of you was pretty as well?
                                     »»————- ❅ ————-««
jungkook doesn’t like to say that he hates people because saying that makes him sound obnoxious and a little overdramatic, but if given the choice, he would 100% choose to be alone
and he doesn’t think that it’s a problem that he prefers his own company over the company of other people
it’s literally just a personal preference!
he likes to keep to himself mainly because he.,.,
well
to be honest, he just doesn’t like talking to people?? which he thinks is a pretty valid reason to roam campus as a lone wolf
it just takes so much effort maintaining a conversation and at the end of the day, he’s just here to learn and get his degree, you know?
and it’s not like he flat-out refuses to talk to people like a weirdo
he can talk to people, he just chooses not to initiate or engage in any type of conversation whatsoever unless he really has to
and don’t even get him started on those damn ice breakers that professors make everyone do at the beginning of every semester
it’s why he always sits in the very back of the auditorium where all the quiet people are
because quiet people understand each other and quiet people will nevER turn to start talking to each other when the professor tells the class to share two truths and a lie about yourself to the person sitting next to you!
there’s just a mutual understanding that everyone in the back of the room will sit in silence and keep to themselves all semester long which is very pleasant
not to mention, he hates having to deal with ‘semester friends’ aka the one friend that you make for the sake and convenience of having someone you know in the same class as you
you guys really don’t have that much in common and you can tell that they’re in a completely different social circle than you are (aka when you inevitably do a social media handle exchange you see that they have more than a thousand followers and you can immediately tell they were super popular in high school which intimidates you and your puny 250 follower count but you can’t back out of this friendship now without looking like a jerk) but the person is friendly enough that you can get along and kind of keep a conversation going
and then once the semester ends the two of you promise to keep in touch next semester even though both parties are fully intending to not stay in touch at all
and then when next semester rolls around no one makes any effort to reach out and be like hey, should we get coffee this week?? because you have conflicting schedules that would take so much reshuffling just to accommodate this acquaintance that you really don’t care that much about so then you end up hitting them with an ooh, i can’t make it this week! what about next week??
and then it just turns into a cycle of ugh, i’m swamped this week! next week? and can’t, sorry! next week?
and then you’ll see each other at the library one day and it’ll be a little bit awkward because you’ll do that awkward half-hug and your voice will go up like ten octaves when you greet them with that overly polite heyyyyyy!
and more promises will be made to get coffee and hang out soon even though everyone knows absolutely no coffee will be gotten
the point is: in the four years that jungkook’s been a university student, not onCe has he made a steady friend and not once has he been remotely interested in making a steady friend
and he doesn’t think that’s sad or anything - again, he prefers it that way!
...but you just had to come along and completely throw his plans out of whack, didn’t you??
unsurprisingly, you were the one who spoke to him at the beginning of the semester but he didn’t think too much of it because it wasn’t like the conversation the two of you had was very riveting
“hi, i’m sorry-” jungkook looks up from his notebook when you twist around in your seat to face him, “this is psychology 400, right? i lost a copy of my schedule and i think this is the lecture hall i’m supposed to be in but i can’t remember if it said auditorium 200 or 201-”
“yeah, you’re in the right place.” jungkook interrupts, offering you a stiff smile before looking back down at his planner
he was in the middle of compiling a grocery list for himself and now he doesn’t remember what that one thing he needed was…
ah!
chocolate pocky sticks
there we go
jungkook clicks his pen before tucking it back into his pencil case and shutting his planner
and… yeah!
that was the first conversation the two of you ever had
he doesn’t think he can really count it as a conversation because it lasted less than three seconds
the first exchange the two of you ever had?
the second exchange he had with you was actually the next class that same week
he was genuinely surprised that you sat in the same spot again because usually when someone realises that he isn’t willing to be their semester-friend, they move to another section of the auditorium the next time
but no
there you were in all your glory
“when’s the first assignment due?”
jungkook’s eyes flicker up from his laptop first before he looks up at you
“uh, in two weeks...?” he trails off, pulling up the calendar app on his screen before nodding affirmatively, “yeah, in two weeks. september sixteenth at midnight.”
“okay, sweet! and that’s a... thursday?”
“wednesday.”
“ah, okay. got it. thanks!
“mhm.”
the weird thing was the fact that you never pulled out the “i don’t think i ever got your name! i’m ___” card because you just seemed like a very ‘i wanna be your friend!!!!!’ person
and he doesn’t know how you made him do it but one day he found himself asking for your name which he didn’t think he’d ever do
(admittedly, he was a little klutzy in doing so because he’d never willingly introduced himself to someone and asked for their name all in one go before)
“are you eating goldfish crackers and... chocolate chips?” jungkook blurts out, leaning forward a little to peer into the little snack box you’re holding in your hand
you pause and look down into the container before twisting around to look at him, “mhm! you know, you wouldn’t think the combination would work, but it totally does,” you smile, holding your box up, “wanna try?”
jungkook immediately shakes his head, “oh, no, that’s oka-”
“no, c’mon-” you pluck out a cracker and a chocolate chip and set your box down on your lap, “hold your hand out!”
jungkook hesitates for a second before holding his hand out and letting you plop the treats in his palm, “and you... eat them together?”
“uh-huh!” you nod, popping a cracker into your mouth before gesturing for him to eat, “don’t worry - if you don’t like it, i promise i won’t cry.”
jungkook brings his palm up and tosses them back into his mouth
...
...
...
huh
that’s actually... not half-bad?
“see? what’d i tell you?” you beam, giving your box a little shake, “good, right?”
“yeah, i mean, i would never think to put the two together...” jungkook trails off, dusting the crumbs off his hands, “oh, um, by the way-” he clears his throat before swallowing nervously, “i, uh, i’m jungkook. by the way. yeah.”
“jungkook?” you say out loud, jungkook nodding in confirmation, “i will try to remember that. i’m pretty bad with names, so if i end up calling you, like, robert next week, don’t hate me.”
“i will try not to hold it against you if you call me robert next week,” jungkook laughs lightly before reaching up to scratch the back of his neck, “and you... um, your name is...?”
“i’m y/n! by the way.” you tease lightly, the apples of jungkook’s cheeks turning a little pink, “it’s nice to meet you! ...even though we met, like, a month ago.”
“touché.”
“jungkook, you dog-” you gasp lightly, and for a second jungkook’s heart drops to his stomach because he thinks he’s said something wrong- “at least take me out to dinner first before touchéing me.”
jungkook immediately snorts and shakes his head lightly as you giggle to yourself
with that being said, even after that exchange he still wasn’t sure if he wanted to stay friends with you or not
yeah, you were nice and kind of charming in your own way, but...
(he couldn’t come up with a reason as to why he shouldn’t be friends with you, so that train of thought is still chug-chug-chugging along.)
                                     »»————- ❅ ————-««
“are those pocky sticks?”
jungkook stops typing, his eyes flickering up from his screen to see you looking at him with a soft little smile, your arms folded over the top of your seat and your chin propped up on them
he looks down at the open package of pocky sticks sitting on top of his backpack next to him before looking over at you and nodding, “uh, yeah. do you... want one?”
“are they the chocolate ones?”
“obviously.” jungkook snorts, pulling one out of the plastic bag before holding it out for you, “nothing beats the original flavour.”
you pluck it from his fingers, inspecting it for a second before biting into it with a crisp snap!, “i personally like the strawberry ones better-”
“what??” jungkook gawks, “i mean, yeah, the strawberry ones are fine, but the chocolate ones-”
“the strawberry ones have a thicker coating! the chocolate coating is so thin and barely-there!” you hold the bottom half of your pocky out so that jungkook can look at the cross-section of it, “see?? barely any chocolate-”
“you don’t know what you’re talking about!” jungkook scoffs playfully, slapping his laptop shut before crossing his arms on his desk and leaning forward, “chocolate pocky sticks are clearly superior to the strawberry ones-”
“alright, robert, whatever helps you sleep at night-”
“wha-” jungkook gawks in mock offence, too distracted by the fact that you like the strawberry pocky sticks over the classic chocolate ones to notice the feeling of his heart skipping a beat at the sound of your laugh
strawberry over chocolate
...
ridiculous!
                                    »»————- ❅ ————-««
now, jungkook isn’t particularly sure when it was that he started to notice how twinkly your eyes were or how sweet your voice sounded or how pretty your smile was or how nice your hair smelled
it kind of just dawned on him one morning??
he was just staring at the back of your head and found himself wondering how it was possible for the back of one’s head to be so pretty (you had your hair down that day and it just looked so soft and clean)
and then he thought to himself how weird it was that he just called the back of your head pretty
and then he thought to himself that if he thought the back of your head was pretty... did that mean that he thought the rest of you was pretty as well?
and then he thought to himself that yes, i suppose i would consider y/n to be pretty if i was ever asked for a list of people i considered to be pretty
and then he realized that oh, god. do i think that y/n’s pretty because i like y/n?!
and now it’s december meaning that it’s almost the end of the semester and he still hasn’t done anything about his crush on you because he?? literally has no idea how to handle it
his plan was to just ask you for your instagram and if you wanted to keep hanging out next semester and hope that it didn’t turn into a can’t what about next week can’t what about next week situation
and the fact that you guys are working together for the final project certainly doesn’t help with him suppressing his feelings at all
because you two have gone from spending time like three times a week in class to five or six times a week in and out of class
it was at the beginning of november that he discovered that you both had an hour and a half break after this class
so you guys usually go for lunch together (obviously, you were the one who asked first) and then go your separate ways
and then it was the second week of november that jungkook started walking you to your next class even though hiS next class is located at the opposite end of campus
he just????
literally has no idea how any of this happened
one minute he’s perfectly fine with being alone and the next minute he finds himself glancing towards the door every three seconds waiting for you to walk in because the best part of his morning is seeing you
because every time you walk in and see him in his usual spot your entire face lights up and your pace quickens and he just thinks it’s really cute how excited you are to see him even though you guys literally see each other so often
he always looks forward to hearing about what you did over the weekend even though he usually doesn’t care less about what anyone did over their weekend
he always looks forward to you bringing out your little snack box and offering him a couple pieces of whatever you have (you brought these sesame-glazed cashews the other day and they were really good)
he always looks forward to sharing his pocky sticks with you even though he’s usually very greedy with his pocky sticks
last week he let you eat like half the box and he wasn’t even mad
and yeah, he finds himself tossing a couple of the strawberry pocky sticks into his basket whenever he goes grocery shopping, but that doesn’t mean anything!
...
right???
                                     »»————- ❅ ————-««
jungkook glances back towards the door as he taps his foot against the ground anxiously before checking his phone for the time or any texts from you  
where are you??
he booked one of the conference rooms in the library so that you guys could work on your project in peace
it’s much more quiet working here than in the general studying area because there’s always that one person who’s sniffling and coughing like a maniac
and you can speak at a normal volume in here which is good
you guys agreed to work on the project together at the end of the day and then you’d grab dinner together
and jungkook hasn’t been classifying these hangout working sessions as dates or anything but for some reason, this feels like a study date AND a dinner date rolled into one which is why his hands are so clammy right now
and on top of thAT he actually has a christmas present that he’s planning to give you but now he’s wondering if it’s too late to back out
you’re already like twenty minutes late
did you forget about him??
did you purposely bail on him??
is this your way of telling him that this friendship is over???
maybe he can text you and tell you that he had to go home because he has food poisoning or something
...but the image of him hunched over the toilet probably isn’t a very attractive one
is there like a.,., like a sexy way to talk about food poisoning?
jungkook paces back and forth as he looks down at his phone, typing a message to you and then immediately deleting it and retyping
hey! i’m gonna have to reschedule. i had a funky ass burrito for lu-
okay so there’s definitely no way to make food poisoning sound sexy
maybe he can come up with a... cool excuse of some kind?  
hey! can we reschedule? i have to save a baby from a burning building because i’m also a firefigh-
nope
he’s terrified of heights and also he hates babies so that excuse would never work
hey! let’s reschedule! i have feelings for you and it’s overwhelming me and also i feel like maybe you kind of bailed on m-
“hey!”
jungkook jumps in his seat before whipping around to look at the door, feeling a sense of relief washing over him when he sees that it’s you
okay
well noW he knows that you didn’t forget about him and that you definitely didn’t bail on him
“he-” his voice gives out halfway and he clears his throat quickly, “hey! i was, uh, i was wondering when you’d show up.”
“i know, sorry i’m late-” you smile sheepishly, shutting the door behind you with a gentle click, “it’s for a good reason, though! i got us hot chocolates!”
you raise the takeout tray in your hand before setting it down on the table, “i was going to get you a peppermint mocha because ‘tis the season and all of that, but i didn’t know if you would like it or not so hot chocolate was the safer option.”
