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mandyloves2read · 2 years

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💖Book Review 💖

Forever Love Duet by Siobhan Davis

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ALL THE FEELS!!! This duet has two of Siobhan Davis best works that I’ve read these stories are prime examples of why she’s my favorite author. Where Forever Changes was gut wrenching heartbreakingly beautiful story I couldn’t breathe through half of it with all the tears I was shedding which is par the course of reading one of Mrs. Davis’s books the angst the heartache the emotions the tragedy and the healing at the end this story is one I will never forget and I have reread a few times already it’s actually one of my first stories I read from her and new I had found a special author when I read it . No Feelings Involved was another angsty emotional forbidden romance story that just brings out all the feels I really loved the characters in this one and I’m sure you will too it’s full of angst steam and a passionate love story that has you rooting for this couple from beginning till end . This is a phenomenal duet and one I highly recommend if you’re new to this author or if you’ve read her before either way don’t sleep on these stories!

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An emotional, angsty, new adult romance duet from USA Today & WSJ bestselling author Siobhan Davis. Over 700 pages of binge-worthy romance. Each book focuses on a new couple and ends with an HEA.

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WHEN FOREVER CHANGES (Forever Love Book 1)

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#1 New Adult & College Romance bestseller and #21 in the entire store when originally released

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Looking back, I should have seen the signs. Perhaps I did, but I subconsciously chose to ignore them.

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From the time I was ten, when I first met Dylan, I knew he was my forever guy.

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Dylan was more than just my best friend, my childhood sweetheart, my lover. He was my soul mate. We were carved from the same whole—destined to be together forever.

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Until he changed.

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And I believed I was no longer good enough.

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Until he shattered me so completely, it felt like I ceased to exist.

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And I’d never experienced such heart-crushing pain.

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Until he leveled me a second time, and I truly wanted to die.

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But I had to stay strong because I wasn’t alone in this cruel twist of fate.

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I can’t help wondering if I had seen the signs earlier, if I’d pushed him, would it have been enough to save us?

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Or had fate already decided to alter our forever?

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For readers who enjoy friends-to-lovers, brother’s best friend, second chance, angsty new adult college romance. Some scenes may be triggering - please read the note at the start of the book.

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NO FEELINGS INVOLVED (Forever Love Book 2)

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Ryan James doesn’t believe in love.

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It’s a truth he learned early in life.

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He broke his golden rule one time, but Myndi trampled all over his heart, cementing his belief that love is a lie and not worth the effort.

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Now he’s returned to his cynical views and promiscuous lifestyle, racking up more notches on his bedpost than he can count.

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Until Summer Petersen comes crashing into his world, threatening to knock down his walls with her tempting body and sunny, sweet personality.

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Summer is determined to lose her V-card before she starts freshman year of college, and the hot, older guy with the cute dimples, dazzling smile, and rippling biceps is just the man for the job. Ryan doesn’t take much persuading, and he rocks her world, giving her a night to remember.

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When they walk away, there’s an agreement it was a one-time thing. Ryan doesn’t do feelings, and Summer doesn’t want to be tied down at eighteen.

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But when she moves into her brother Austin’s apartment, she’s shocked to discover her new roomie is the guy who recently popped her cherry.

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Ryan can’t believe he slept with Austin’s baby sister, and if he finds out, he’ll literally kill him. Keeping their hook up a secret is nonnegotiable. Keeping his thoughts, and his hands, off Summer, less so. Because the longer he’s around her, the more he finds himself catching feelings for the gorgeous brunette.

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Summer doesn’t want to care for her older brother’s best friend, but Ryan makes her feel things she’s never felt before, and she’s slowly falling under his spell.

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Embarking on an illicit affair behind Austin’s back has train wreck written all over it, but provided they keep their feelings in check, they can end this before he ever finds out.

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It’s not like either of them is in love.

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Right?

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For readers who enjoy brother’s best friend/best friends’ little sister, age gap, second chance, forbidden, angsty new adult romance.

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𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐈𝐍 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐋𝐄 𝐔𝐍𝐋𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐃

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US➡️ https://amzn.to/3PIc0mI

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UK➡️ https://amzn.to/3TdKnEV

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AU➡️ https://amzn.to/3R6UtFR

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CA➡️ https://amzn.to/3dJXf5o

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Universal➡️ https://mybook.to/FLeBook

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yyh4ever · 3 years

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Thanks again for responding to my follow-up question. My last questions for now, there's a couple of persistent rumors about the Three Kings arc that I've wanted to know if there was any truth to for a while now: first, that Togashi initially didn't want to write it at all; and second, that he planned for Hiei and Mukuro to explicitly become a couple but nixed it due to fearing angry Hiei/Kurama fans would come after him in real life. Any info?

Togashi initially didn't want to write it at all;

What was officially stated is that Togashi asked to quit YYH during Yusuke and Sensui’s fight and the author and publisher agreed to 6 more months of serialization to end the series:

- According to Yoshirin de Pon! (1994) interview, when Yusuke was fighting Sensui, Togashi was feeling really stressed and asked the editorial department for the first time that he wanted to quit YYH. So, it had been decided in December 1993 that YYH was going to end. In December 1993, the January issues of WSJ were being published, Raizen had just incorporated Yusuke’s body (WSJ #3-4, 1994). In my opinion, ending the series at this point without any further explanation would have been a little awkward.

- According to Kunio Ajino’s book, “Sensei Hakusho”, Togashi announced to the three assistants that YYH was going to end, which took everyone by surprised, but he told that the serialization would go on for six more months. So, those 6 months of serialization and Makai’s Arc were a natural path to end the series properly, in my opinion. I don’t know if Togashi didn’t want to write it all, but as he said Mukuro was one of his favorite characters, I think, despite being exhausted, he enjoyed writing it (that’s just my opinion). And let’s highlight the story Ajino-sensei overheard: when Togashi’s editor told him to let his assistants help and draw the characters, Togashi denied stating it would have meant “the end of his life as a mangaka”.

He planned for Hiei and Mukuro to explicitly become a couple but nixed it due to fearing angry Hiei/Kurama fans would come after him in real life;

There were all kind of rumors during this time. Some people said Togashi created Mukuro to provoke the KuraHi fans that were numerous back then lol. I remember Ajino commenting in an interview (I need to find the link) that there were all kind of urban legends involving Togashi and he doesn’t know where they came from XD.

But we are talking about a “shounen” magazine here. Romances are always left aside in battle-shounen manga, specially in the early 90′s and in the Weekly Shounen Jump which was famous for forbidding many things! Even romantic comedies like “Wicked Cupid” (Togashi’s previous work) are very light when it comes to couples. I don’t think the editors would have allowed it. Hopefully, things are changing as Togashi mentioned in the Shonen Jump Exhibit Vol. 3 that the “macho” feel the magazine has had for so long is decreasing and it’s easier to put shoujo’s elements into the stories nowadays.

What Togashi did comment for the Official Characters Book is that he created Mukuro having in mind a girl Hiei would date. But as I said, developing a couple in a battle-shounen was out of question. This kind of thing is just hinted, like Sensui and Itsuki.

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natsubeatsrock · 3 years

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10 Things I Enjoyed in 2020 that Aren’t Fairy Tail

Well... it’s almost over? With all the crazy stuff that’s happened this year, it’s hard to remember that there were some good things to come from this year. So instead of 7, here’s 10 things I enjoyed throughout this year.

#10. Sonic the Hedgehog

Not unlike many people, this would be the last film that came out this year I would see in theaters before everything shut down earlier this year. While I have gone out to watch movies throughout this year since, this happens to be the only movie I’ve been looking forward to that came out this year. Since the release of Detective Pikachu last year, the fraught history of video game movies has started to look a lot better. For all intents and purposes, I think this film is better than that one, and I’m a much bigger fan of Pokemon than Sonic. If certain spoilers are a sign of anything, a future sequel will be interesting to see and greatly anticipated.

#9. Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia

One of the blessings-in-disguise of being locked down with extra money is the ability to get and enjoy things you haven’t gotten the opportunity to before. In my case, I was able to play through some of the Pokemon games I’ve been waiting to play through. My favorite of the bunch has been the second installment of the Pokemon Ranger series. The Ranger games have been greatly underrated and overlooked by fans. I was reintroduced to the original last Christmas and believe it to be a solid game, but this easily blows it out of the water. While this year also marked the sad end of the 3DS cycle, I’m glad that this game came my way.