“i like hot chocolate!” jungkook coughs, “peppermint mochas- i mean, i would’ve been fine with a peppermint mocha too, but i- i still appreciate the hot chocolate-” he rambles, nervously flipping his pen back and forth in between his fingers, “i mean, i, like, what i’m trying to say is that i would like anything you brought for me, you know?”
okay
he’s spiralling
whY is this happening to him??
jungkook doesn’t know if he’s ever been this nervous for anything before
he wasn’t even this nervous when he had to do a solo presentation in front of two hundred people in his history course last semester and thaT was terrifying
“alright, well, i’ll definitely keep that in mind for next time!” you chirp, pulling out one of the wheely chairs before plopping down and turning to face him, “what else do we have to do for our report?”
jungkook feels his heart skip a beat when your knee bumps against his
oh god
okay
he has to get it together  
just relax!
“oh, uh-” he turns to look through the checklist on his notebook, “we have to write up the conclusion... and also the annotated bibliography.”
“annotated bibliography?” you huff, scrolling through yours guys’ twenty page report, “oh, god... that’s going to take forever- we used, like, thirty different sources...”
“i told you not to go crazy with the scholarly articles...” jungkook teases lightly before taking a sip of his hot chocolate
ooH
there’s whipped cream on this as well!
“i just thought that it would make us look smarter if we used more sources-” you grumble, pushing your bottom lip out in a pathetic little pout, “and now we have to go through and annotate every single one...”
“hey, if it motivates you to work faster, i’ll get you an extra order of onion rings for dinner tonight.” jungkook hums, smiling fondly when you gasp excitedly and turn to face him
one thing that he’s learned about you is the fact that you are verY food motivated
one time you told him that you would be willing to rob a bank for a pack of oreos
...and he wholeheartedly believes that.
                                     »»————- ❅ ————-««
you try your hardest to hold back a grin when you notice that jungkook still hasn’t moved his leg from yours
the side of your thigh has been pressed right up against his for a good twenty minutes now and it seems like he doesn’t mind it at all
if anything, it’s safe to say that he’s comfortable being this close to you
that must mean that he likes you back, right?
because you know for a fact that he isn’t normally a touchy-feely person and you were fully expecting him to pull back the moment your leg touched his
this is!!!!
exciting!!!!
you don’t know when you started liking jungkook but the details really aren’t that important
you just know that you like him now and you’re like 80% sure that maybe he might?? like you back??
if he didn’t like you, why would he be willing to get coffee with you during your breaks and walk you to class?
you were actually a little put off by him the first time you spoke to him mainly because he seemed like he didn’t really want to talk to you
and usually you don’t do well with people who don’t want to talk to you because.,., you personally think you’re a greaT person to talk to and if the same vibes aren’t reciprocated then you immediately hightail it out of there
and you were actually going to switch seats the next class but it was pretty cozy in the back of the auditorium and you liked that your seat was near the exit so that you could be the first one out without getting trampled over by everyone else  
so you figured you’d just swallow your pride and try to work it out with mr. pretty boy (yes, part of the reason as to why you stayed was because of how handsome he is.,., you’re only human!!!)
and it looks like it worked out in your favour because here you are!! hanging out with him outside of class!!
with that being said, you haven’t really thought about what your next move is going to be because you’re..., not entirely sure how to ask him out without potentially freaking him out or something
because if on the off-chance that he tells you that he actually doesn’t like you back after you ask him out with full confidence,,..,
ugh
you don’t even want to think about how awkward that’s going to be
and you don’t even knoW how you’d play it off casually without letting your disappointment show (“oh! well, that’s- pft- that’s totally fine, it’s whatever- like, i’m so... like, i’m so cool. it’s totally fine! dates are- dates are so overrated, anyway- romance is so lame-”)
you were thinking of maybe asking him out after the final project because if he says no then you’ll never have to see him again!
that’s the beautiful part of being on such a big campus
it’s fine
you’ll figure something out
just focus on this damn bibliography and try not to think about how good jungkook smells and how pretty his hands look when he’s typing
                                     »»————- ❅ ————-««
it’s about an hour and a half into the session that jungkook suddenly remembers that he has a present for you
he turns his head slightly to look at you
there’s a divot in between your brows as your fingers practically fly across your keyboard
wow
you must really want those onion rings
jungkook glances down at his backpack before pressing his lips together tightly
when would be a good time to give it to you without it being like.,,. awkward?
maybe after you guys are done?
or during dinner?
or after dinner?
or after he drives you hom-
“i have a present for you, by the way-!” jungkook blurts out a little louder than intended, shattering the serene silence of the atmosphere
okay never mind
“you do??” you ask, jungkook nodding quickly
“i... yeah. a christmas present! for you.” he clears his throat, leaning down to pull the neatly wrapped package out of his backpack, “it’s just a little something, it’s really not that big of a deal.”
“aw, that’s so nice of you... i didn’t know we were doing presents otherwise i totally would’ve gotten something for you...” you trail off, pursing your lips in disappointment
damnit
you weRE going to get jungkook something but you didn’t know if he’d find it weird or anything
and now you must look like a complete jerk!
“oh my god, don’t even worry about it-” jungkook flicks his wrist to dismiss your concerns, “you can count the hot chocolate as your gift to me! plus, you splurged on a venti just for me-”
“i did splurge on a venti just for you...” you joke along, instantly feeling a little better about the situation, “and i usually only treat people to tiny little talls!”
(for the record, you’re definitely going to get him a proper present over the weekend)
“also, it’s totally fine if you don’t like it-” jungkook swallows thickly when you start to rip open the packaging, “i can return it and get you something else-”
!!!!!!!!
“oH MY GOD i love it!” you exclaim, feeling your serotonin levels shoot straight through the ceiling when you pull out a heart shaped snack box, “i don’t even know what to say, this is literally the greatest present i’ve ever received in my entire life-”
“oh, thank god-” jungkook flops back in his seat before placing his hand on his chest, “i was worried that maybe you wouldn’t like it because you already have a pretty extensive collection of snack boxes- oh, and!” he perks up, spinning around to pull something else out of his bag, “i also got you a box of strawberry pocky sticks even though i still think your opinion about them being better than the chocolate flavour is very wrong.”
wow
he really knows the way to your heart :’)
“i don’t even know what to say, kook...” you smile, “thank you so much...”
jungkook beams, giving himself a mental pat on the back for a job well done, “ah, don’t worry about it. i’m just glad that you like your gifts...”
...
okay, you don’t have a gift for him so this is the next best thing
“can i-” you pause, trying to think of how to handle this, “can i- sorry, can you just close your eyes for a second?” you clear your throat
you’re suddenly feeling a lot more confident about jungkook’s feelings towards you than you were half an hour ago
(aka you are now 98% sure that he likes you back and if you’re wrong about this assumption then you’re definitely going to regret the thing that you’re about to do)  
“close my eyes?” jungkook snorts, “why?”
“it’ll make sense in a second. just close them!”
“this is the part of our friendship where you kill me, isn’t it?” he jokes, setting his laptop aside before turning his chair so he can fully face you
ha hA
very funny
“if i was planning to kill you, i would’ve poisoned your precious pocky sticks a long time ago-” you laugh lightly, wiping your clammy hands on your jeans before turning to face him as well
“speaking of pocky sticks, have you ever tried the cookies and creme flavoured ones?” jungkook hums, jolting in surprise when he feels you place your hands on his knees, “because i was thinking we could just buy a bunch of flavours and try them toge-”
smak!
jungkook’s eyes immediately pop open the moment he feels you kiss his cheek, his entire face going beet red and his mouth going dry
you smile innocently as you pull back, jungkook trying his best to noT melt into a giant puddle of goo
you-
you just...
you kissed his cheek?
you kissed him?
maybe it was an accident??
maybe there was a bug on his cheek and you were just trying to kill it with your mouth
“you- i- heh-” he reaches up to scratch the back of his head, quickly averting his gaze when he notices you looking directly at him, “um, why... uh, what did you do that for?”
“to say thank you...” you shrug, biting back a smile, “and i guess it’s me trying to tell you that i... i like you too, by the way.”
jungkook feels his heart stop beating in his chest and his fingers dig into his thigh
too?
you like him?
too????
jungkook blinks owlishly at you, “you like me... too? r-really?”
“of course i do.” you hum, admiring your brand new snack box before looking back at him, “how could i not?”
(judging by his reaction, you are now 100% sure that jungkook likes you back so you now have nothing to worry about.)
“but how’d you know that i even liked you in the first place?” jungkook asks dumbly, still a little dazed from that kiss on the cheek
he can’t even think about how his body is going to react when he eventually gets to kiss you properly
“i mean...” you let out a little laugh before tilting your head slightly, “if the in-between class coffee runs and the walking me to class even though we both know it’d make you late for your class didn’t give it away, the fact that you let me eat half a box of pocky sticks without slicing my hands off certainly did.”
oh
yeah
that’s fair
“you make a good point.” jungkook nods slowly, “touché-”
“-”
“-!” jungkook holds a finger out before the corners of his mouth tug up in a wide grin, “and i will definitely be taking you out to dinner first before even thinking about touchéing you. don’t worry.”
christmas with cee 2020 masterlist
🎁what would you like from ceenta this year? 🎁
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nancythedrew · 4 years
Text
Nancy Drew Lawyer Time: Renee’s Culpability
Some people expressed interest in me using my almost 1 full year of law school knowledge to try to analyze some ND game things from a legal perspective. Obviously, take everything I say with a grain of salt because I am not a lawyer and this is addressing a not real set of facts. This is also for my own benefit because it is much more fun to write about ND games when prepping for an exam than it is using facts from law school study materials. 
So without further ado, I attempt to answer the question: Was Nancy correct in saying “While [Renee] may not have meant to cause Bruno’s death, she certainly meant to cause mine when she sealed me up in that crypt”?
OK just some ground rules here: I’m gonna be addressing this based on the Model Penal Code(MPC) which is basically like an advisory text for lawmakers to follow when it comes to creating criminal codes by state. Most states have adopted the MPC in some fashion; I have no idea if Louisiana has or to what degree but for the sake of argument let’s just address this based on the MPC/common law(case rulings)/federal law.
In general, to show that someone is guilty of a crime it must be demonstrated that they possessed both actus reus(action or conduct) and mens rea(guilty mind). Here, we’re looking at two different actions that Renee engaged in: giving Bruno the fake letter saying the crystal skull was a fake and leaving Nancy in the crypt. We’ll address the mens rea for each of those separately as well.
Bruno’s Death - Actus reus
Actus reus is usually broken down into four main elements: voluntary act, social harm, factual causation, and legal causation.
Voluntary act: This threshold is pretty easy to meet. This basically asks whether what the person did was actually something within their control. MPC § 2.01(1) In other words, you’re only gonna not meet this standard if you like had a convulsion or seizure and literally could not control your body’s actions. Here, there is no indication that Renee did not actually will herself to write up the fake letter and give it to Bruno, so she meets the voluntary act requirement.
Social harm: The social harm element looks to the negative consequences that the law is intending to prevent. In this case, we’re talking about the death of a human which laws against homicide are intended to prevent. Here, someone died so the social harm component of a homicide charge has been met.
Factual causation: Under factual causation, we use what is called the “But-For Test” which asks “But for X conduct, would this social harm have come about when it did?” MPC § 2.03(1)(a-b).  Essentially, if the defendant hadn’t done what they did, would we still have the same end result? Here, but for Renee creating the fake letter and giving it to Bruno he probably would not have died when he did. Renee could maybe try to argue that at his age a heart attack was likely to happen at pretty much anytime in his life and the timing of the letter and subsequence heart attack were mere coincidence, but I think it would be pretty hard to prove that Renee’s letter didn’t at least somewhat contribute to the heart attack that killed him. Therefore, there is likely factual causation between Renee’s conduct and the social harm.
Legal causation: Legal causation asks whether actual result is not too remote or accidental to have a just bearing on the actor’s liability or on the gravity of the offense. Basically, even if someone technically was a link in the chain that “caused” a social harm, is what they did socially abhorrent enough that we actually want to punish them for it? In this case, Renee could -try- to argue that Bruno’s medical conditions and psychological dependence on the perceived protection he got from the skull were an intervening force that broke the chain of legal causation enough that Renee shouldn’t be held responsible for his death. However, criminal law applies what we also have in tort(personal injury) law which is known as the “Eggshell Plaintiff Rule” or “You take the plaintiff as you find him.” If a plaintiff/victim has a pre-existing medical condition that makes them more sensitive or susceptible to injury, even if the defendant could not have foreseen the condition, the existence of such a condition is not enough to break the chain of causation and absolve the defendant of liability. Therefore, Renee’s conduct will still likely be a legal cause of Bruno’s death.
Bruno’s Death - Mens rea
Mmkay here is where things get dicey. The MPC has four main mental state categories to determine how culpable someone’s mental state is. From most culpable to least culpable: Purposely, knowingly, recklessly, and negligently. Based on what your mental state was when you killed someone will determine the level of homicide you committed. I will address each accordingly.
Purposely - Intentional homicide:
A person is guilty of committing a crime knowingly if “the element involves the nature of his conduct or a result thereof, it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result.” MPC § 2.02(2)(a). Basically, was Bruno’s death(the result) Renee’s conscious object to cause such a result? Probably not. Assuming we take her at her word that she truly just hoped he’d give her the skull after reading the letter, she probably did not meet the requirement for a purposeful homicide.