#8. 42

With the unfortunate passing of its lead actor, Chadwick Boseman, and the racial tensions which came to a head after the death of George Floyd, it makes sense theaters would reopen with this movie. Jackie Robinson’s story is one that’s interested me as the talks of integration and racism have gone on this year. He became the first African American MLB player because of both his talent on the field and his character off it. He wasn’t just skilled in stealing bases. He didn’t allow the anger he rightly felt towards racism control him.

#7. Bakuman

The famed writer and artist duo behind Death Note teamed up to deliver another smash hit manga for Weekly Shonen Jump. This time, about... a writer and artist duo who team up to make a name for themselves by delivering a smash hit manga to Weekly Shonen Jump. As I read Bakuman, I was struck with the genius of its construction. It’s one thing to read the information about Shueisha and WSJ this series shares in a book. It’s another for that information to be shared within the confines that the series itself describes. Special shout-outs go to Ayakashi Triangle and Phantom Seer which started in WSJ this year.

#6. Power Girl: Power Trip

Oh? Were you perhaps expecting to see some other female character owned by Detective Comics Comics who graced the silver screen take this spot? Well, maybe next year, depending on how things go. I love my comic book heroes with healthy doses of snark and existential crisis. While I might have gone in expecting the former, I wasn’t expecting the latter as much. If you know about Power Girl, you may know about her famous “boob window“, which is in lieu of a real symbol. It turns out that she was originally thought to be Superman’s cousin, but has recently been proven to be otherwise. I’m not so against DC that I’m unwilling to admit when they make books that I like.

#5. Carole and Tuesday

Carole and Tuesday holds a special spot as becoming the latest 10/10 anime I’ve seen. This is easily one of the most diverse anime that I’ve ever seen. It’s not just a matter of showing people of different walks of life, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. It’s also showing artists different music styles from folk to jazz to rap to electronic to new age to operatic rap. And none of it feels forced or unnatural, though some of it might come off as offensive. If you’re on as big a planet as Mars, you’ll expect to see all kinds of people and hear all kinds of music as long as you’re willing to listen. Shinichiro Wantanabe is one of anime’s best directors and this might be his best work yet.

#4. Lupin III: The First

If you told me a few years ago that one of the best anime movies would be a fully CGI film, I would have looked at you like you were insane. Nevertheless, this movie exists. I was skeptical about the idea of a fully CGI movie for a character like this. But when I saw a clip from the movie, I could tell they knew what they were doing. This movie is by no means anywhere as good looking as Spiderverse, but it looks amazing in its own right. Content wise, this serves as a great heist film for anyone regardless of proximity to the series. Arsene Lupin III makes It makes a fine introduction to the world of one of anime’s most longstanding series, and a good launching point for his earlier antics. Props to Weathering to You for keeping this slot warm. (Ironic considering things...)

#3. John Byrne’s run on Sensational She-Hulk

So I wasn’t going to say this talking about Power Trip, but I need to say this here. American comics are at a weird spot. In attempts to reach a wider audience, they’re not doing a great job of keeping the fans they have. Or make actually new ones. The current run of Savage She-Hulk has been no exception to this. Though it wasn’t always like this and John Byrne’s runs on Sensational She-Hulk is proof positive. Byrne took Jennifer Walters with more fun than I’ve seen any author write any comic book with. This especially shows in one of the more notable abilities of She-Hulk, breaking the fourth wall. I was very worried when I heard Marvel Studios was going to do a series with Shulkie. But with this as inspiration, maybe there’s hope for this project after all. (Please be good!)

#2. Burn the Witch

Tite Kubo is back, baby! This spot doesn’t go to any of the sets of chapters to be published in Shonen Jump. Rather, his collaboration with Studio Colorido is my choice for anime of the year. Burn the Witch tells the story of a different Soul Society than Bleach fans may be familiar with. It’s almost cheating to compare this mid-length film to the other shows to come out this year, even if it was broken up into three episodes for streaming sites. However, film or otherwise, no other anime grabbed my attention as much as this did. This also marks the best anime from WSJ I’ve seen this year. Surely I’m not forgetting anything big to come out recently in saying this, especially from this year with everything that got delayed. Honorable mentions go to TONIKAWA: Under the Moon, Bofuri, BNA, Keep Your Hands off Eizouken!, and Misfit of Demon King Academy for nearly taking my spot.

#1. Skullgirls

This year has been a tough year for a lot of people, companies, and fandoms. Though, I’d be hard pressed to think of a fandom that has had a worse year than this indie fighter. One of its founders was revealed to be terrible, one of its parent companies went under, and a prime opportunity for the spotlight in EVO Online being cancelled, it wouldn’t be a mistake to say things aren’t going well. Thankfully, the fans and dev team have done everything they can to keep this game alive before and that didn’t stop this year. It feels somewhat on-brand for this series to have survived the kinds of situations that would normally kill a game off. This game would have made the top spot by virtue of being the most fun game I played this year. I’m proud to put it at this spot knowing everything that’s surrounded it this year.

For extra honorable mentions, Pokemon’s seventh generation of games, especially the Ultra versions, were fun to finally experience and they have the best stories of the 3DS era of Pokemon. Cobra Kai was a fun series and almost definitely would be here if I were more emotionally attached to the Karate Kid series. I rewatched Neon Genesis Evangelion and it’s better than I remembered originally. Finally, I’d move heaven and earth to add Oregairu or Hilda on this list, considering new seasons came out this year, but I know better.

As usual, check my list for EZ, which also has 10 things, and be glad we’re almost done with this year. See you!

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cctinsleybaxter · 4 years

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2019 in books

The year’s contenders for the good, the bad, and the rest. I used to make a list of the ten best books I read all year, a tradition encouraged by my mom as far back as high school, but out 2019′s twenty-six mediocre offerings it didn’t really come together. Instead I’ve decided to break my ‘honorable mentions’ category into three subsections that I hope you’ll enjoy. In order of when read, not in order of affection:

Honorable mentions [books I liked; 3+ star material]

The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin was given to me as a Christmas present last year, and I wasn’t sure how much I would like it since I don’t really do high fantasy. Rules need not apply; I loved the world building and narrative structure, and the characters were so much better than I’m used to even when their arcs seemed familiar at first glance. I guessed what was going on with the formatting maybe a little too quickly, but even then it was emotionally engaging and I was eager to keep reading and see what happened next. Haven’t devoured a book that way in years.

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi has been on my list for a while; as a memoir told through short stories it’s hit-or-miss, but so worth it. I especially loved getting to read his early attempts at fiction, and the chapter Phosphorus regarding his first real job as a chemist in 1942 (his description of his absolute disgust at having to work with rabbits, the feel of their fur and the “natural handle” of the ears is a personal favorite.) This excerpt is one I just think about a lot because it’s full of small sweet details and so kindly written:

“[my father] known to all the pork butchers because he checked with his logarithmic ruler the multiplication for the prosciutto purchase. Not that he purchased this last item with a carefree heart; superstitious rather than religious, he felt ill at ease breaking the kasherut rules, but he liked prosciutto so much that, faced by the temptation of a shop window, he yielded every time, sighing, cursing under his breath, and watching me out of the corner of his eye, as if he feared my judgement or hoped for my complicity.”

Slowing Down from Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin is a one-page short story, but I’m including it because it’s the best in the book and one of the better stories I’ve read in general. I won’t spoil it for you since it’s more poem than anything else (and you can read the whole thing here.)

A Short Film About Disappointment by Joshua Mattson deserves to be lower in the order because it’s like. Bad. But I couldn’t help but have a self-indulgent kind of love for it, since it’s a book about white boy ennui told through movie reviews. It definitely gets old by the end (one of those things where you can tell the author lost steam just as much as his leading man), but parts of it are so well-written and the concept clever. 80+ imaginary movie reviews and psychosomatic possession by your traitorous best friend.

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has one of the greatest twists I’ve ever read in a novel, and no that’s not a spoiler, and yes I will recommend it entirely on that basis. It does its job as a multi-year sci-fi epic; reminds me a lot of Walter Moer’s early stuff in that it’s a bit Much(tm) but still a good mixture of politics and absurdity and absolute characters. Tobemory Trent was my favorite of the ensemble cast (but also boy do I wish men would learn how to write women.)

My Only Wife by Jac Jemk is a novella with only two characters, both unnamed, a man describing fragmented memories of his wife. It has me interested in Jemck’s other writing because even though I didn’t love it she writes beautifully; reading her work is like watching someone paint. The whole thing has a very indie movie feel to it (no scene of someone peeing but there SHOULD be), which I don’t think I’ve experienced in a story like this before and would like to try again.