Knowingly - Intentional homicide 
A person is guilty of committing a crime purposely “if the element involves a result of his conduct, he is aware that it is practically certain that his conduct will cause such a result.” MPC § 2.02(b), For pretty much the same reasons as above, it’s gonna be pretty hard to show that Renee was practically certain that Bruno would literally die as a result of the letter, so her conduct probably does not fall within what is required for a knowing homicide. 
Recklessly - Involuntary Manslaughter 
A person is guilty of committing a crime recklessly if “he consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct.”  MPC § 2.02(2)(c). Again, here, if we take Renee at her word that she truly did not think her conduct posed a risk to Bruno’s life, it’s gonna be fairly difficult to prove a reckless homicide unless there’s maybe facts that suggest Renee knew about Bruno’s health conditions and knew how the letter would affect those. But given the information we have, she probably did not commit reckless homicide.
Negligently - Negligent homicide
A person is guilty of committing a crime negligently if “he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct.” This is where things could go either way. As distinguished from a reckless mental state where the defendant must have actually disregarded a risk, here it just needs to be demonstrated that Renee should have been aware of the risk giving the fake letter to Bruno posed. The state could probably argue that Renee, being his housekeeper, should have been aware of his medical condition and his emotional dependence on the skull and known that the letter would really mess him up. On the other hand, Renee could probably easily argue that at most she would have anticipated that Bruno would’ve been emotionally distraught but that there was not a substantial risk of him literally having a heart attack and dying.
On balance, the issue of Bruno’s death is likely going to hinge on how much the jury believes the resulting heart attack from the letter was a high enough risk that Renee should have been aware of it. My guess is if the state couples both the Bruno and Nancy(we’ll get to that in a second) situations into one case, the jury will likely be sympathetic to Nancy’s testimony and therefore be more willing to find Renee guilty of other crimes.
Nancy’s Almost-Death
Woo hoo let’s talk about inchoate crimes, or essentially crimes that have not fully been realized. In this case, the state will probably argue that Renee attempted a homicide by leaving Nancy locked up in that crypt. Demonstrating an “attempt” has a slightly different mental state and action requirement, since it isn’t a fully completed crime. Here’s the full MPC definition of it and I’ll go through each possible element accordingly:
MPC § 5.01 “(1) Definition of Attempt 
A person is guilty of an attempt to commit a crime if, acting with the kind of culpability otherwise required for commission of the crime, he:
(a) purposely engages in conduct which would constitute the crime if the attendant circumstances were as he believes them to be; or
(b) when causing a particular result is an element of the crime, does or omits to do anything with
the purpose of causing or with the belief that it will cause such result without further conduct on his part; or
(c) purposely does or omits to do anything which, under the circumstances as he believes them to be, is an act or omission constituting a substantial step in a course of conduct planned to culminate in his commission of the crime.”
Let’s start with that first mental state requirement: “acting with the kind of culpability otherwise required for commission of the crime.” Here, we need to specify exactly what kind of homicide we’re seeing if Renee attempted. The MPC does not allow people to be held liable for attempted negligent or reckless mens rea crimes(which makes sense. How do you “attempt to” be negligent at something), so it’s gonna have to fall into purposeful or knowing. Here, it seems like it was Renee’s conscious object to cause the result of Nancy sitting in that crypt until she died. Therefore, we’re gonna be looking to see if Renee attempted to commit intentional homicide aka murder. 
I was going to address the actus reus elements individually, but the core question all three of them pretty must ask is had the circumstances been as the defendant believed would the social harm have occured? In this case, Nancy was able to escape from the crypt, but Renee did not have knowledge that there was a way to get out of the crypt. Therefore, had the facts been as Renee believed, with Nancy having no way to escape, Renee would have been able to bring about the result(Nancy’s death) that she wanted. Thus, Renee likely met the actus reus requirements of attempted murder.
A quick note on omission: It’s worth nothing that Renee didn’t technically “do” anything. She caught the skull like Nancy wanted her too and then just left; it’s not like she actively poisoned or stabbed someone. But, if you’ll notice, in § 5.01(b-c) it mentions both purposely doing an action as well as “omits to do anything with the purpose of….” Because Renee failed to help Nancy out of the crypt with the purpose of leaving Nancy there to die, she would have still met the actus reus requirement even without “doing” something. Generally, criminal law doesn’t like to hold people criminally responsible for not doing things(though there are some situations where a duty arises and an omission could make you liable), but here the elements requirement the mental state of ���purposely” engaging in an omission to lead to a certain result. In other words, you’re only going to be liable for an omission if it was your conscious object that such an omission would lead to a social harm.
So, to wrap up, Renee will probably be found guilty of attempted murder for leaving Nancy in that crypt because her actions and comments (“Bye now, Nancy”) suggest it was her concious object to leave Nancy there to die. Bruno’s death might leave Renee liable for negligent homicide, but it’s going to really depend on how much the jury thinks it would have been reasonable for Renee to have thought Bruno could’ve died based on the letter.
In summary, was Nancy correct in saying, “While [Renee] may not have meant to cause Bruno’s death, she certainly meant to cause mine when she sealed me up in that crypt”? As the Mythbusters would say….plausible. 
That was super long, but was actually very helpful for me prepping for my finals. If ya’ll have any other ND-related law analyses you’d be interest in me trying to do(if they relate to Criminal or Property law even better for my sake, but I also could do Contracts or Torts) please shoot them my way! Again, I am not a lawyer, but I have learned some things about the law and thought it’d be interesting to apply them to a medium I love. 
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lilietsblog · 5 years
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a scattering of extremely specific headcanons about the early life of Franziska von Karma
this is just an assortment of things that don’t really matter and probably won’t even make it into any fic I ever write in full but I have them so here we are
@ace-attorney-headcanons @linda-ravstar @nadiestar @ everyone else i want to see this but cant remember immediately (and count on hopefully seeing this anyway)
at age 13 Franziska von Karma passes the bar and becomes a prosecutor
at that point, she’s been living at a boarding school for a while (for 3 years as a continuation of my other headcanons but thats not the point)
she is not however following the school program, even if she sits in class shes far ahead of her grade and has a set of teachers/tutors/mentors that managed to get her that far
one of them is a rhetorics teacher who got Franziska from nearly completely nonverbal to ready to stand in court in just a few years (this did not take away Franziska’s problems with talking completely but it made her at least capable of using words as a tool in her life)
when she becomes a prosecutor, it’s not near the school but in the area where her father had been prosecuting for the last while and convinced people to take her, aka near in the place where the Von Karma Mansion is at
of course at this point Manfred and Miles are prosecuting back in Japan already so Franziska is kind of on her own
(it’s kind of funny, when I think about the second trilogy I picture it in the States but when I think about the first trilogy I 100% picture it in Japan, even though I picture both being in the same place. It doesn’t really matter though)
this is about the point at which it starts to dawn on Franziska that it doesn’t actually matter what she does, her papa doesn’t care and never did and never will
she’s a smart kid, and her law-centered education includes things such as the definition and varieties of abuse, and she’s known on a certain level for quite some time
it’s just one of those things that are really easy to ignore when you’re not thinking about them, especially when you’re a traumatized tween whose brain fragmentizes thoughts and memories so as to keep the necessary for survival attachment to the parental figure
but she has a job now, and is an adult in her own right, even if she really shouldn’t be yet, and some things are becoming steadily more impossible to ignore
she kind of hates Miles but also really doesn’t, and is maybe sinking into depression a bit but she’s too busy to really notice
the mansion is too big to live in on her own, and it doesn’t feel like home, and the accountant her papa hired for her confirms that she absolutely can afford to rent a small studio apartment closer to her job
the scratched, half-broken, overstuffed blue couch in front of the old not-even-flatscreen tv feels more like the lap of luxury than Franziska’s expensive room filled with expensive things ever has
she eats ice-cream from a tub and watches Steel Samurai on DVD from midnight to 2am, and she doesn’t even really like the cartoon, but she knows what Miles has said or would say about every single character or plot development and it feels more like home than anything else in her life
she wakes up in the morning when the driver papa hired for her lets himself in with the keys she gave him for that purpose and wakes her up, and then sits in the kitchen area and drinks tea with his face politely to the wall while Franziska gets up and goes to wash up and get dressed in the bathroom right behind him, too thirteen and too sleepy to be embarrassed by his presence
he takes her to work and buys her pastries and coffee on the way, and maybe she’s too young for it but who’s he to say what she can and cannot do? there’s a coffee vending machine in the office anyway
most people aren’t Manfred von Karma, so 13 and then 14 year old Franziska isn’t initially left to handle cases on her own. she’s unofficially assigned to an older prosecutor who handles both her cases and his own in all but the courtroom, in exchange for her being his errand girl and assistant for the more boring parts (Franziska is very good at the boring parts)
in the evenings when she comes home she’s busy: she still has to finish the high school program, and then she moves on to a remote college degree
at first she still has time for horses on weekends, but she keeps overstuffing her time, more out of habit than anything, and soon she just has time for horse magazines and books on veterinary medicine
when she remembers this time later, what she has to say is ‘it wasn’t too bad, i guess. i got by’
she can eat all the ice cream she wants, as long as she’s willing to live with the stomach-ache after; this isn’t really the first time she learns about consequences of her actions, but it makes for a nice lighthearted milestone to remember later
her mentor is a better person and a better prosecutor than Manfred von Karma ever was, so he teaches Franziska some better investigating habits without ever realizing she ever had any different. Franziska knows how to be quiet and listen; when she was a child, this was the skill she needed most
she gets her first victories in court on simpler cases that her mentor allows her to handle on her own; on more complex ones she stands as his assistant
then he gets sick and goes to the hospital for a while, because he’s not a young man, and Franziska has to handle her cases on her own now
she does pretty well, better than expected in fact - this would be a crack she’d be falling into, her mentor thinks as he’s helpless to do anything to support her from the hospital bed, but to everyone’s surprise she’s actually alright. she can stand on her own. anyone who doesn’t care to pay attention and thinks that ‘the prosecutor is a fourteen year old girl’ is a beginning of a joke quickly and painfully learns different
this brings her first big case. it’s a serial murder case, and everyone thinks a little girl shouldn’t even be on the crime scene, let alone direct the investigation, and yet
she solves then wins the case
even when her mentor comes back, she now handles her cases on her own, even if she still occasionally comes to him for advice
he misses her; she handled more of his routine than he realized
she has her own routine to handle now, and she finishes her education and just gets more and more consumed by the job, especially as she hears of Miles’ successes
she knows vaguely that what she is doing is different from what her papa taught her, but he doesn’t care so she doesn’t either
she keeps winning, and that’s all that matters. she doesn’t want to think about it
she passes her 15th birthday, then her 16th, then her 17th, and then
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lefthanded-sans · 6 years
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Heya! You're a linguist, right? Any advice for someone who would love to get into English linguistics with a burning passion, but don't see that as being possible owing to the fact that they're a foreigner/not a native speaker and are afraid they might not get any work because of it other than translation (and I'm guessing the pay isn't that great anyway)? Or just, what's it like being a linguist?
Heyaaaa! Great to chat with you again! Sorry for being so slow responding to you, and I hope this answer helps!
I’ll go through all of these questions, because why not? I want to help as much as I can, and I’m always willing to help and talk more. I’ll also be backtracking and talking some basics of what it means to be a linguist, just so that other people who read this can follow along with the discussion. 
What it’s like being a linguist!
Unlike what many people might suspect, linguistics isn’t a field about speaking a ton of languages. While many linguists speak more than one tongue fluently, that’s because we love language, not because that’s the heart of our profession. Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and it covers everything from how we anatomically pronounce words, to the physical acoustic properties of language, to how words and sentences are structured, to how we humans socially respond to language, and more. It means there are a ton of subfields in linguistics, and that linguistics can often get interdisciplinary.
My primary subfield all throughout my undergraduate and graduate work was phonetics, which is the study of language at its smallest sound units. I studied the acoustic properties of sounds, how the vocal tract biologically was made up and moved to create these sounds, the acoustic makeup of all the tiny sound units in a language (often represented as letters in languages) - aka phonemes, how the presence of one sound unit can alter how another is pronounced, things like phrasal tone where your voice pitch varies throughout a sentence, and more.
While I love phonetics, the truth is that the high majority of my career work hasn’t been in phonetics. Almost all of my work has been in the semantic-syntactic interface - where the meaning of sentences interacts with how sentences are structured. In a given day of work, I’ll receive hoards of written sentences online from a computer database. My overseers will tell me how they want me to analyze and organize the data, usually through some sort of annotation scheme where I make notes on top of the sentences. I analyze how meaning is embedded through the structure of the sentences according to that annotation scheme, then send the data back to be processed by computers. That’s because most of my work has to do with machine learning. For computers to get better at understanding sentences, we feed data with annotations to them to help them understand how to parse sentences. Then, they can make future better “comprehension” choices on their own with new sentences they receive. This has a variety of applications, including improving online search functions or making virtual assistants like Siri and Amazon Echo understand you better.