Mentions [books I really wanted to like but my GOD did something go wrong]

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the most comprehensive history we have of Elizabeth Holmes and her con-company Theranos. It’s incredibly well-researched and absolutely fascinating, but veers into unnecessary pro-military stuff in one chapter (’can you believe she tricked the government?’ yes i can, good for her, leave me alone) and carries an air of racism directed at Holmes’ partner and the Pakistani people he brings onto the company. Carreyrou works for WSJ so I don’t know what I expected.

Circe by Madeline Miller was fun to read and goes down like a glass of iced tea on a hot day, but leaves a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste. It says a lot of things that seem very resonant and beautiful but ultimately ring hollow, and the ending is too safe. Predictable and inevitable.

I was also bothered about Circe’s relationships with Odysseus and Telemachus as a focal point, not because they’re father and son (Greek mythology ethics : non-committal hand gesture) but because it’s the traditional “I used to like bold men but now I like... sensitive men.” Which as a character arc feels not unrealistic but very boring. You close the book and realize you’re not nine and reading your beat-up copy of Greek Myths, you’re an adult reading a New York Times Bestseller by a middle aged straight white woman.

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor could have been the best thing I read all year and I’m miserable at how bad it ended up being. The concept is excellent; a thirteen-year-old girl goes missing in a rural English village, and every chapter chronicles a passing year. I knew it would be slow, I like slow, but nothing happens in this book and it ends up it feeling like Broadchurch without the detectives. Plus, McGregor, you know sometimes you can take a moral stance in your story and not just make everything a grey area? Especially with subplots that deal with things like pedophilia and institutional racism?

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor is about a twenty-something who moves from Iowa to San Francisco in the 90s and explores gender and sexuality through shapeshifting. It was something I really thought I would like and maybe even find helpful in my own life, but I couldn’t stand a single one of the characters or the narration so that’s on me! It does contain one of my favorite lines I’ve read in a long time though:

“And anyway, weren’t French boys supposed to be like Giovanni, waiting gaily for you in their rented room and actually Italian?”

Dishonorable mentions [there’s no saving these fellows]

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson was supposed to be a fun easy-to-read thriller and what can I say except what the jklfkhlkj;fkfuck. It very quickly goes from ‘oh hey I read books like this when I was 15’ to ‘oh the girl who intentionally gets kidnapped by a wealthy serial killer is accidentally falling in love with his son and can’t stop talking about his eye color now huh.’ I felt like I was losing my mind; why did grown adults give this 5 stars on Goodreads.

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips is supposedly surrealist horror fiction about working an office job in a new town, and reminded me of that rocky third or fourth year when I really started hating Welcome to Night Vale. All spark no substance, and even less fun because you know it’s going nowhere. I’ve also realized this past year that I cannot stand stories about women where their only personality trait is the desire to have children. People will throw the word ‘Kafkaesque’ at anything but here it was just insulting.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai alternates point of view between Yale, a gay man living in Chicago in the late 80s and watching his friends die, and Fiona, the straight younger sister of one of those friends now looking for her erstwhile daughter in 2018. It was nominated for the 2018 Pulitzer, and part of my interest was in wondering how we were going to connect the plot lines of ‘the personal cost of the AIDS crisis’ with ‘daughter lost to a cult.’

The answer is that we don’t. The book is well-researched and acclaimed beyond belief, but it is SUCH a straight story. Yale’s arc is fueled by the drama of his boyfriend cheating on him and infecting them both, Fiona is painted as a witness to tragedy and encouraged to share their stories with her own daughter. “You’re like the Mother Theresa of Boys Town” one of the men complains bitterly of her, and the claim goes undisputed. It’s a story that makes a lot of statements about love and families and art that I feel we’ve all heard before to much greater effect.

#long post #stardate 2k19 #apologies for any typoes or bad wording i've been trying to write and edit this for like the past week and a half

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myinnerscarlett · 5 years

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The World and all its Charms

Charm is a lost art. Charm is what we expect when we come to a city called the Hostess City of Savannah. Take my word for it, as my husband and I officially became super-hosts...independent of any agency. For whatever it’s worth, we have been through our share of less than charming agencies that boast they are doing great. They let less than desirable people into our property and, when we pointed out their transgressions, acted like it was our fault. Not our fault people abuse property and safety of inhabitants. That’s not what I’d call a Lucky charm. Put that in your next ad campaign. And we also don’t put up with neighboring agencies who wreak havoc in the townhomes surrounding us - no matter which agency they employ - eye opening to some who found out through us just how bad it’s getting. Because we are about true hospitality for both guests and neighbors. Some people never learn. I’m grateful for those who do. The city putting its foot down is a step in the right direction. That’s the Hostess City I’m talking about. I’m preaching to the choir for those who also live in highly touristic Airbnb towns. It’s all about balance & talk about an act... On that note, the opposite of a mark of hospitality, a book reviewer should never have to be described by a reviewed writer as one who “incorrectly states some facts and omits others.” Letter to the Editor, April/May 2019. As curious or foreign as that approach is to me (because I’d call it rude), it’s always interesting to see how folks change their tune when confronted with their own failings. Much like the vacation rental agencies in Savannah, and doubtless/countless other places... One minute it’s all about I stand by my opinions or (as last year’s reviewed writer put it) “way w-aaay off” appraisal, now it’s - to put it in the proverbial nutshell - who cares. That letter to the editor appeared in June 2018. If you write about it, you care about it. Period. I see a trend. It’s either a marketing ploy on the part of the editor to make sure The Bulletin stays a battleground, for the sake of interest, or just a game, as Mensans are fond of games. If it was a publication for sale, controversy might help up it. However, The Mensa Bulletin is a “free” magazine that comes with membership. To put it into perspective, it’s the only freebie we mensans get, the readership is getting much older and its book reviewer is unpaid. I skim the issues infrequently and no longer use the resource as a means to get my work to a greater audience. Works I have had reviewed come out as good as my husband and I have as super-hosts. As for readability, there are far more important news outlets and infinitely more important news circulating. I agree with the WSJ article that described Mensa as more of a party club than intellectual meeting of minds (should be both) and anyone who says differently, fine, who cares, right? “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Quote from Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Denmark, anyone?) I’ll get back to that later. Let’s take the high road. Let the others wallow in the mud. Super-hosts, remember? Speaking of which, so much mud...so little time. In March of 2003, Vanity Fair published a piece called “The Talented Mr. Epstein.” It looked at his lavish lifestyle and questioned the origin of his vast fortune upon which it was based. Questionable is the operative word here. What it failed to do - and failing others is the topic - is report on the team of Jeffrey Epstein and gal pal procurer “I’m innocent to a witch” Ghislaine Maxwell. Crucible references are so apropos here. The Farmers’ accusations are among so many women’s accusations made public lately. They recounted theirs on the record long ago, but that part didn’t make the cut. Another example of bad editing. In their own words: “We decided to share our story about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell with a writer for Vanity Fair in 2002 because telling other people what happened to us, as we had already done, did not lead to either of them being held accountable.” Accountability for one’s actions. Another mainstay of so-called professional agencies. They hoped the story would put people on alert so as to avoid other girls falling prey to their abuse. The article that ran essentially, in their own words, “erased our voices.” Among the tools of intimidation, it’s alleged, were Epstein’s coterie of intimidating lawyers; a five figure donation to a New York Time’s reporter’s favorite non-profit; a bullet delivering a message; and - get this - a deployment of charm? What was that, surely not the alleged severed cat’s head left on the front lawn of the editor-in-chief? The world and all its charms. Charm should not be equated with buying people off. After all, we don’t live in Denmark’s autonomous region of Greenland. But it is called The Kingdom of Denmark and the King of Denmark figures into Hamlet. And our very own “King of Israel, Chosen One and Second Coming of God” tRump wanted to buy it (or if that didn’t work out, maybe trade it for Puerto Rico). Why some are asking Congress to invoke the 25th amendment, I’ll never know. Ah, sarcasm, but then what else are fools for? There’s The Crucible again. The New York Daily News has had a field day - and rightly so - with the depiction of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper turned The Last Whopper, with tRump front and center, but surrounded by cronies: VP Pence, HUD Sec Ben Carson, Education Sec Betsy DeVos, First “Lady” Melanie (done on purpose) daughter Ivanka and his boy Elroy, I mean son-in-law Jared Kushner. Meet the Jetsons, right. These people are not just other worldly...they are lost in space. As for Bernie’s thoughts on Israel taking tRump’s cues on not allowing members of Congress to visit there...even if - in the one case - Netanyahu flipped (bc of Tlaib’s grandmother)...not so fast. Banning members of Congress should come at a price - to the tune of billions in military aid. Playing fair sometimes means playing hardball. That occurs even when one is as hospitable as a super-host. Or good old Bernie Sanders. That’s an expression, not a judgment. No age discrimination, please. Some of us are not just super-hosts, we are super-agers, like Bernie and the list of candidates in the presidential line-up. For quality people everywhere, no matter what your demographic, I got one question for you... Can you spell “Misogynist,” “Xenophobe,” and “Narcissist,” because I know I can. How about let’s define charm and actually not just use it but insist on others behaving in the same way. At the end of the day, don’t ever let the narcissists or their distractions get in the way.