There is a somewhat fair though not unending amount of work to be found in this area, if you know where to look.
Now, I’m going to be transparent about the financial situation and work stability situation of my jobs. That way, you can decide whether or not it’s something you want to gamble yourself. And it is a little gamble because I’m not living a full-time, steady, long-term job. Currently, I work as a contract consultant, annotator, and adjudicator. Sometimes clients will hire me to look at their data for one month, three months, or in the luckiest cases, a year. This means I am constantly looking for new work, I don’t have any health, etc. benefits because I’m part-time (this is of course an issue for my country, not internationally), and I often am doing one to four contracts simulntaneously. There’s also something to be said that, even when I’m hired for a position, data comes in SPURTS - sometimes there are weeks where I’m twiddling my thumbs doing nothing, and other weeks where I am overloaded with tight deadlines and have to work around the clock. 
In all of my positions, I’m working temporarily with clients in part-time temporary jobs. It’s remote work where I can choose the hours of the day I work, chill in my pajamas at home, all sorts of great stuff. I communicate with my coworkers or superiors almost entirely through email and online chat, with the RARE Skype call or face-to-face meeting.I tend to get my contracts through a company called Appen or by connecting with old peers from my university days (I still work for my university’s cognitive science research department, in fact). I started doing annotations part-time when I was an undergraduate sophomore in 2012 and was paid about $11 an hour. Now, I make about $18-20 per hour for my contract positions. Specifically, I have slowly bargained up my pay from about $12 to $20 in the last year. So I’m getting increasingly paid higher with each new gig. I don’t know how much higher I can increasingly climb, but it’s not bad pay when I get enough hours (and hours is where it’s hardest to win).
Other linguists will have different types of jobs than me. There is a ton of work - and good stable work! - in the computational linguistics field if you’re interesting in programming and working with the computer side of studying language. That’s the safest gamble. Other linguists will contact indigenous people groups to study endangered languages, and spend their days either out in the field recording speech with tape recorders, or studying the language closely in their office. Others will get their TOEFL certificates and teach English to non-native speakers. Lots of different things that might come up. Again, if you know where to look, and if you’re creative enough to know how to apply your degree to different things.
You’re right that translation is one of the areas you see the most job openings for. Depending on all the languages you know, it’ll be easier or harder to break into. I’ve never looked into translation. I doubt I’d get hired, first of all; I live in a an area which has a high percentage of bilingual Spanish speakers, so everyone’s going to hire the people who speak both Spanish and English fluently and natively (as versus me, who grew up in a monolingual household and started to learn Spanish at thirteen years old). Lots of translation jobs even specify that they want you to be a NATIVE speaker of the language you’re translating, which means that someone like me who came from a monolingual household is 100% out of luck. The other reason why I don’t do translation is because, while there are some translation jobs that pay okay, lots of them don’t, and lots of them in my country/state aren’t full-time. I’ve seen a number of translation positions that pay you by the number of words or pages you translate, and the pay isn’t that pretty when you add it up. 
That’s not true for all translation jobs, though, especially if you happen to speak high demand but less commonly spoken languages for your region (in my area, something like Arabic or Bangladeshi could get you a pretty penny). ASL (American Sign Language) translator jobs in my country are always nice gigs. And people who speak English as a second language and something else “uncommon” as their first language have a pretty good shot of being hired for something.
But I know translation isn’t what you’re interested in. Which is fair.
Now, as far as breaking into English linguistics as a non-native speaker, you’re right that you’ll probably run into obstacles, but they’re not imposssssssible to get around. Especially if your verbal speech is anything like the writing you do for English, you’re almost certainly FINE. This following discussion is more specifically for the academic community of linguistics, but what I would do whenever I wanted to study a language I didn’t speak… was get an academic partner who did. And in many types of studies you do, depending on your linguistics subfield, you won’t even need to worry about that. Honestly the biggest challenge isn’t whether English is your first language or not, because linguists get their fingers over any language whenever and wherever they can… the biggest challenge is that English has been very thoroughly studied academically in linguistics compared to many other languages. VERY thoroughly studied. Whereas I had an easier time finding unstudied topics in languages like Khmer, I’d be harder pressed to find easy research areas in languages like Mandarin or Spanish. Buuuuuuuuut there are still many, many Unknowns I have come across in English linguistics - for instance, lots and lots and lots that needs to be done in the sociolinguistic arena. Most of my doctorate peers wrote their second year papers on English. Granted, that was a sample size of five people, but nevertheless. There are still things to be said about the language academically, if you know where and how to look.
Whether or not this’ll be a big hindrance to you depends on more choices than “I want to study English linguistics.” It reaaaaaally depends what subfield you want to get into, whether you go into graduate school, whether you want to enter lingusitics academia or something else, and where you live and how accessible/fluent English is to your overall populace. In some fields more than others, you may find barriers. So be careful, but don’t rule out opportunities completely. I’ll point out I’ve seen native speakers of Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, and Mandarin professionally study English… so it’s certainly something that’s not uncommon or impossible!
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You Need A Budget (YNAB): Humbly Confident Email Marketing Automation Specialist
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Headquarters: Salt Lake City, UT URL: https://www.youneedabudget.com/
At YNAB, we build the world’s best budgeting software. But teaching people how to get control of their money and changing lives one budget at a time is what gets us up in the morning. In order to teach the masses the YNAB way of budgeting, it requires sending emails...lots and lots of emails (and messages, really). That’s where you come in!
You are an HTML email-crafting savant on wheels. You scorn the decision makers at Microsoft for their implementation of Outlook 2003’s HTML rendering, but you also love the challenge and job security it brings. Also, it was a different time...who knew CSS would be a thing (everybody knew, but still)?
Even though you love getting into the weeds, creating and troubleshooting HTML emails and in-app messages, you also have never met a mind map that you don’t like. You’re building customer lifecycle messaging funnels in your sleep. You’re targeting, triggering and delaying like a procrastinating hunter! You’re fascinated by the user journey and you absolutely love finding new ways to convert, engage, and retain anyone and everyone who comes into the marketing automation orbit.
Requirements (these are real, actual requirements): 
You have a ton of experience using Marketing Automation platforms. We use Braze, but they all have similar rules (Marketo, Iterable, SFMC, Eloqua, etc.). 
You can take a messaging series strategy, develop the emails (we have designers to design them), implement all of automation details, troubleshoot, A/B test and optimize it to a degree that impresses everyone you know and have ever talked to.
You are a highly skilled HTML/CSS email developer. You can (and probably should) use a solid template as a base, but there’s no email client issue you can’t troubleshoot.
Oh, hey, also, it probably goes without saying, but you can make those same emails look amazing on mobile. Are we still using the word “responsive?” You get the idea.
That gives you a pretty good idea of the job, but first, you need to know if you’ll even like working with us. (We think you will.)
A Bit About Us
We build the best budgeting software around, YNAB or “You Need a Budget” if you have a lot of extra time on your hands. For more than a decade, people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives. (Google us, or read some of our reviews on the app store, and you’ll see what we mean.) We love building something that has a huge positive impact on people’s lives.
We’re profitable, bootstrapped, and growing. YNAB started in 2004 and we haven’t taken any outside funding—we’re in it for the long haul. 
We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our Core Value Manifesto has to really click with you. If you’re nodding emphatically while reading it, you’ll probably fit right in, in which case, we can’t wait to hear from you! 
First, let’s talk about life at YNAB and then we’ll go into detail about what we’re looking for. 
Who you’d be working with:
Lindsey & The Gang aka the Marketing Team aka just a rag-tag but lovable bunch of underdogs who defy the odds—making budgeting software hilarious, emotional, and accessible—day in and day out. (Disney, are you listening?) 
We love musical theater, board games, stand-up comedy, the Enneagram, video games, and art, to varying degrees, depending on who you talk to first. Our internal Slack channel is so much fun, it has a growing fanbase. 
Lindsey, our Chief Marketing Officer, will be the first to delete something very important, but also the first to celebrate your wins—big and small. Ryan, our Digital Marketing Director, will quickly become your lifeline in any type of bracketology-related emergency and even under website-launch-level-stress, he can sneak in the jokes that make you feel like, “if Dad’s OK, we’ll all be OK.” 
And then there’s, Ben B. and Janelle, who lead out on Community Engagement and Social Media, respectively. They both have huge hearts, and a tangible passion for our customers, plus they are hilarious. Reema, our Marketing Production Manager, keeps all the balls in the air, while wearing many different hats, basically, if there is a need, yo, she’ll solve it (and yes, that was a seamless incorporation of Vanilla Ice lyrics). 
Plus, our brilliant creatives, Lauren and Marian (designers), Tristan (animation), Hannah and Ashley (video), and Rachel (writing) bring everything to life. They are a veritable idea machine who serve to make us look good on a daily basis. What more could you ask for?
More importantly, you get to work with Arturo, our brilliant marketing developer whose mult-lingual humor and je ne sais quoi (I don’t know what that means, but Arturo probably does) will restore all your faith (if you had lost any) in humanity on a daily basis. 
But wait, there’s more! As the sole Email Marketing Automation Specialist at YNAB, you’ll be working with Support reps to craft in-app messages and Product Designers to communicate with beta testing cohorts that help test new features in YNAB. Essentially, you will be the glue that holds together the YNAB email marketing machine (don’t ask us why our machine uses glue instead of, like, bolts and more-machiney-type things).
How You’ll Work at YNAB
We work really hard to make working at YNAB an amazing experience. In fact, we were recently recognized as Fortune's #4 best small company to work for in the United States! We have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. Here’s how we operate:
Live Where You Want
We’re a distributed team, so you can live and work wherever you want. Proximity doesn’t influence productivity. Taylor, our CTO, was traveling who-knows-where for a couple of years before he bought a farm. Up and move to France for a year? Sure, Todd did that. Don’t like France? How about London, where Janelle trotted off to. Tulsa Remote? Can do. Or if you just love LA or Baltimore or Buenos Aires, we’ve got people there, too.  Not all of us move around, but the fact that these folks have is totally okay because we’re all adults. Just make sure you have a reliable internet connection.
No Crazy Hours
We rarely work more than 40 hours per week. There have been a few occasions where things got a little crazy and people had to log some extra hours. But then they took some extra time off, so it all balances out. We work hard and smart but we’re in this for the long haul, no need to go crazy on the hours.
Take Vacation (Seriously)
We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for Christmas break). It’s important to get out and do something. We’ll look forward to seeing pictures of your vacation in our Slack channel, creatively named #office_wall.
The YNAB Meetup
We get the teams together once a year to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding. So far, we’ve done Costa Rica, a gigantic cabin in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, and most recently, Laguna Beach. We work together, play together, and reinforce the bonds we’ve made as a team and company. Every year, we leave refreshed, motivated, and excited for the year ahead together.
Up Your Game
We’re serious about helping you improve your craft. We budget for it (hey-o!). Think conferences, Lynda subscriptions, dedicated time away from work to learn something new… it’s really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing.  
International is Absolutely Oka
If you are Stateside, we’ll set you up as a W2 employee. If you’re international, you’ll be set up as a contractor. Employee or contractor, it’s all the same to us. You’re part of the team. (We are spread all over the world: Switzerland, Scotland, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Canada, and all over the United States.)
If You’re Stateside…
YNAB offers fantastic health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you and your family. (No need to check your vision, you read that right, 100%. Although if you did need to check your vision, we’ve got you covered!)
We also have a Traditional and Roth 401k option. YNAB contributes three percent whether you choose to throw any money in there or not. It vests immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNAB’s 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, not your retirement nest egg. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Trust us, it’s awesome.)
Other Tidbits
Once you start, we DEMAND (in a friendly, ALL CAPS IS YELLING way) that you fill out your “Bucket List” spreadsheet with 50 items. (That’s harder than it sounds!) 
The bucket list really helps in deciding what we should give you for your birthday and the holidays.
We have a bonus plan based on profitability. You’ll be in on that from day one. YNAB wins, you win. That kind of thing.
We’re all adults. There’s no need to punch a clock, or ask for permission to take off early one afternoon to go see the doctor (health insurance premium 100% covered!). We look at what you accomplish, not how long you sit (have you tried standing?) in front of a computer.
We want you firing on all cylinders so we’ll set you up with a shiny new computer and replace it every three years.
Did I mention we make a huge, positive difference in people’s lives? You may not think that matters much, but then a few months down the road you’ll realize it’s made your job really, really enjoyable. Don’t underestimate this one!
If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now I want to talk about you. You will play a big, big part in helping YNAB customers achieve success. You will change lives. I’ll only say that six more times.
Now, back to you, our new Email Marketing Automation Specialist...
We’re educators and content marketers here at YNAB, and email and in-app messages are the principal way that we teach and engage with our users after they have made the decision to give us a chance. We feel like our content is something that sets us apart from our competitors in an extremely crowded space, so you will be on the front lines, delivering that content (precious cargo). We’re counting on you. You’re our only hope!
You’ll have all of the tools you need to deliver engaging, personalized messages to these new, budding budgeters as they learn how to gain total control of their money. We have writers and designers to help craft the content that you’ll develop. We have full stack developers who will keep all the systems functioning and keep all the data (for targeting) nice and clean.
Now, we need you to develop the emails/messages, set the targeting, configure the triggers and unleash the campaigns into the world.
You are our ideal candidate if you: 
Have at least 3-5 years of experience using Marketing Automation platforms. Braze is preferred, but experience with any similar platform totally works. This probably wouldn’t include some ESP’s like Constant Contact. We’re really looking for more powerful Automation platforms.
Have at least 3-5 years of experience developing responsive HTML/CSS emails.
Are comfortable creating strategies for all phases of the customer lifecycle (acquisition, conversion, retention, winback).
Have some pretty stellar writing skills.
Make us laugh. 
Manage your time exceptionally well and you are comfortable working remotely. 
Incredibly organized, flexible, and collaborative. 
Never met a deadline you didn’t love. 
Self-motivated and driven by nature, maybe even a little competitive. 
Stay laser-focused on the big picture, without losing sight of every. last. detail. 
Wildly productive and independent, but a team-player at heart. 
Bonus Points: 
You already use and love YNAB. 
You are familiar with webhooks and API integrations and might even know a little bit of JavaScript.
You write some pretty amazing email copy, or at least you know it when you see it.
YNAB is an equal opportunity employer. We believe diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences to be critical to our success and are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart, hard-working, and diverse team who love working together to build something that matter
How to Apply
Apply here (https://ynab.recruiterbox.com/jobs/fk0q69o) by 11:59PM on March 9th, 2020. Firm. It’s a real deadline. The kind you love.
Attach a pdf of your cover letter. In your cover letter: 
Introduce yourself and explain why this position is of interest to you, and why you would be a great fit. Please limit this section of the cover letter to 1.5 pages. 
On a separate page of your cover letter, answer the following questions (with each response being about a paragraph in length): 
1. What attracted you to this position? (This is not about what attracted you to the software.) 
2. What criteria do you look for when searching for your next company or position? 
3. What are your favorite and least favorite parts of your current job? 
4. Tell us about a time when you had to learn something new to excel at your job. 
5. Tell us about the craziest email client bug/issue that you’ve ever troubleshooted (troubleshot?). What was it? How did you discover it and how did you fix it? What do you do now to make sure you never have to fight it again? 
6. What are some of the differences between emails, messages, and automation strategies that you would implement to convert users vs. those that you would send to retain users? 
If you have a prepared resume, attach it in PDF form. If you don’t have a resume because you aren’t even sure you’re looking to change jobs, that’s fine! An informal list of your work and education history are all we’re looking for.
Please send all attachments as PDFs. 
P.S.  If you’re not interested in or available for this position, but know someone who is, we would really appreciate it if you passed this along!
To apply: https://ynab.recruiterbox.com/jobs/fk0q69o
from We Work Remotely: Remote jobs in design, programming, marketing and more https://ift.tt/381DopO from Work From Home YouTuber Job Board Blog https://ift.tt/2VwQZ5M
0 notes
componentplanet · 4 years
Text
Tested: High-Tech Cooking With the Cinder Grill and Meater Thermometer
After decades of only minor changes, the last few years have brought us an onslaught of high-tech updates to traditional cooking devices. Among those have been a variety of smart ovens and connected thermometers. As someone who cooks dinner almost every night, I can both appreciate how useful more technology can be in the kitchen, but also that it can sometimes just make life more complicated. So I set out to test the Cinder Grill ($429) and Meater’s completely wireless thermometers ($69-$269) with that in mind. Would they make life easier for a tech-enthusiast cook, and would they produce better results than the devices they aim to replace?
Cinder Is a Cool Name for a Grill, but What Does It Do?
When you first see a Cinder Grill it is hard not to think of the George Foreman grill. But the Cinder is light years ahead of the Foreman. Yes, it is a grill (technically, more of a griddle or “flattop” since it has flat surfaces), but it is a high-precision and versatile version. You can dial in just about any temperature, and use either one or both cooking surfaces. Speaking of which, the surface isn’t huge, so like the Foreman, you’re constrained to how much you can cook at once. I found I could cook four eggs or four burgers at once, but either filled the entire 9-inch by 10-inch grilling surface.
Cinder Promises Sous-Vide Without the Water
I’ve been using a thermal bath and vacuum-sealed bags to help get meat and fish cooked to a precise temperature for 15 years because the results are excellent. The trick is that the water bath is held at a specific temperature so that your food can’t get hotter than that — meaning you won’t overcook or burn it. However, it’s a bit of a cumbersome process, and the resulting texture and color aren’t typically appetizing, especially for steaks. So an additional step of patting the meat dry and searing it is needed (aka a reverse sear).
The Cinder Grill provides a remarkably evenly-heated cooking surface as shown using this thermal image from a FLIR ONE Pro camera.
The Cinder grill replaces the water bath with carefully heated heavy metal plates. A set of three high-tech heating coils under both a top and bottom plate allows you to control the temperature of the grill surface precisely. At least that’s what Cinder and a control knob calibrated to the nearest degree promised. I wanted to check for myself, so I used my FLIR ONE Pro to measure the surface temperature of the grill plates when I had the control set to 350 degrees. While it wasn’t perfect, the Cinder did a much better job than most grills. The middle third or so of the lower grill was within a degree of 350 (at least as measured by the FLIR), and most of the rest — except for the extreme corners — was within about 10 degrees. That compares well with a typical grill or oven, where temperatures can vary 20 to 40 degrees with time or across the cooking surface.
The Cinder Grill makes it a cinch to cook a perfect steak — simply pick your desired temperature for the doneness you want, and then use the Sear mode to get a great crust.
For its next trick, the Cinder can also sear. So you can accomplish both the initial cook of your food to the correct temperature, and then sear it. Cinder makes that a simple process. Simply take your food off, turn the temperature knob to sear, wait for it to heat up, and then put your food back on. If you want both sides seared, as you would for a steak, close the grill so both the top and bottom plates will be used, and then press the knob. The Cinder will do a 45-second countdown for you, which is just about the right amount of time for searing most meat and some fish.
The Cinder Also Makes an Accurate and Convenient Griddle
While some stoves come with a grill/griddle burner, most of them aren’t that accurate. If you have room for it on your counter, Cinder is a nice alternative. You can simply dial in the temperature you want — I taped the temperature chart from the Hester Cue on a  cabinet over my review Cinder — and cook up anything you can make on a traditional flattop. I had great success with grilled cheese sandwiches, Reuben sandwiches, Smashburgers (using Cinder’s recipe), fried eggs, toast, and bacon.
In this mode, you are back to the standard cooking practice of checking your food for doneness and making sure it doesn’t burn. If it is thick enough to tolerate a thermometer I found that the Meater wireless probes worked perfectly. I loved that I could use them even with the Cinder closed, and not worry about wire leads needing to snake out between the very hot plates.
Comparing the Cinder and the Brava
The Cinder reminded me initially of the Brava smart oven that I reviewed last year, in particular, because they both claim to make it easy to cook a perfect steak. But after using it for a while, it’s clear they serve quite different purposes (once you get past the fact that they both do an excellent job of cooking steaks). The Brava lets you cook several elements of a meal at once, and can often do that automatically, without you needing to do more than prep and load the food according to directions, and then use the touch screen to pick out what you’re cooking. So the Brava is without question an excellent labor-saving device.
If you’re cooking a steak, or something similar, the Cinder can also save you a lot of labor (I don’t say time, because the process isn’t any faster than sous-vide and sear, and slower than the simple throw-it-in-a-skillet approach). But for most foods, the promise isn’t less work; it’s a better and more repeatable result.
Brava also has a very large array of recipes for ingredients and combinations, along with tons of videos. Cinder has a few recipes, a few videos, and a depressingly sparse food guide. That’s an area where I think they need to really step up their efforts, as I was often stuck with trial and error when cooking something they didn’t have instructions for. The Cinder also has more trouble handling either delicate fish (if you cook with the lid down to get the full effect, it squeezes the fish) and uneven-width ingredients (for example bone-in short ribs) as the top can’t heat them evenly.
On the other hand, the Brava is more than twice as expensive as the Cinder ($1,095 for the Brava versus $429 for the Cinder) and can’t be used as a traditional cooking surface. Both are fairly small and unlikely to replace the need for a traditional oven or stove or even microwave. However, either can certainly replace a toaster oven and take up about the same room on your counter. Note that both are heavy, so they are not something you’re going to want to pull out when you use it and put away afterward.
Meater: The First Truly Wireless Remote Food Thermometer
Meater block with four wireless probes
Whatever technology you use to cook perfect meat and fish — whether it is a skillet, a grill, a smoker, or a sous-vide bath — accurate temperature measurement is vital. If you’re a pro, like my friend who owns our local restaurant, you can tell the doneness of a steak by comparing it with the softness of the skin on your hand. But if you’re like most of us, a fast-reading digital thermometer is the way to go. It’s also your best option for getting consistent results with trickier foods like poultry and fish. And of course, if you’re cooking in a smoker, you need a way to know what’s going on without frequently opening the lid.
Traditionally, there have been a couple of types of digital thermometers for food. One is a hand-held probe that you can stick directly into the food. I keep one of those near our stove and another near our outdoor grill. They’re simple and don’t need any wires. Then there are thermometers that use wired probes. They range from entry-level models, such as Weber’s iGrill, to more sophisticated versions like the excellent Fireboard 6-probe model. These now offer internet connectivity, but you wind up having to deal with untangling and routing the wires each time you use them.
So-called wireless thermometers before Meater still required wires to their probes, and they required separate probes for measuring ambient and food temperatures. Meater addressed both of these issues with a unique wireless probe that measures the food temperature at the point and the ambient temperature at the back end where the electronics live. The probes use Bluetooth to talk to a nicely designed wood base. You can either read the temperatures directly from the base’s display or have it connect to Wi-Fi so that you can monitor it from your mobile phone.
Cooking With a Meater Thermometer
To be honest, I have put off looking at Meater because I really didn’t think it would work with the probes in a large Faraday cage as with my pellet smoker. Much to my surprise, the probes worked great in it. They also worked well when I sealed them up with a steak I was cooking sous-vide in a thermal bath, and when I stuck them into a steak I was cooking in the Cinder Grill. The probes are limited to an ambient temperature of 527F (higher temps can damage them), so I’ve been nervous about trying them in my Brava oven.
The MEATER worked perfectly when I used it with my Memphis Advantage pellet cooker.
The Meater probes recharge by being placed in their base, and in turn, the base is powered by AA batteries. I’m used to similar devices recharging over USB, but it is easy enough to use rechargeable AA batteries instead. When I first got the Meater system for review, I found it hard to tell the probes apart (they have a tiny number 1-4 on their rear end), but shortly after that Meater sent out small metal number tags ($8 on their site), and now it’s easy. The only other small thing I found tricky is that the probes need to be inserted a couple of inches into the food. For large items, that’s easy. But in some cases like sausages or chicken thighs, it can take a little doing.
Overall, I really like the Meater system. When it first launched, Meater was pretty expensive, but the company has done a good job of providing some value-priced options. You can get a single probe plus a base without a display and with a 33-foot range for $69, or a 165-foot range version with a Bluetooth repeater for $99. The unit we reviewed has four probes, Wi-Fi, and a display, and sells for $269. So you’re definitely paying a premium over wired units like the iGrill, but you’re getting the convenience of no wires and having two sensors in each probe.
[Image Credits: Cardinal Photo]
Now Read:
Brava Review: It’s a Better Oven, If You Have the Budget
The Best Smart Kitchen Appliances for 2019
‘Smart’ Ovens May Turn On and Preheat Themselves Overnight, Which Is Totally Safe
from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/300706-high-tech-cooking-with-the-cinder-grill-and-meater-thermometer from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2019/10/tested-high-tech-cooking-with-cinder.html
0 notes
adambstingus · 7 years
Text
4 Backwards Medical Beliefs In Otherwise Developed Countries
America is currently suffering from a mass outbreak of bullshit. Long-eradicated diseases are kicking off a comeback tour because people choose to take their medical advice from a washed-up actress and a guy who literally talks out of his ass. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, less than half of U.S. adults believe human activity has affected climate change, while a fifth say that global warming isn’t even a thing. It’s almost as if a significant portion of the populace has chosen to flip science the bird and go back to the good old days of drowning uppity women to find out if they’re witches. But lest you think this is strictly an American phenomenon …
4
Sweden Has A Debilitating Case Of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a supposed allergy of sorts to the electromagnetic radiation incessantly emitted by newfangled technologies such as power lines, cell phones, and WiFi routers. Blind studies have found zippo evidence that the symptoms described by EHS sufferers are in any way related to the presence of an electromagnetic field, but that data’s done precisely nothing to staunch the steady flow of folks claiming that walking into a Starbucks is like reenacting a scene from Scanners.