That’s the story of...that’s the glory of love.

The narcissists are running our country now. You need to understand what this means. Read and share this book today!

#trump #narcissist #bernie sanders #jeffrey epstein #mensa #mike pence #ben carson #ivanka #netanyahu #savannah #airbnb

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thatsnotperiod-blog · 6 years

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television. pilot. bbc’s jonathan strange and mr norrell is my favorite show i’ve never seen because its whole thing is making an interesting concept (magic) boring by piling on a regency setting, academia, and early 19th century british nationalism.

Starts out with a raven. It seems hungry! Some guy is putting water and some other dumb crap (is that a broken pen?) in a bowl while his servants watch. He looks like a nerd. The magic didn’t work. But is he in want of a wife?

He kind of bumbles out to a side street, and, TITLE.

Sidestreet bumbler bumbles on past a bookstore and is observed in a sinister way by a man who looks really, really similar to him, but is actually a totally separate man. BBC original series are perilous like this. The sinister man is just getting a book so it’s fine though. Ah, Book People.

Then a narrator tells me that, “Some years ago there was in York a society of magicians. They met on the third Wednesday of every month, and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.” The narrator is a dumb idea but just the phrase “dull papers” has my heart pounding. This narration is cut with Our Hero bumbling up to one such meeting, attended by the Most British-Looking Men Available, many in wigs.

Our Hero is revealed to be an anxious-voiced dilettante called Mr Segundus and he wants to know, “Why is magic no longer done in England?” and his question is greeted with derision, which tells me a couple things, in order 1. that magic may be done elsewhere but certainly is not in France, because if the French were doing magic, Horatio Nelson would be doing it too 2. that magic is probably alive and well in Scotland 3. Mr Segundus must not be in want of a wife as clearly he is not in possession of a good fortune and Mrs Bennet will have to turn her sights elsewhere!

Mr Segundus gets cornered outside by a man who introduces himself as Honeyfoot (lol) and it’s Brian Pettifer, one of the Several Actors of Britain! He was Couthon in that 2009 French Revolution movie, Mr Raggles in Vanity Fair, Wheeler in To the Ends of the Earth, Poupart (not Poptart) in the Musketeers, and many other things (Growler in Bleak House, Boycott in Garrow’s Law)! Good to see you, Brian Pettifer!

Anyway Honeyfoot (lol) is like, Mr Segundus I agree with you, people should be doing magic. But apparently the books about how to do it are super rare -- even in York! They hit up a book store, and seems like Segundus tried to reserve some magic books but the asshole store owner sold them already. Segundus, visibly deflated, asks if the guy has anything on “the nature of clouds” which, jesus, being a gigantic nerd in the 19th century is so fucking bleak if clouds is your fallback. OMG it was a ruse! While the guy is off looking for cloud books, Segundus hops over the counter and snatches the cash sheet to “find the devil who keeps swiping my books!”

Someone named Norrell, they discover, is the devil in question. They hop in a carriage to go find him. They talk magic on the way there, and Segundus says he bought a nonfunctional spell from a street magician who threw in a free prophecy: “Magic will be returned to England by two magicians.”

Honeyfoot (lol) is like, “We are two magicians. John Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot (lol)” which is the same construction as the title of the show but ... not ... the right guys. Turns out the street magician set expectations already and Segundus shoots him down. RIP, John Segundus & Mr Honeyfoot, the Show That Never Was.

They arrive at Mr Norrell’s pad and are admitted by the Sinister Bookstore Guy from earlier. Mr Norrell is a grouchy alpha nerd who has read Segundus’s publications but wants to throw out some criticism anyway. Segundus and Honeyfoot geek sweetly over Norrell’s library. Segundus repeats his question again and the camera zooms hard on Mr Norrell, who says, “It is a wrong question, sir. Magic is not ended in England. I myself am quite a tolerable practical magician.”

! O H S H I T !

Back at the York Society of Extremely British Men, this assertion is shouted down as “absolute tripe.” They decide that they’ll write to Norrell and ask him to show them some magic or shut up.

York Minster. Nighttime. The Society approaches the front steps, observing that it’s the hour and place appointed but Norrell has clearly chickened out.

“Mr Norrell concedes defeat!” says their beefiest guy.

But then Sinister Bookstore guy (his name is Childermass, and I guess he’s Norrell’s servant) appears saying no, Norrell doesn’t concede shit, he’ll just be working from home today, and also he wants everybody to sign a contract promising they will no longer call themselves magicians if he succeeds at magic. Everybody signs, except Segundus, who is like “magic is my life u can’t take it.” Bleak.

Meanwhile Mr Norrell is doing a typical work-from-home where he’s watching Real Housewives of New Jersey in his PJs. Just kidding, he’s waving his hands over a bowl of water. How do people in this show keep themselves from accidentally doing magic while shaving?

The Society wanders into York Minster. Childermass, building his character, finds stuff to lean against. Bells chime.

And then, MAGIC! Some of the carvings at the top of the clustered columns in the nave are talking, and it is real creepy because they’re talking about a murder they witnessed, until the camera gets up there and they look like Statler and Waldorf. The York Society are all freaking out.

Cut to the rood screen, which of course features statues of all the kings of England and they’re bickering. OK. There’s a Richard III joke which I tepidly laughed at. A carving of a woman with a harp is singing, and a statue of a former archbishop (as York Minster is, in fact, actually a cathedral) yells at Beefy in Latin.

Then the magic is over. Norrell, at home, collapses back in his chair, because a WFH day also involves a lot of early booze. The York Society is invigorated, then sad because they all signed the We’re Not Magicians paper.

The next day, the York Society of No Longer Magicians is taking down all their signs (lol) while Childermass, building his character, leans back in their chairs and smokes. Segundus says he’s just happy that “magic is restored to England” but then, Segundus didn’t sign shit.

“Do you think,” Segundus asks Childermass, “Mr Norrell would be offended if I wrote to the London newspapers of this?”

Childermass is like, yes he would be offended, but do it anyway: “I rather think my master has hidden his talent long enough. It’s time for him to take his place, and London is where I will take him.”

OK then Mr. World’s Worst Press Secretary.

Meanwhile! Elsewhere! A man rides a horse while Charlotte Riley (!) attends church. Horse Guy is bugging Charlotte Riley from the window, and she hilariously ignores him, but meets him on the way out.

He’s listing the ways he has reformed himself for her, not playing cards, not flirting with anybody in Brighton (but the Bennets might be there!) not drinking as much, etc. His name is Jonathan, hers is Arabella, and apparently they are in love. All Arabella wants from him is for him to find “a way to occupy [his] time” instead of “perpetual holiday.”

He gets on one knee, missing the point and saying that he sees he must act.

“Jonathan,” she says. “Do not act. Think.”

The camera zooms to him to imply that this has not occurred before.

*** IT’S DAD TIME ***

Jonathan is apparently being prevented from having any occupation by his Mean Old Dad, who tortures the servants and harangues his son for being useless. He sounds like the Mean Old Dad from Moulin Rouge a little.

But it gets worse! “You have proven yourself a failure at everything you have done,” says Mean Old Dad, “and you will have no assistance finding an occupation while I am yet living.”

Yikes! Later.

Jonathan -- It’s Jonathan Strange, ok, it’s him, the other guy in the show -- is getting a drink with Arabella’s brother and probably venting about his Mean Old Dad. And, yep, there it is: “My father delights in torturing me, as he tortures his servants ... as he tortured my mother.” Wow, that’s the same word I used like two paragraphs up!

“All I’ve ever truly wished for was your sister,” says Strange, clearly thinking that is a sweet thing to say instead of a gross one. Arabrother leaves, and Strange empties a flask into his cup. wellllllllp.

Morning. Hangover. Someone is rapping at the chamber door. Strange’s servants are here to get him because his Mean Old Dad is locked in his office. Turns out he’s mean old dead!

Funeral. Strange triumphant. He wonders how long he should wait before asking Arabella to marry him.