Nowhere is the condition more prevalent than in Sweden, where a full 5 percent of the population believe they are, to some degree, hypersensitive to electromagnetic waves (that’s a more than 200 percent increase since 2002). Those hundreds of thousands of cases are probably why Sweden is currently the only country to acknowledge electromagnetic hypersensitivity as an official functional impairment, meaning Swedish citizens can receive financial compensation for the negative effects resulting from the condition. Swedish social services sometimes pay to electrically “sanitize” homes via the installation of metallic shielding, or even rent out remote cabins to the most severe cases of those who cannot stomach populated areas. Expensive, EHS-friendly healthcare facilities have been made available to the public, and there’s even talk in Stockholm of constructing an entire EMF-free community, which we’re going to go ahead and assume would be the village from The Village.
All this for a condition that is entirely self-diagnosed, mostly because there’s not one damned bit of scientific evidence that it truly exists. One thing we can say for certain about the Swedish government: They have no shortage of faith in their citizens.
Now, none of this is to say that sufferers of EHS aren’t really suffering — with the exception of the occasional chronic hooky-player, they’re most definitely experiencing all manner of uncomfortable symptoms, ranging from headaches to fatigue to nausea to nosebleeds. However, studies have demonstrated that cognitive behavioral therapy (of the same type used to treat conditions such as depression, stress, and anxiety) can significantly reduce so-called EHS symptoms after a mere six months of treatment. So while we’re not downplaying the plight of hypersensitive Swedes, we are saying that maybe, just maybe, constructing a goddamned Sweden-sized tinfoil hat isn’t the answer.
3
Germans Are Deathly Afraid Of Drafts
In a telephone survey conducted by Germany’s Allensbach Institute, more than a third of those interviewed said that a warm midwinter wind commonly known as the foehn — pronounced “fern,” like the houseplant — caused noticeable changes in their health, while one in five said it was the meteorological equivalent of a kneecapping. But that’s pretty standard stuff. After all, there’s a good chance your mom once had you convinced that the common cold was so named because it was caused by actual cold.
bowdenimages/iStock “Well, why do I get colds during the summer sometimes?” “Because you’re an abomination.”
Odder is the fact that opening a window on a sweltering bus in Germany is likely to earn you irritated shouts of “Es zieht!” and a swift smack with the riding crop we imagine every German carries. Directly translated, that means “It pulls” — because the draft supposedly pulls the health and well-being straight out of you. So fearful of air currents are some Germans that they blame them for conditions ranging from migraines to insomnia to kreislaufzusammenbruch. No, we didn’t kick our laptop down the stairs and into a passing thresher; that monstrous word translates to “circulatory collapse,” and while in most places such a condition would get you good and dead, in Germany it gets you a day off work if you’re lucky. Because what’s a little organ system failure to a people who consume their beer by the liter?
Interestingly, there is one real, measurable effect of the much-feared German drafts: When the aforementioned foehn blows in, it brings with it an uptick in traffic accidents and crime. Perhaps because everyone is convinced it’s a sign that their days are numbered. In neighboring Austria and parts of Switzerland, the foehn is even recognized as a mitigating factor in criminal proceedings, making this quite possibly the only circumstance in which the Swayze defense is a viable strategy.
2
France Is Suffering An Ongoing Epidemic Of “Heavy Legs”
Have you ever had one of those days when your legs simply do not wish to carry your ass to work? Well, so has the entirety of France. They’ve even coined a special term for the condition: heavy legs syndrome.
skeeze/Pixabay Heavy-feeling legs, in a nation where 80 percent of the diet is wine, cheese, and bread? You don’t say …
Unique to France (aka the place with more pharmacies than any other European country), heavy legs syndrome has no concrete medical definition, probably because it’s not recognized as a condition at all anywhere else. Rather, it’s vaguely described as an “unpleasant sensation of pain and heaviness” in the lower extremities. It’s generally treated with a variety of topical creams, a veritable cornucopia of pain medications, and presumably millions upon millions of dollars in lost productivity.
The thing is, all those French people calling in sick to work because their calves have gone up a weight class likely don’t realize that they’re contributing to an epidemic of an entirely different variety. You see, assigning a set of symptoms their own “syndrome” could be more damaging than anyone realizes. The symptoms of so-called heavy legs syndrome, for instance, align nicely with real, treatable conditions, such as varicose veins — which more than half of French women and one third of French men suffer. By apathetically tossing drugs at the symptoms, however, you’re never getting to the root cause of said symptoms.
Kajdi Szabolcs/iStock “They pair perfectly with brie and a nice Chardonnay.”
That’s how you wind up with a heavy drug consumption culture in which nearly a quarter of men under 35 fear that they’re suffering from some medical boogeyman, even when experiencing no symptoms whatsoever. Luckily, there are over 5,000 drugs readily available in France, more than half of which “serve no useful purpose” other than shooting their social medical system budget straight to shit.
1
In India, Homeopathy Is A Legitimate Medical Practice
In 1796, German physician Samuel Hahnemann had an idea. Building upon his principle of “like cures like,” he developed an approach to medicine positing that substances which would normally induce negative effects on the human body could, when diluted to such a degree that they were no longer even the substances in question, be used to treat ailments whose symptoms resembled the aforementioned negative effects. (Stomach cramps and convulsions? Here, have a trace amount of arsenic!) He called this newly minted field homeopathy, and it’s been causing physicians worldwide to roll their eyes ever since.
Except in India, where a homeopathy practitioner can hang their fancy Homeopathy Practitioner Certificate on the wall of their honest-to-god medical practice. Indeed, it’s the second most popular form of medical treatment in India behind allopathy (better known to most of the world as “non-bullshit medicine”), with around 10 percent of the population putting their trust in flower petals and crossed fingers to cure everything from swine flu to cancer. And they’re doing so with the backing of the government — India is home to hundreds of homeopathic medical colleges and university programs, with state councils training and registering thousands of new practitioners at a growing rate each year.
More horrifying yet is the fact that the Maharashtra state government, in response to an ongoing shortage of science-based medical practitioners, is all set to promote hundreds of homeopathic placebo peddlers to actual doctors, citing the oft-ignored “good ’nuff” school of medical training. That’s sort of like if Florida had a shortage of plumbers, so they handed out plumbing certifications to everyone who’d ever played Super Mario Bros. Either scenario involves disturbing levels of both shit and random mushrooms.
Wes Corwin is a stand-up comedian currently based in Dallas. You can like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, or if you live in Dallas and prefer analog comedy over digital, check out his weekly show at Noble Rey Brewery on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
Also check out 6 Mental Illnesses That Only Happen in One Place on Earth and 6 Unexplained Things That Only Happen In A Few Places On Earth.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Horrifying Truth About Those People in TV Commercials, and other videos you won’t see on the site!
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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/14/4-backwards-medical-beliefs-in-otherwise-developed-countries/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/165344670832
0 notes
samanthasroberts · 7 years
Text
4 Backwards Medical Beliefs In Otherwise Developed Countries
America is currently suffering from a mass outbreak of bullshit. Long-eradicated diseases are kicking off a comeback tour because people choose to take their medical advice from a washed-up actress and a guy who literally talks out of his ass. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, less than half of U.S. adults believe human activity has affected climate change, while a fifth say that global warming isn’t even a thing. It’s almost as if a significant portion of the populace has chosen to flip science the bird and go back to the good old days of drowning uppity women to find out if they’re witches. But lest you think this is strictly an American phenomenon …
4
Sweden Has A Debilitating Case Of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a supposed allergy of sorts to the electromagnetic radiation incessantly emitted by newfangled technologies such as power lines, cell phones, and WiFi routers. Blind studies have found zippo evidence that the symptoms described by EHS sufferers are in any way related to the presence of an electromagnetic field, but that data’s done precisely nothing to staunch the steady flow of folks claiming that walking into a Starbucks is like reenacting a scene from Scanners.
Nowhere is the condition more prevalent than in Sweden, where a full 5 percent of the population believe they are, to some degree, hypersensitive to electromagnetic waves (that’s a more than 200 percent increase since 2002). Those hundreds of thousands of cases are probably why Sweden is currently the only country to acknowledge electromagnetic hypersensitivity as an official functional impairment, meaning Swedish citizens can receive financial compensation for the negative effects resulting from the condition. Swedish social services sometimes pay to electrically “sanitize” homes via the installation of metallic shielding, or even rent out remote cabins to the most severe cases of those who cannot stomach populated areas. Expensive, EHS-friendly healthcare facilities have been made available to the public, and there’s even talk in Stockholm of constructing an entire EMF-free community, which we’re going to go ahead and assume would be the village from The Village.
All this for a condition that is entirely self-diagnosed, mostly because there’s not one damned bit of scientific evidence that it truly exists. One thing we can say for certain about the Swedish government: They have no shortage of faith in their citizens.
Now, none of this is to say that sufferers of EHS aren’t really suffering — with the exception of the occasional chronic hooky-player, they’re most definitely experiencing all manner of uncomfortable symptoms, ranging from headaches to fatigue to nausea to nosebleeds. However, studies have demonstrated that cognitive behavioral therapy (of the same type used to treat conditions such as depression, stress, and anxiety) can significantly reduce so-called EHS symptoms after a mere six months of treatment. So while we’re not downplaying the plight of hypersensitive Swedes, we are saying that maybe, just maybe, constructing a goddamned Sweden-sized tinfoil hat isn’t the answer.
3
Germans Are Deathly Afraid Of Drafts
In a telephone survey conducted by Germany’s Allensbach Institute, more than a third of those interviewed said that a warm midwinter wind commonly known as the foehn — pronounced “fern,” like the houseplant — caused noticeable changes in their health, while one in five said it was the meteorological equivalent of a kneecapping. But that’s pretty standard stuff. After all, there’s a good chance your mom once had you convinced that the common cold was so named because it was caused by actual cold.
bowdenimages/iStock “Well, why do I get colds during the summer sometimes?” “Because you’re an abomination.”
Odder is the fact that opening a window on a sweltering bus in Germany is likely to earn you irritated shouts of “Es zieht!” and a swift smack with the riding crop we imagine every German carries. Directly translated, that means “It pulls” — because the draft supposedly pulls the health and well-being straight out of you. So fearful of air currents are some Germans that they blame them for conditions ranging from migraines to insomnia to kreislaufzusammenbruch. No, we didn’t kick our laptop down the stairs and into a passing thresher; that monstrous word translates to “circulatory collapse,” and while in most places such a condition would get you good and dead, in Germany it gets you a day off work if you’re lucky. Because what’s a little organ system failure to a people who consume their beer by the liter?
Interestingly, there is one real, measurable effect of the much-feared German drafts: When the aforementioned foehn blows in, it brings with it an uptick in traffic accidents and crime. Perhaps because everyone is convinced it’s a sign that their days are numbered. In neighboring Austria and parts of Switzerland, the foehn is even recognized as a mitigating factor in criminal proceedings, making this quite possibly the only circumstance in which the Swayze defense is a viable strategy.
2
France Is Suffering An Ongoing Epidemic Of “Heavy Legs”
Have you ever had one of those days when your legs simply do not wish to carry your ass to work? Well, so has the entirety of France. They’ve even coined a special term for the condition: heavy legs syndrome.
skeeze/Pixabay Heavy-feeling legs, in a nation where 80 percent of the diet is wine, cheese, and bread? You don’t say …
Unique to France (aka the place with more pharmacies than any other European country), heavy legs syndrome has no concrete medical definition, probably because it’s not recognized as a condition at all anywhere else. Rather, it’s vaguely described as an “unpleasant sensation of pain and heaviness” in the lower extremities. It’s generally treated with a variety of topical creams, a veritable cornucopia of pain medications, and presumably millions upon millions of dollars in lost productivity.
The thing is, all those French people calling in sick to work because their calves have gone up a weight class likely don’t realize that they’re contributing to an epidemic of an entirely different variety. You see, assigning a set of symptoms their own “syndrome” could be more damaging than anyone realizes. The symptoms of so-called heavy legs syndrome, for instance, align nicely with real, treatable conditions, such as varicose veins — which more than half of French women and one third of French men suffer. By apathetically tossing drugs at the symptoms, however, you’re never getting to the root cause of said symptoms.
Kajdi Szabolcs/iStock “They pair perfectly with brie and a nice Chardonnay.”
That’s how you wind up with a heavy drug consumption culture in which nearly a quarter of men under 35 fear that they’re suffering from some medical boogeyman, even when experiencing no symptoms whatsoever. Luckily, there are over 5,000 drugs readily available in France, more than half of which “serve no useful purpose” other than shooting their social medical system budget straight to shit.
1
In India, Homeopathy Is A Legitimate Medical Practice
In 1796, German physician Samuel Hahnemann had an idea. Building upon his principle of “like cures like,” he developed an approach to medicine positing that substances which would normally induce negative effects on the human body could, when diluted to such a degree that they were no longer even the substances in question, be used to treat ailments whose symptoms resembled the aforementioned negative effects. (Stomach cramps and convulsions? Here, have a trace amount of arsenic!) He called this newly minted field homeopathy, and it’s been causing physicians worldwide to roll their eyes ever since.