London! Norrell and Childermass in a carriage, reading Norrell’s press clips. He is causing Quite a Stir, which apparently is his intention, or Childermass’s. Norrell is pissed off that London is loud and expensive and that his WSJ crosshatch portrait isn’t flattering. OK, guy. They pass by a street magician who is talking about “the Raven King” and then gives Norrell the world’s weirdest stare. Norrell bitches that street magicians give the practice of magic an “such an appalling name” and Childermass does a stage mom thing where he tells Norrell that he is the only one who has any real talent and the future of his art depends on him: “This is what you have worked for. This is your great opportunity. If all goes well here, when folk think of a magician...”

“...They will think of myself,” says Norrell, with chilling self-reverence. Childermass gives him a little more pep talk and sends him out of the carriage. What -- what kind of dynamic did I just watch?

New scene. Parliament. Somebody’s yelling, and -- is that Samuel West?! -- and Samuel West (!) is looking bored. Nobody told me Samuel West was in this show! Wow! Samuel West.

Norrell is wandering boringly through the halls.

Turns out Samuel West is the target of the parliamentary harangue (which is, from what I understand of Actual Parliament, just punching the clock for these guys) and has the decency to look a little ashamed of it. His name in the show is Sir Walter Pole, not Samuel West. He stands to rebut, and does so with all the sneering, grandstanding, and rhetorical posturing that constitute the parliamentary equivalent of “slow Monday.”

He tosses a zinger to the opposition leader on his way out, and Norrell tries to lobby him in the, uh, lobby. But Sir Walter just scoots into his office, and one of his servants shuts the door in Norrell’s face. The servant says, he knows Norrell has an appointment, but can they move the meeting to Chez Sir Walter instead of the office?

Scene change. Chez Sir Walter. There’s a lady there who tries to snob Norrell, and it works until she hits on an academic subject. They discuss “fairy servants” and Norrell explains that fairies are trouble-with-a-capital-t-and-that-rhymes-with-p-and-that-stands-for-pool.

The servant/scheduler from earlier is handing out tea, and we learn that his name is Stephen.

Norrell states his intention: to use magic to help in the war. Sir Walter is totally snowed by this, and thinks maybe magic could be used to clean up uniforms or like, entertain people maybe? He Doesn’t Get It. Norrell, clearly the IT guy of his day, heaves a sigh.

There’s a young woman coughing pathetically and curled up on a chaise longue in the background, and Sir Walter introduces her as his fiancée Emma, like it’s totally normal to be this sick in somebody’s living room. Norrell is very surprisingly sweet to her, and she says she’s pretty into magic. Norrell suggests hot tea with lemon and nutmeg for her cough. Sir Walter kicks him out with a lecture: “Magic is not respectable. The government cannot meddle in such things.” OK.

“How’d it go?” says Childermass, back in the carriage.

“Very well,” says Norrell, on the verge of tears. I’m not letting go of the stage mom analogy because it seems to get more and more on the nose. Norrell notices they’re not going home, and Childermass says nope, they’re going Lady Godstone’s house: “It’s a soiree.”

“A party?” says Norrell, looking devastated. “I wish to go home and read a book.”

Norrell at a party. It’s like those MBTI specialized hells, and this is INTJ hell. It’s crowded, people are laughing, and Norrell doesn’t know anyone, but they’re all gossiping about him. Norrell escapes INTJ Hell and shuts himself in the host’s library, or INTJ Heaven. Ah, dichotomy.

After a minute of Alone Time with Books, Norrell is interrupted by two Party People. Party Guy 1 is harassing the Party Guy 2, apparently the host, about how Norrell was promised, but no magic seems to have been did. “That gentleman is reading a book!” he says, of Norrell, to demonstrate how boring and amagical the party is.

Norrell interrupts them and kind of says hi I’m the guy you’re talking about. They both recover awkwardly. Party Guy 2 introduces himself as Drawlight, and Party Guy 1 as Lascelles. Drawlight tries to drag Norrell out to introduce him to people and Norrell slips out the back.

He’s met at outside by like the street magician from earlier, who says some creepy stuff to him: “You think yourself a very fine fellow, hoarding books like a miser hoards gold. But I have a book you won’t find in your library, or any other.”

Norrell tries to get back inside, but the doors have locked behind him.

“It’s written by the Raven King,” says the creepy guy. Norrell makes the face I make when someone tells me they saw a spider in their shower five years ago, which is to say absolute living nightmare horror. “And it tells me all about you.”

Creepy Guy introduces himself as Vinculus, magician of Threadneedle Street, so abruptly that Norrell almost pees. He goes on that Norrell’s coming was foretold, and while he’s doing this he’s leaning in and menacing him in like, kind of an overboard way?

Norrell scoots away and, feeling safer, snottily shouts that magic can’t tell the future and only total hacks make prophecies. He undermines this by continually yelling for Childermass.

Vinculus keeps going: Two magicians will appear in England, one will be Fearfulness and one will be Arrogance. Some stuff will happen, both will fail, some other stuff. Norrell is stuck on the two magicians thing. Vinculus wanders off, and Norrell shouts for Childermass again. He looks really scared!

Back Chez Norrell, Childermass is trying to calm Norrell down, and asks what Vinculus wanted. Norrell hysterics that he mentioned a book, “and if he does have a book, I want it, and then I want to go home to Yorkshire.”

Childermass plays hardball: “Do you wish to make a success of this, or do you not?”

New Day. Childermass watches Vinculus sell spells on the street. Norrell meets Drawlight and Lascelles in his house and, surprise surprise, they want a favor, to be the guys who get credit for discovering him. Norrell is refusing, he doesn’t want to attend parties or do dumb stuff, he wants to go home.

Meanwhile, Vinculus and Childermass are talking brass tacks about whether Norrell will get Vinculus’s book. Childermass chooses an odd method of intimidation by like, threateningly whipping out some tarot cards to tell Vinculus’s fortune. I mean, if that’s worked before... Vinculus tries to one-up him by telling Norrell’s fortune. Is this like, a tarot duel? Vinculus has turned all the cards to kings, and says it means that “the Raven King is coming.” Childermass is pissed that his cards are all messed up now. I know!

Chez Norrell. On their way out, Drawlight and Lascelles gleefully mention that Sir Walter’s fiancée is dead. Well, she was pretty sick. Norrell starts to mutter about how hard it is to bring someone back from the dead. Drawlight transparently eggs him on.

“I will need to send for more books,” says Norrell. He’s so into this plan!

New scene. Jonathan Strange finds some peasants doing something poor, and rides up to interfere. They explain that they’ve found a magician sleeping under the hedge. What? Sure. It’s Vinculus.

Vinculus wakes up, stares right at Jonathan, and gives him the two magicians, Fear and Arrogance, speech while stumbling around. Jonathan Strange looks very confused. He’s also holding a large stick for reasons that are obscure to me. Vinculus tells Strange that he is destined to become a great magician. Strange pokes him with his stick and tells him to choose someone else, because it sounds like being a magician sucks. Still, he buys two spells from Vinculus, probably because a nice patrician power move is to condescendingly buy someone’s wares.

That night at dinner, Strange is telling Arabella about his big plan for the farm he’s inherited, and she laughs at him because the plan is bad.

“Very well, I’m going to study magic,” he says. Arabella and her brother are shocked. They all look at the spells and Strange decides to like, do one, right there at the table. It’s a spell to discover what your enemy is doing presently. It works, and Strange sees a stranger, apparently his enemy, in a mirror.

“Good magicians conjure up fairy spirits and long-dead kings,” says Strange. “I appear to have summoned the spirit of a banker.” It’s Mr Norrell. Ha!

London, Norrell. He arrives at Sir Walter’s house with a huge book. Sir Walter gives him access to the room where Poor Dead Emma is like, dead. Norrell shuts them out, alone with the corpse, and opens his book, looking terrified.

There’s silence, and something rattles, and a man with Ziggy Stardust hair and huge eyebrows appears. He’s also got a synthed voice and a weird jacket that I can’t pause on to figure out. He is clearly a fairy, and Norrell clearly summoned him, and he acknowledges that Norrell is destined to return magic to England. He does some back and forth about “what do I get if I resurrect this woman.” He wants to help Norrell and get credit, Norrell wants him to do this one quick necromancy and never be summoned again. The fairy does the old “maybe I will take my business to your competitor” and Norrell freaks out: “There is no other magician.”

“Of course there is another magician,” says the fairy. “He is your dearest friend in all the world.”

“I have no friends,” says Norrell. I laugh. He asks the fairy again if he can do the necromancy.

The fairy says, if he gets half of Emma’s life, it’s on. Norrell looks sad, but then he asks if they should sign something. The fairy is like no, I’ll just take something of Emma’s. The shadow of his hand stretches over her. Yikes!

Cut to Drawlight and Lascelles hanging out downstairs. They hear a woman scream. Double yikes! Everybody runs upstairs and Emma is fighting her way out of her funeral shroud. Triple yikes! Her mother points out that half of her little finger on her left hand is missing. Quadruple yikes! She brushes it off, looking out of it, and asks Sir Walter to dance with her.

Norrell zombie-walks out to his carriage. Quintuple yikes!

Until next time, Favorite Show!

#jonathan strange and mr norrell

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arplis · 4 years

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Arplis - News: Small Spaces Hidden Door Hardware

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Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/small-spaces-hidden-door-hardware

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jobsearchtips02 · 4 years

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As Anger Erupts Across U.S., Law Enforcement Tries to Rein In Protests

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from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/as-anger-erupts-across-u-s-law-enforcement-tries-to-rein-in-protests/

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andrewdburton · 5 years

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Death by a thousand cuts

I've been on the internet for a long, long time.

Via local Bulletin Board Systems, I started reading USENET newsgroups — mostly Star Trek and comic book and computer game stuff — during college in the late 1980s. I got sucked into the world of MUDs. Soon after graduating, I heard about this new thing called the World Wide Web, so I installed Mosaic on my Macintosh SE.

Before long, I taught myself HTML and built my first website. Eventually, in 1997, I started my first blog — back before blog was even a word!

I was drawn to the web (and the internet) in part because it seemed so egalitarian. Anyone could start a website about anything, and as long as they produced great stuff and shared it, people would read. I also liked the fact that almost everything was free. It didn't cost anything (besides your $19.95 monthly dial-up service) to access any of this information. The early web was a de facto sharing economy.

Best of all? The web was a wide open space, a blank slate, a platform free from dominance by mainstream media. Little people like me could have a voice.

None of this lasted long.

The Monetization of the Web

Soon, banner ads came along. I hated banner ads when they first appeared. “My site will never have banner ads,” I told my friends. (This was my first real lesson that you should never say never. My friends have been giving me grief about this for more than fifteen years!)

In 1998, Google arrived and changed everything. Until that point, web search was a miserable experience. It wasn't very good and it was overly monetized. Google was the opposite. It was amazing and had no monetization at all.

Hahahahahahahaha. How things have changed. Today, Google is all about ads. And using it is more and more a miserable experience. Look at this mess:

How long until Google has transformed itself into AltaVista?

In time, the mainstream media realized that the web wasn't going anywhere. By the early 2000s, they were treating it as an important part of their operations. By the early 2010s, the web had become the most important part of most media companies' platforms. And if it hadn't, those companies would soon be dead.

Meanwhile, two parallel (but related) trends developed.

First, there was the rise of “software as a service” (Saas). In the olden days — 1995, say — when you wanted a computer program, you went down to Circuit City and bought it. You paid for it once and you owned it forever. As “web apps” became a thing, companies shifted from one-time payments to a subscription model. Today, even big companies like Microsoft and Adobe have adopted the practice of continually charging for their products. (And if they don't use a subscription model, they often “sunset” their software, which is essentially the same damn thing.)

Second, forward-thinking sites and companies learned there was money to be made by disrupting existing business models. Netflix is a great example. Founded in 1997, this company has single-handedly destroyed multiple industries, most notably retail video. And, eventually, Netflix began to disrupt the monolithic television industry itself! Initially, this was beneficial to consumers. Now, in 2019, it's become apparent that oops, nope it's not. (See also.)

Twenty-five years ago, when the web was young, it was all about free. Anyone who could afford a computer and a $19.95/month dial-up connection was free to create and publish whatever they wanted — and free to consume what other people had created. It was like some sort of digital utopia.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Today, the web is most decidedly not free. And it's getting less free with every passing month. Let's be honest: More and more, life online is fucking expensive. It's like death by a thousand cuts.

This morning as I was pulling together the latest edition of the GRS Insider — this site's weekly email — I experienced the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. And that prompted this article. (And delayed the newsletter haha.)

First, I tried to read a New York Times article: “Health facts aren't enough. Should persuasion become a priority?” But I couldn't. I've already read one article from the NYT this month: “D.I.Y. Private Equity Is Luring Small Investors”. It used to be that the NYT was free. Then they instituted a limit on article consumption unless you subscribed, but it was a limit I could live with (something like ten articles per month). Besides, I could bypass the paywall with my browser's incognito mode. Then they got wise to incognito mode, which is fair enough. Now, apparently, you get one free article per month.

Next, I wanted to read this article: “Families Go Deep in Debt to Stay in the Middle Class”. I mean, I really want to read that article. But I can't. It's at The Wall Street Journal and the WSJ has been locked behind a paywall for years.

Crashing into paywalls is a daily occurence now. No — it's an hourly occurrence. I follow a promising link and bam I'm brought up short because I have to pay to access the article. This happens at newspapers, magazines, and even internet-only sites. It makes me grateful for the publications that produce terrific content and still provide it for free. (One example? I find that I'm frequently drawn to articles at The Atlantic. They provide top-notch quality without asking for payment. But for how long?)

Meanwhile, the subscription software model is starting to take its toll too. I completely understand that some apps and services require subscriptions in order to function properly. I pay a monthly fee to have Get Rich Slowly hosted on a webserver. That makes sense.

It does not make sense to me that some of the tools we use to build Get Rich Slowly require monthly (or yearly) subscriptions. There's no ongoing maintenance. There's no draw on the vendor's resources.

It does not make sense to me that my favorite weather app for the iPhone requires an annual subscription. In fact, it's insane. (Yet I still pay it.)

It does not make sense to my that Pzizz, a sleep tool that I've used for over a decade, moved from standalone pricing to subscription pricing. (And hey, Pzizz people, how many times do I have to pay for your product before you give me lifetime access? Because I've paid three or four times already.)

Generally speaking, SaaS and subscription plans aren't necessary — they're just profitable for the companies that use them. And as long as we keep paying, they'll stick to the model.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

The “cut” that's really going to mess with people's minds? The upcoming high price of television.

When Netflix and Hulu and similar companies came along, they offered low-cost alternatives to cable. Cord cutting became an act of frugality. I ditched cable television in 2007 and have never looked back. Until now.

Now, big media companies have recognized that they too can get on the act. They too can inflict one of the thousand cuts.

CBS was quick on the draw. Want to watch the latest Star Trek shows? No Netflix for you! You have to pay $10 per month for CBS All Access — or $6 per month if you're willing to put up with commercials.

Disney is a heavy hitter and they want to get in on the act. Disney+ — coming November 12th — will cost $8 per month. Want to watch the latest Marvel and Star Wars shows? Want to watch Disney and Pixar movies? This is your only option.

By far, the most popular show on Netflix is NBC's The Office, which accounts for a mind-boggling 7% of all Netflix viewing in the U.S. NBC knows a golden goose when it sees one. When its current deal with Netflix expires, it's yanking The Office and using it as a tent pole to launch its own subscription service.

Meanwhile, Netflix and Hulu and Amazon all offer their own original programming. (At least the latter is free for folks who pay for Prime, which is nearly one-third of the United States. Holy shit!) Apple will soon get in on the game and they're using big names to draw viewers: Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and more.

youtube

Streaming used to be a cheaper alternative to cable television. As Consumer Reports notes, these days it's a toss-up. And soon, streaming is likely to be the more expensive option.

Note: The one huge advantage to this proliferation of options? Users can pick and choose which content they subscribe to. For years (or decades), folks had been asking for a la carte pricing for cable channels. Well, I guess now we have it.

No Free Lunch

To provide supporting evidence for this article, I started to make a list of all of the software subscriptions I have, my software that's being “sunsetted” and needs to be upgraded (Quickbooks 2016 just notified me yesterday that it's no longer supported), the most common paywalls I encounter, and the television-related payments I make. I gave up. It's a doable thing, but it'd take too much time right now. It's a project for another day.

I know I sound like a cranky old man (again!), but I've had enough. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore! Except that I probably am.

“Don't you expect to pay for services?” Kim asked me as I bitched to her this morning. “How does anybody run a business if it's free? In your mind, their business model should be to not charge the customer?”

Okay, fair point. I don't want to be taken for a choosing beggar.

As somebody who runs a website himself and knows how much it costs (in terms of time and money) just to maintain my tiny corner of the web, I absolutely do not begrudge anyone the desire to make money.