Except in India, where a homeopathy practitioner can hang their fancy Homeopathy Practitioner Certificate on the wall of their honest-to-god medical practice. Indeed, it’s the second most popular form of medical treatment in India behind allopathy (better known to most of the world as “non-bullshit medicine”), with around 10 percent of the population putting their trust in flower petals and crossed fingers to cure everything from swine flu to cancer. And they’re doing so with the backing of the government — India is home to hundreds of homeopathic medical colleges and university programs, with state councils training and registering thousands of new practitioners at a growing rate each year.
More horrifying yet is the fact that the Maharashtra state government, in response to an ongoing shortage of science-based medical practitioners, is all set to promote hundreds of homeopathic placebo peddlers to actual doctors, citing the oft-ignored “good ’nuff” school of medical training. That’s sort of like if Florida had a shortage of plumbers, so they handed out plumbing certifications to everyone who’d ever played Super Mario Bros. Either scenario involves disturbing levels of both shit and random mushrooms.
Wes Corwin is a stand-up comedian currently based in Dallas. You can like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, or if you live in Dallas and prefer analog comedy over digital, check out his weekly show at Noble Rey Brewery on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
Also check out 6 Mental Illnesses That Only Happen in One Place on Earth and 6 Unexplained Things That Only Happen In A Few Places On Earth.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Horrifying Truth About Those People in TV Commercials, and other videos you won’t see on the site!
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Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/14/4-backwards-medical-beliefs-in-otherwise-developed-countries/
from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/4-backwards-medical-beliefs-in-otherwise-developed-countries/
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allofbeercom · 7 years
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4 Backwards Medical Beliefs In Otherwise Developed Countries
America is currently suffering from a mass outbreak of bullshit. Long-eradicated diseases are kicking off a comeback tour because people choose to take their medical advice from a washed-up actress and a guy who literally talks out of his ass. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, less than half of U.S. adults believe human activity has affected climate change, while a fifth say that global warming isn’t even a thing. It’s almost as if a significant portion of the populace has chosen to flip science the bird and go back to the good old days of drowning uppity women to find out if they’re witches. But lest you think this is strictly an American phenomenon …
4
Sweden Has A Debilitating Case Of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a supposed allergy of sorts to the electromagnetic radiation incessantly emitted by newfangled technologies such as power lines, cell phones, and WiFi routers. Blind studies have found zippo evidence that the symptoms described by EHS sufferers are in any way related to the presence of an electromagnetic field, but that data’s done precisely nothing to staunch the steady flow of folks claiming that walking into a Starbucks is like reenacting a scene from Scanners.
Nowhere is the condition more prevalent than in Sweden, where a full 5 percent of the population believe they are, to some degree, hypersensitive to electromagnetic waves (that’s a more than 200 percent increase since 2002). Those hundreds of thousands of cases are probably why Sweden is currently the only country to acknowledge electromagnetic hypersensitivity as an official functional impairment, meaning Swedish citizens can receive financial compensation for the negative effects resulting from the condition. Swedish social services sometimes pay to electrically “sanitize” homes via the installation of metallic shielding, or even rent out remote cabins to the most severe cases of those who cannot stomach populated areas. Expensive, EHS-friendly healthcare facilities have been made available to the public, and there’s even talk in Stockholm of constructing an entire EMF-free community, which we’re going to go ahead and assume would be the village from The Village.
All this for a condition that is entirely self-diagnosed, mostly because there’s not one damned bit of scientific evidence that it truly exists. One thing we can say for certain about the Swedish government: They have no shortage of faith in their citizens.
Now, none of this is to say that sufferers of EHS aren’t really suffering — with the exception of the occasional chronic hooky-player, they’re most definitely experiencing all manner of uncomfortable symptoms, ranging from headaches to fatigue to nausea to nosebleeds. However, studies have demonstrated that cognitive behavioral therapy (of the same type used to treat conditions such as depression, stress, and anxiety) can significantly reduce so-called EHS symptoms after a mere six months of treatment. So while we’re not downplaying the plight of hypersensitive Swedes, we are saying that maybe, just maybe, constructing a goddamned Sweden-sized tinfoil hat isn’t the answer.
3
Germans Are Deathly Afraid Of Drafts
In a telephone survey conducted by Germany’s Allensbach Institute, more than a third of those interviewed said that a warm midwinter wind commonly known as the foehn — pronounced “fern,” like the houseplant — caused noticeable changes in their health, while one in five said it was the meteorological equivalent of a kneecapping. But that’s pretty standard stuff. After all, there’s a good chance your mom once had you convinced that the common cold was so named because it was caused by actual cold.
bowdenimages/iStock “Well, why do I get colds during the summer sometimes?” “Because you’re an abomination.”
Odder is the fact that opening a window on a sweltering bus in Germany is likely to earn you irritated shouts of “Es zieht!” and a swift smack with the riding crop we imagine every German carries. Directly translated, that means “It pulls” — because the draft supposedly pulls the health and well-being straight out of you. So fearful of air currents are some Germans that they blame them for conditions ranging from migraines to insomnia to kreislaufzusammenbruch. No, we didn’t kick our laptop down the stairs and into a passing thresher; that monstrous word translates to “circulatory collapse,” and while in most places such a condition would get you good and dead, in Germany it gets you a day off work if you’re lucky. Because what’s a little organ system failure to a people who consume their beer by the liter?
Interestingly, there is one real, measurable effect of the much-feared German drafts: When the aforementioned foehn blows in, it brings with it an uptick in traffic accidents and crime. Perhaps because everyone is convinced it’s a sign that their days are numbered. In neighboring Austria and parts of Switzerland, the foehn is even recognized as a mitigating factor in criminal proceedings, making this quite possibly the only circumstance in which the Swayze defense is a viable strategy.
2
France Is Suffering An Ongoing Epidemic Of “Heavy Legs”
Have you ever had one of those days when your legs simply do not wish to carry your ass to work? Well, so has the entirety of France. They’ve even coined a special term for the condition: heavy legs syndrome.
skeeze/Pixabay Heavy-feeling legs, in a nation where 80 percent of the diet is wine, cheese, and bread? You don’t say …
Unique to France (aka the place with more pharmacies than any other European country), heavy legs syndrome has no concrete medical definition, probably because it’s not recognized as a condition at all anywhere else. Rather, it’s vaguely described as an “unpleasant sensation of pain and heaviness” in the lower extremities. It’s generally treated with a variety of topical creams, a veritable cornucopia of pain medications, and presumably millions upon millions of dollars in lost productivity.
The thing is, all those French people calling in sick to work because their calves have gone up a weight class likely don’t realize that they’re contributing to an epidemic of an entirely different variety. You see, assigning a set of symptoms their own “syndrome” could be more damaging than anyone realizes. The symptoms of so-called heavy legs syndrome, for instance, align nicely with real, treatable conditions, such as varicose veins — which more than half of French women and one third of French men suffer. By apathetically tossing drugs at the symptoms, however, you’re never getting to the root cause of said symptoms.
Kajdi Szabolcs/iStock “They pair perfectly with brie and a nice Chardonnay.”
That’s how you wind up with a heavy drug consumption culture in which nearly a quarter of men under 35 fear that they’re suffering from some medical boogeyman, even when experiencing no symptoms whatsoever. Luckily, there are over 5,000 drugs readily available in France, more than half of which “serve no useful purpose” other than shooting their social medical system budget straight to shit.
1
In India, Homeopathy Is A Legitimate Medical Practice
In 1796, German physician Samuel Hahnemann had an idea. Building upon his principle of “like cures like,” he developed an approach to medicine positing that substances which would normally induce negative effects on the human body could, when diluted to such a degree that they were no longer even the substances in question, be used to treat ailments whose symptoms resembled the aforementioned negative effects. (Stomach cramps and convulsions? Here, have a trace amount of arsenic!) He called this newly minted field homeopathy, and it’s been causing physicians worldwide to roll their eyes ever since.
Except in India, where a homeopathy practitioner can hang their fancy Homeopathy Practitioner Certificate on the wall of their honest-to-god medical practice. Indeed, it’s the second most popular form of medical treatment in India behind allopathy (better known to most of the world as “non-bullshit medicine”), with around 10 percent of the population putting their trust in flower petals and crossed fingers to cure everything from swine flu to cancer. And they’re doing so with the backing of the government — India is home to hundreds of homeopathic medical colleges and university programs, with state councils training and registering thousands of new practitioners at a growing rate each year.
More horrifying yet is the fact that the Maharashtra state government, in response to an ongoing shortage of science-based medical practitioners, is all set to promote hundreds of homeopathic placebo peddlers to actual doctors, citing the oft-ignored “good ’nuff” school of medical training. That’s sort of like if Florida had a shortage of plumbers, so they handed out plumbing certifications to everyone who’d ever played Super Mario Bros. Either scenario involves disturbing levels of both shit and random mushrooms.
Wes Corwin is a stand-up comedian currently based in Dallas. You can like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, or if you live in Dallas and prefer analog comedy over digital, check out his weekly show at Noble Rey Brewery on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
Also check out 6 Mental Illnesses That Only Happen in One Place on Earth and 6 Unexplained Things That Only Happen In A Few Places On Earth.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Horrifying Truth About Those People in TV Commercials, and other videos you won’t see on the site!
Follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you everywhere.
If we’ve ever made you laugh or think, we now have a way where you can thank and support us!
Make a contribution
from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/14/4-backwards-medical-beliefs-in-otherwise-developed-countries/
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normalviews-blog · 7 years
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God, the Universe, and Burritos
During a frustratingly sleepless night, my mind wandered, as it often does, to thoughts of existence and the vastness of the universe. Normally this train of thought ensures deep slumber within five minutes or so, but last night was having none of that. Eventually the thought of God's place in all this came into the picture as well. I'd bet the majority of people I know believe in God or some form of higher power. I know of a number that do not as well, and that's fine too. Personally, I like to think that there's a God. There's something comforting about the thought of someone higher up who is pulling for me and willing to offer me paradise. But, I would also not be totally shocked to discover that the idea was all a construct of humankind, for whatever reason. To twist the words of Arthur C. Clarke, we either have an afterlife, or we blink out of existence like a popped light bulb. Both are equally terrifying. Well, maybe not terrifying per se, but thought provoking at least. Faith can be a great thing to have, provided it is not used as a crutch. But it's just that, faith. Blind trusting. I can have faith that, in my heart of hearts, I know that my kids don't do drugs. Doesn't make it true. By the same token, however, I know that if I'm watching the Colts game, and my wife sits down and watches with me just as they start to suck, my kicking her out of the room will spark a miraculous comeback. It's okay to believe in things we can't see or explain as well. I often wonder if my religious friends ever ponder the enormously cool implications of an existing God. Sure, it's easy to go to church or say a quick prayer now and again, but think of what that means. You're actually acknowledging the existence of a supernatural, all-powerful being who rules the universe, can be everywhere at once, has an army of angels at His beck and call, and can smite anyone from anywhere for any reason. How cool is that? It's like the greatest Marvel movie ever made! Especially when juxtaposed with our mundane, decidedly non-supernatural everyday lives. To think that this could all be out there behind the scenes is mind blowing! Let's work on the assumption that there is a God. Firstly, He waited around for who knows how long before the universe was even created, when there was just empty nothingness (no beginning and no end, remember?). Then, bang, everything starts coming into place over another few billion years. Then He decides to pick this one planet, out of the trillions He made and put some living things on it. Not even a big planet. One of the small/medium sized ones. After millions more years go by, in come the people, the only ones who can get into Heaven (I think the generally accepted view is that animals, dung beetle to dinosaur, and all in between, don't spend the afterlife with us. Except maybe dogs. People like dogs). Now humans' time on this planet is the tiniest of fractions of a millisecond compared to the eternity before us and waiting after all's said and done. Seemingly everything was built and shaped over countless time just to allow us to live a few short years on a rock in space before jetting off to the ever after. Kind of makes me feel a bit ungrateful for spending my whole life in the Midwest. "Yeah, hey, thanks for this whole big, ever-expanding universe to explore and all, but nah, I think I'm good here." Depending on your religious views, or lack thereof, all this can make you feel extremely special or extremely insignificant. We humans have done incredible things in our speck of dust on the cosmic timeline. Think of the advancements we've made in last 20 years, 100 years, 1000. Look around and see all the stuff we've managed to build, using only what we got from this once barren planet. We harnessed electricity. We landed a freaking remote control robot on Mars. And at some point we became experts on what our God likes and doesn't like. There's a line from the only Primitive Radio Gods song that anyone's ever heard that goes, "We sit outside and argue all night long about a God we've never seen, but never fails to side with me." God hates gays. God's damning you to hell for watching South Park. God needs me to sacrifice a goat to Him (which I never really understood. You're showing your devotion for Him by killing something He made? That's like me telling someone, "I can't be sure you love me unless you smash that table I built." But I digress...) We all claim to know exactly what our version of God is wanting from us, but tend to focus more on what He wants from other people. Anyway, for the sake of argument, let's say Old Testament God hated gays. In my teens I had Winger cassette. And I liked it. Bloody Winger. That was 30 years ago, and I'm embarrassed to admit it. Who's to say that God can't change His mind over the course of a few thousand years? "You know, these gay folk aren't so bad. A lot of them are really good people. Maybe I was a bit hasty condemning them to eternal fire." Who knows? Which brings me to burritos - aka earthly pleasures. Are there burritos in heaven? We've already established that cows and chickens likely don't make the trip up north, so I'd tag that as Outlook Not So Good. What about mountains, sunny, 70 degree days, or new car smell? Perhaps heaven has a host of other vast wonders we can't begin to comprehend. Or perhaps it's just a big open area where we're stuck forever hanging out with the friends and family that we tried to avoid while they were here on Earth. Sure, they might be all for that, but what about us introverts that don't want to spend eternity small talking? At what point does your heaven experience interfere with mine? Will we spend our time longing for our earthly vices? Our cell phones. Our fantasy football drafts. I would think that anything would get dull over time, much less an entire eternity. I mean seriously, how many ways are there to keep things fresh and interesting? I could be wrong. I hope so. About this point is where I finally drifted off to sleep, so sorry, no neatly tied conclusion or anything. By this time the train of thought had likely derailed and sped into that recurring dream where I can levitate a few inches off the ground and it's totally normal for some reason. I guess what I'm taking away from all this is to not be too worried about the possibility of blinking out of existence, you'll never know the difference anyway. Don't be a dick. Eat the burrito. Climb the mountain. Or sit in front of the tv all weekend if it makes you happy. But also, be prepared just in case there's a potentially awesome, possibly tedious adventure waiting for you beyond this mortal coil. I'm planning to bring a few books with me just in case.