And, in fact, my biggest challenge since repurchasing Get Rich Slowly two years ago has been balancing my desire to provide excellent information without destroying the user experience with monetization. It's a delicate balance, one that I'm not sure I'm achieving. (But hey, I'm working on it!)

My frustration is that there are just so many companies extracting a pound of flesh from me. It's too much.

Yes, I realize most (of not all) of these expenses are voluntary. Yes, I realize this is capitalism in action. Yes, I realize there are often free (or cheaper) options. Yes, I realize we can't reset the internet to 1995. Believe me: I've been thinking about this issue for years now. I understand all of this stuff. But I don't like it.

In the end, my solution recently has been to KonMari my digital life. I've removed most of the apps from my iPhone and iPad, opting to cut those with subscription fees first. When possible, choose software with a one-time fee instead of an ongoing subscription. I try to steer clear of sites with paywalls. I killed Hulu. (But then Kim promptly joined.) Even though I love Star Trek and the Marvel Universe, I refuse to pay for CBS All Access and Disney+. I never will.

But then, I was never going to have banner ads on my website either, was I?

The post Death by a thousand cuts appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/death-by-a-thousand-cuts/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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ronnykblair · 6 years

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“Bad Blood” Book Review: Fooling Most of the People for a Long, Long Time

While I read Bad Blood, John Carreyrou’s detailed account of the rise and fall of Theranos, two thoughts immediately came to mind.

First, if North Korea ever launched a startup, Theranos would be it.

The company operated the same way Kim Jong Un does: non-functional products, “launches” that backfire, massive fraud, dead employees, and a creepy old guy who monitored employee email and Internet usage.

Second, this story is amazing. They need to make it into a movie.

Then I realized that they are making it into a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, with Adam McKay from The Big Short set to direct.

After extensive research, I’ve determined that North Korea did not officially back the company, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Kim family invested via Rupert Murdoch or Betsy DeVos.

Bad Blood is my favorite non-fiction book of the past decade.

It’s so good that it almost seems like fiction – a John Grisham thriller, maybe.

It takes the best parts of history’s most famous downfall stories and injects even more intrigue by adding the one element those stories lacked: human life.

This book isn’t directly related to recruiting or working in the finance industry.

But there are so many valuable takeaways that are indirectly related that I decided to write this review anyway:

What is This Book About, and Why Should You Care?

In case you’ve been living in a cave in Antarctica for the past ~3 years, Theranos was a massively hyped “unicorn” healthcare startup that aimed to perform hundreds of blood tests from a single drop of blood pricked from your finger.

No more needles! No more vials of blood!

Just one small problem: it is impossible to do this.

Blood from your finger is different from the blood in your veins because it is partially oxygenated, it’s contaminated by interstitial fluid, and the volume is very low.

In plain English, there’s not enough data, so you can’t solve the problem with a medical device.

You can do a few simple tests, such as the one for glucose levels, with finger-pricked blood, but not the hundreds of complex tests out there.

Despite that, Theranos still managed to raise $900 million over the years at a peak valuation of $9 billion.

But after more than a decade of lying to investors, threatening employees, and using non-functional devices to diagnose patients, Theranos finally began to implode in 2015.

That’s when WSJ investigative reporter John Carreyrou received a tip about the company, began his deep dive into it, and finally published the article that sparked a firestorm.

After that, the company’s trajectory resembled that of a spaceship being sucked into a black hole.

Regulatory agencies banned Theranos from running a lab, Walgreens ended its partnership, the COO was forced out, investors and partners started suing the company, and the SEC charged the CEO and COO (Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani) with massive fraud.

A criminal investigation is underway, and indictments are likely. Most likely, Theranos will soon be liquidated, and both the top executives will be in jail.

This story is a textbook example of how to do everything wrong at a startup.

And it’s a cautionary tale of what to avoid and how to detect deception if you’re an investor.

So… How Did a North Korean Startup Survive for Over a Decade?

Even if you’ve followed all the WSJ’s reporting on Theranos, you probably have one big question: How could such a fraudulent company last for so long?

Didn’t anyone notice that the Empress had no clothes before a reporter came along?

Bad Blood makes it clear that plenty of people were skeptical from the start.

The company never published peer-reviewed literature, its Board of Directors consisted of fossilized former diplomats who knew nothing about medicine, and it never attracted serious life science VC investors.

The original Ph.D. student who founded the company with Elizabeth Holmes thought her first idea was “science fiction,” and dozens of disgruntled employees quit along the way, convinced that the entire operation was a Potemkin village.

I can’t explain the company’s survival in one sentence, but here’s my summary:

Business Partners: Walgreens was paranoid that CVS would get the technology first, so they entered the partnership without proper due diligence. One skeptical consultant kept warning them, but he was silenced. This one goes in the FOMO (“fear of missing out”) bucket.

Investors: The company raised money mostly from family offices and VCs with no healthcare experience. And they pointed to early investors, such as Tim Draper and Larry Ellison, as evidence that “the smart money” was on board.

VCs with a track record in life sciences, such as Google Ventures and MedVenture Associates, passed when they realized the company couldn’t answer basic technical questions.

Employees: Pretty much all the employees figured out that the company was a fraud, which is why turnover was extremely high.

However, Theranos was super-secretive and used expensive lawyers and private investigators to threaten ex-employees who could have become whistleblowers.

Regulators: Theranos operated in “regulatory no man’s land” by labeling its diagnostics “lab-developed tests,” which are not regulated by the FDA.

Eventually, the regulators caught up to them and started conducting surprise lab inspections because of tips from anonymous ex-employees.

Patients: The company used its broken device(s) to test patients in Arizona and California, which later resulted in ~1 million voided tests.

Amazingly, they threatened doctors and patients who left bad Yelp reviews, but nothing could hide fraud on this scale.

These live deployments finally pushed it over the edge and alerted the broader population to the scam.

What I Loved

I’ve followed the Theranos story closely, but Bad Blood was great because it put together all the pieces in a logical order and gave them more emotional resonance.

The book conveys superbly the human tragedy, ranging from patients who received the wrong diagnoses to employee Ian Gibbons, the chief scientist who “committed suicide” under suspicious circumstances.

But what I loved most were the vividly drawn characters.

In particular, “Sunny” Balwani, the #2 at Theranos, seems like an amalgamation of every single horrible VP in investment banking.

Not only did he micromanage employees while knowing nothing about the product, but he also had the social skills of an autistic monkey.

When an employee quit and refused to sign a confidentiality agreement, Sunny sent a security guard after him, called the police, and then told the police the employee stole property.

When they asked what property was stolen, Sunny replied that the employee “stole property in his mind.”

Oh, and the whole time Sunny was at the company, he was also in a romantic relationship with CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who was ~20 years younger.

Award-winning corporate governance!

Areas for Improvement

That said, the book isn’t perfect.

There are a lot of characters to remember, and sometimes I lost track of who was doing what at which time.

The book moves in rough chronological order, but chapters tend to be thematic or character-based rather than time-based.

So, similar to TV shows like Westworld, the exact timeline can be a bit confusing (though the lack of robots makes it far less convoluted than Westworld).

Finally, the transition where John Carreyrou enters the story toward the end is a bit jarring, since the preceding chapters are written in the third person from the perspective of others.

Takeaways for the Finance Industry

Here’s what you can learn from this story even if you have no interest in startups, venture capital, or medical devices:

1) Story, Story, Story

Your story is everything. That’s why we focus on it heavily in the Interview Guide and the articles on this site.

A great story can sell anything, whether it’s a product or yourself in a job interview.

Elizabeth Holmes was a great storyteller who idolized Steve Jobs, and like Jobs, she could also sell anything.

But if the claims in your story can be disproven easily, your story will fall apart.

It’s not unusual for an early-stage biotech startup to make aggressive claims about its future products.

But what was unusual – and fraudulent – was to claim that the product was ready for real-life usage, when it clearly was not, and then to use it on patients.

This is why it’s a terrible idea to lie or even “spin” facts that can be easily disproven in interviews, such as your abilities in other languages, graduation dates, grades, employment dates, and job titles.

So many readers have gone too far with spinning that I’m going to rewrite the article on the topic later this year.

2) Healthcare != Technology

Many technology companies that launch apps, software, and even hardware adopt a “fake it ‘til you make it” attitude.

That’s fine for technology because no one dies if a smartphone app crashes.

And many students have famously dropped out of university and then started world-class technology companies… because you don’t need that much experience to get started.

Healthcare, though, is a different ball game.

Your product can’t “kind of work” unless you want to kill people.

And it’s almost impossible for 19-year-old university dropouts with no medical experience to start important healthcare companies.