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You Need A Budget (YNAB): Humbly Confident Email Marketing Automation Specialist
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Headquarters: Lehi, UT URL: http://www.ynab.com
At YNAB, we build the world’s best budgeting software. But teaching people how to get control of their money and changing lives one budget at a time is what gets us up in the morning. In order to teach the masses the YNAB way of budgeting, it requires sending emails...lots and lots of emails (and messages, really). That’s where you come in!
You are an HTML email-crafting savant on wheels. You scorn the decision makers at Microsoft for their implementation of Outlook 2003’s HTML rendering, but you also love the challenge and job security it brings. Also, it was a different time...who knew CSS would be a thing (everybody knew, but still)?
Even though you love getting into the weeds, creating and troubleshooting HTML emails and in-app messages, you also have never met a mind map that you don’t like. You’re building customer lifecycle messaging funnels in your sleep. You’re targeting, triggering and delaying like a procrastinating hunter! You’re fascinated by the user journey and you absolutely love finding new ways to convert, engage, and retain anyone and everyone who comes into the marketing automation orbit.
Requirements (these are real, actual requirements): 
You have a ton of experience using Marketing Automation platforms. We use Braze, but they all have similar rules (Marketo, Iterable, SFMC, Eloqua, etc.). 
You can take a messaging series strategy, develop the emails (we have designers to design them), implement all of automation details, troubleshoot, A/B test and optimize it to a degree that impresses everyone you know and have ever talked to.
You are a highly skilled HTML/CSS email developer. You can (and probably should) use a solid template as a base, but there’s no email client issue you can’t troubleshoot.
Oh, hey, also, it probably goes without saying, but you can make those same emails look amazing on mobile. Are we still using the word “responsive?” You get the idea.
That gives you a pretty good idea of the job, but first, you need to know if you’ll even like working with us. (We think you will.)
A Bit About Us
We build the best budgeting software around, YNAB or “You Need a Budget” if you have a lot of extra time on your hands. For more than a decade, people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives. (Google us, or read some of our reviews on the app store, and you’ll see what we mean.) We love building something that has a huge positive impact on people’s lives.
We’re profitable, bootstrapped, and growing. YNAB started in 2004 and we haven’t taken any outside funding—we’re in it for the long haul. 
We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our Core Value Manifesto has to really click with you. If you’re nodding emphatically while reading it, you’ll probably fit right in, in which case, we can’t wait to hear from you! 
First, let’s talk about life at YNAB and then we’ll go into detail about what we’re looking for. 
Who you’d be working with:
Lindsey & The Gang aka the Marketing Team aka just a rag-tag but lovable bunch of underdogs who defy the odds—making budgeting software hilarious, emotional, and accessible—day in and day out. (Disney, are you listening?) 
We love musical theater, board games, stand-up comedy, the Enneagram, video games, and art, to varying degrees, depending on who you talk to first. Our internal Slack channel is so much fun, it has a growing fanbase. 
Lindsey, our Chief Marketing Officer, will be the first to delete something very important, but also the first to celebrate your wins—big and small. Ryan, our Digital Marketing Director, will quickly become your lifeline in any type of bracketology-related emergency and even under website-launch-level-stress, he can sneak in the jokes that make you feel like, “if Dad’s OK, we’ll all be OK.” 
And then there’s, Ben B. and Janelle, who lead out on Community Engagement and Social Media, respectively. They both have huge hearts, and a tangible passion for our customers, plus they are hilarious. Reema, our Marketing Production Manager, keeps all the balls in the air, while wearing many different hats, basically, if there is a need, yo, she’ll solve it (and yes, that was a seamless incorporation of Vanilla Ice lyrics). 
Plus, our brilliant creatives, Lauren and Marian (designers), Tristan (animation), Hannah and Ashley (video), and Rachel (writing) bring everything to life. They are a veritable idea machine who serve to make us look good on a daily basis. What more could you ask for?
More importantly, you get to work with Arturo, our brilliant marketing developer whose mult-lingual humor and je ne sais quoi (I don’t know what that means, but Arturo probably does) will restore all your faith (if you had lost any) in humanity on a daily basis. 
But wait, there’s more! As the sole Email Marketing Automation Specialist at YNAB, you’ll be working with Support reps to craft in-app messages and Product Designers to communicate with beta testing cohorts that help test new features in YNAB. Essentially, you will be the glue that holds together the YNAB email marketing machine (don’t ask us why our machine uses glue instead of, like, bolts and more-machiney-type things).
How You’ll Work at YNAB
We work really hard to make working at YNAB an amazing experience. In fact, we were recently recognized as Fortune's #4 best small company to work for in the United States! We have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. Here’s how we operate:
Live Where You Want
We’re a distributed team, so you can live and work wherever you want. Proximity doesn’t influence productivity. Taylor, our CTO, was traveling who-knows-where for a couple of years before he bought a farm. Up and move to France for a year? Sure, Todd did that. Don’t like France? How about London, where Janelle trotted off to. Tulsa Remote? Can do. Or if you just love LA or Baltimore or Buenos Aires, we’ve got people there, too.  Not all of us move around, but the fact that these folks have is totally okay because we’re all adults. Just make sure you have a reliable internet connection.
No Crazy Hours
We rarely work more than 40 hours per week. There have been a few occasions where things got a little crazy and people had to log some extra hours. But then they took some extra time off, so it all balances out. We work hard and smart but we’re in this for the long haul, no need to go crazy on the hours.
Take Vacation (Seriously)
We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for Christmas break). It’s important to get out and do something. We’ll look forward to seeing pictures of your vacation in our Slack channel, creatively named #office_wall.
The YNAB Meetup
We get the teams together once a year to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding. So far, we’ve done Costa Rica, a gigantic cabin in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, and most recently, Laguna Beach. We work together, play together, and reinforce the bonds we’ve made as a team and company. Every year, we leave refreshed, motivated, and excited for the year ahead together.
Up Your Game
We’re serious about helping you improve your craft. We budget for it (hey-o!). Think conferences, Lynda subscriptions, dedicated time away from work to learn something new… it’s really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing.  
International is Absolutely Okay
If you are Stateside, we’ll set you up as a W2 employee. If you’re international, you’ll be set up as a contractor. Employee or contractor, it’s all the same to us. You’re part of the team. (We are spread all over the world: Switzerland, Scotland, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Canada, and all over the United States.)
If You’re Stateside…
YNAB offers fantastic health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you and your family. (No need to check your vision, you read that right, 100%. Although if you did need to check your vision, we’ve got you covered!)
We also have a Traditional and Roth 401k option. YNAB contributes three percent whether you choose to throw any money in there or not. It vests immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNAB’s 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, not your retirement nest egg. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Trust us, it’s awesome.)
Other Tidbits
Once you start, we DEMAND (in a friendly, ALL CAPS IS YELLING way) that you fill out your “Bucket List” spreadsheet with 50 items. (That’s harder than it sounds!) 
The bucket list really helps in deciding what we should give you for your birthday and the holidays.
We have a bonus plan based on profitability. You’ll be in on that from day one. YNAB wins, you win. That kind of thing.
We’re all adults. There’s no need to punch a clock, or ask for permission to take off early one afternoon to go see the doctor (health insurance premium 100% covered!). We look at what you accomplish, not how long you sit (have you tried standing?) in front of a computer.
We want you firing on all cylinders so we’ll set you up with a shiny new computer and replace it every three years.
Did I mention we make a huge, positive difference in people’s lives? You may not think that matters much, but then a few months down the road you’ll realize it’s made your job really, really enjoyable. Don’t underestimate this one!
If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now I want to talk about you. You will play a big, big part in helping YNAB customers achieve success. You will change lives. I’ll only say that six more times.
Now, back to you, our new Email Marketing Automation Specialist...
We’re educators and content marketers here at YNAB, and email and in-app messages are the principal way that we teach and engage with our users after they have made the decision to give us a chance. We feel like our content is something that sets us apart from our competitors in an extremely crowded space, so you will be on the front lines, delivering that content (precious cargo). We’re counting on you. You’re our only hope!
You’ll have all of the tools you need to deliver engaging, personalized messages to these new, budding budgeters as they learn how to gain total control of their money. We have writers and designers to help craft the content that you’ll develop. We have full stack developers who will keep all the systems functioning and keep all the data (for targeting) nice and clean.
Now, we need you to develop the emails/messages, set the targeting, configure the triggers and unleash the campaigns into the world.
You are our ideal candidate if you: 
Have at least 3-5 years of experience using Marketing Automation platforms. Braze is preferred, but experience with any similar platform totally works. This probably wouldn’t include some ESP’s like Constant Contact. We’re really looking for more powerful Automation platforms.
Have at least 3-5 years of experience developing responsive HTML/CSS emails.
Are comfortable creating strategies for all phases of the customer lifecycle (acquisition, conversion, retention, winback).
Have some pretty stellar writing skills.
Make us laugh. 
Manage your time exceptionally well and you are comfortable working remotely. 
Incredibly organized, flexible, and collaborative. 
Never met a deadline you didn’t love. 
Self-motivated and driven by nature, maybe even a little competitive. 
Stay laser-focused on the big picture, without losing sight of every. last. detail. 
Wildly productive and independent, but a team-player at heart. 
Bonus Points: 
You already use and love YNAB. 
You are familiar with webhooks and API integrations and might even know a little bit of JavaScript.
You write some pretty amazing email copy, or at least you know it when you see it.
YNAB is an equal opportunity employer. We believe diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences to be critical to our success and are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart, hard-working, and diverse team who love working together to build something that matters.
How to Apply
Apply here by 11:59PM on March 9th, 2020. Firm. It’s a real deadline. The kind you love.
Attach a pdf of your cover letter. In your cover letter: 
Introduce yourself and explain why this position is of interest to you, and why you would be a great fit. Please limit this section of the cover letter to 1.5 pages. 
On a separate page of your cover letter, answer the following questions (with each response being about a paragraph in length): 
1. What attracted you to this position? (This is not about what attracted you to the software.)
2. What criteria do you look for when searching for your next company or position?
3. What are your favorite and least favorite parts of your current job?
4. Tell us about a time when you had to learn something new to excel at your job.
5. Tell us about the craziest email client bug/issue that you’ve ever troubleshooted (troubleshot?). What was it? How did you discover it and how did you fix it? What do you do now to make sure you never have to fight it again?
6. What are some of the differences between emails, messages and automation strategies that you would implement to convert users vs. those that you would send to retain users?
If you have a prepared resume, attach it in PDF form. If you don’t have a resume because you aren’t even sure you’re looking to change jobs, that’s fine! An informal list of your work and education history are all we’re looking for.
Please send all attachments as PDFs. 
P.S.  If you’re not interested in or available for this position, but know someone who is, we would really appreciate it if you passed this along!
To apply: https://ynab.recruiterbox.com/jobs/4082ccba621b447ea26231e763aa824e
from We Work Remotely: Remote jobs in design, programming, marketing and more https://ift.tt/2PrYPdg from Work From Home YouTuber Job Board Blog https://ift.tt/2Tgqsag
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