If you’re trying to move into finance, you can use these industry differences to your advantage.

For example, if you have significant medical/biotech experience, you’re much stronger as a career changer candidate if you target healthcare groups at banks and VC firms.

They want people like you because no university graduate could understand those sectors as well as a Ph.D. or industry executive.

But if you want to get into the industry at the last minute, or you don’t have real work experience, it’s better to target sectors such as technology or consumer/retail where you can get up to speed quickly.

3) The Fallacy of Expertise Transferability

Many students at top universities believe that since they got into a top school, they are experts at everything – or at least, they could quickly become experts at anything.

The Board members and early investors of Theranos embraced similar logic:

“I’m the former Secretary of State/Defense or the founder of a multi-billion-dollar tech company. Therefore, I can also be a successful healthcare investor!”

Except… they’re completely different fields.

Facing down the Soviets in the Cold War is impressive, but it doesn’t make a 90-something former diplomat qualified to judge the merits of medical devices.

I outlined in a previous article how you can outwit and out-hustle Ivy League students to win job offers, and this point goes along with the advice there.

Yes, other candidates might have better credentials or higher GPAs…

…but will they take the time to learn the in’s and out’s of stock pitches, find contact information for hundreds of industry professionals, and then contact them in a socially calibrated way?

I’m not sure, but most “experts” would say it’s beneath them.

4) Focus on the Right Things for Your Development Stage – Not the Trappings of Power

As Theranos raised $900 million, Elizabeth Holmes spent much of the money on lawyers, new offices, a contingent of bodyguards, and yes, even bulletproof glass for her office (!).

She also put a ton of time and effort into distribution partnerships and sales.

For an early-stage technology company, it’s not necessarily wrong to focus on sales before your product is fully functional.

But for an early-stage healthcare company, nothing matters except for developing a working solution, passing clinical trials, and winning approval from regulators.

If your new device or vaccination or surgical method doesn’t work, partnerships won’t save you.

Consistently, companies focus on the wrong things and ignore the stage they’re at.

I even did the same thing back when I made the mistake of creating a $5,000 product for a $500 market.

In a way, I made the opposite mistake of Theranos: I had products that worked, and I wanted to make them even better to the point where no one noticed or cared.

But it was motivated by the same mistake: not understanding the stage I was at.

5) If “The End Goal” is Your Focus, Rethink Your Life!

When Holmes was young, a family member asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.

“A billionaire!” she replied.

That answer demonstrates why the fraud reached this level before collapsing: rather than trying different skills, becoming good at one, and then pursuing it, Holmes started with the end goal in mind.

And she stopped at nothing to pursue it, even if it meant lying to investors, threatening employees, and putting patients’ lives at risk.

Most entrepreneurs start working in a specific industry, get to know people, learn the key problems, and then launch new products/services.

Otherwise, it’s impossible to know what people will pay for and which solutions are feasible vs. science fiction.

Idolizing Steve Jobs and aiming to become a billionaire aren’t real goals; they’re aspirations of teenagers who do not yet know themselves.

As far as applicability to the finance industry, well, take a look at the comments thread on this article about finance as a long-term career.

Final Thoughts and Reality Distortion Fields

Both Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes possessed “reality distortion fields” that let them recruit subordinates and convince investors, Board members, and the public of almost anything.

But Jobs also had a firm grasp on his own reality, and despite some exaggerations and problems, delivered products that worked.

By contrast, Holmes forgot to apply self-shielding, which let her reality distortion field twist her own perception of reality.

Aside from the upcoming indictment and trial, I don’t think we’ll be hearing much from her.

But if you want to find out more, the rumor is that she might head to North Korea.

Apparently, she’s an excellent fit.

The post “Bad Blood” Book Review: Fooling Most of the People for a Long, Long Time appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/bad-blood-book-review/

#ronnykblair digest

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blainerollins · 7 years

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Weekly Research Briefing: The Sea Door...

August 7, 2017

(@archpics)

I suspect that this will be the view of many readers for the week. It is a good time to take a break. 2nd quarter earnings are in the books, Congress and the White House are out until September and the Fed is sizing up waders and fishing poles for that annual break to Jackson Hole on the 24th of August. As we glide into the end of summer, we can go knowing that Q2 earnings were better, but stocks had a more difficult time navigating the numbers. The U.S. economy continues to show signs of slowing but not as bad as the U.S. Dollar is fearing, so shift some of that blame to Washington uncertainty. The International stock markets still look like the easier bet from both a momentum and valuation perspective. Energy stocks are so unloved that if the sector was a football team, they wouldn’t even be able to get a matchup on Thursday night. Meanwhile the rest of the U.S. stock market just keeps very slowly grinding sideways to slightly higher. When Congress returns on September 5th, they will be taking on the Debt Ceiling and Tax Reform. Hopefully they can at least tackle the former or else the market could decide to grind in a different direction. Have a great break everyone.

Friday jobs data shows that the economy continues to bounce around 200,000 jobs created monthly…

(@ukarlewitz)

Further detail showed a Goldilocks job report with growth with low inflation…

In terms of job growth, the July jobs report soundly beat expectations, showing the addition of 209,000 nonfarm payrolls (Briefing.com consensus 181,000). However, in terms of wage growth, investors received another unimpressive reading as the report showed an increase of just 0.3% in average hourly earnings (Briefing.com consensus +0.3%). In other words, it was another ‘Goldilocks’ report.

Investors have rallied around these ‘Goldilocks’ reports in the past as they’re not hot enough to raise rate-hike concerns that are typically present amid a pick up in economic activity and not cold enough to give investors a reason to question the state of future economic growth.

Rate-hike expectations did shift up a tad following the July jobs report with the fed funds futures market assigning an implied probability of 50.4% to a December rate hike, up from 46.8% on Thursday.

U.S. Treasuries sold off in a curve-steepening trade following the release, leaving the 10-yr yield (2.26%) and the 2-yr yield (1.35%) higher by four basis points and one basis point, respectively. Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar Index (93.35, +0.65) rallied 0.7% to eke out a modest victory for the week (+0.3%).

In the equity market, the heavily-weighted financial sector (+0.7%) outperformed from start to finish, settling the session at the top of the leaderboard.

(briefing.com)

Will this new stronger employment data point help turn the U.S. Dollar higher? We will all be watching very closely…

(Stockcharts.com)

Two thirds of the U.S. Economy is tied to Services so last week’s downturn in the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index is worth watching…

(WSJ/Daily Shot)

The miss of the Services ISM data as well as July auto sales kept the Economic Surprise Indexes in check during the week…

(WSJ/DailyShot)

While GDP may have a current headwind, given the ongoing ISM manufacturing data there should be few worries on the horizon for negative GDP growth…

The chart above is one of my enduring favorites. It shows that the ISM manufacturing index does a pretty good job of tracking the growth rate of the economy. What’s especially nice is that the index comes out with a relatively short lag of just a week or two, whereas we usually have to wait months to get a read on the economy. What it’s saying now is that GDP growth in the current (third) quarter is likely to be in the range of 2-4% annualized. That won’t necessarily mean that the underlying pace of growth is picking up though; it’s more likely that some faster reported growth in the current quarter which will make up for the relatively weak growth of recent quarters. Such is the volatile nature of GDP stats.

(Scott Granis Blogspot)

Can valuations hold to these higher levels if U.S. growth continues to slow?

(Yardeni.com)

To read the full 361 Capital Weekly Research Briefing, please click here

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#$SPY #$aapl #$eem #$FEZ #$XLE #market commentary #market outlook

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natsubeatsrock · 2 years

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7 Things I Enjoyed in 2021 that Aren’t Fairy Tail

You know the rules and so do I.

Number 7: The Hunter's Guild: Red Hood

Given the cutthroat nature of the WSJ, many series that show promise are canceled early. A lot of series got the ax this year, including Phantom Seer, an honorable mention from last year. But seeing Red Hood end prematurely was especially disappointing. It was great to see a series take the various Grimm Brothers stories and make a fighting series with it. It doesn't seem as though WSJ readers and the folks at Shueisha agreed. Here's hoping the writer gets another shot sometime soon.

Number 6: Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

Yeah, this is going to upset some people. I found out about the authors Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay a few years ago. They teamed up with Peter Boghossian to fool a bunch of academic journalists into publishing bunk journal entries, including a feminist rewriting of part of Mein Kampf. (I wish I was joking.) Since then, the group has often teamed up to write and talk about how these studies aren't as helpful as people want to believe. I've been waiting to read this book for a while. I'm glad I was able to this year. The whole time I read it, I kept screaming "This stuff is cancer!" out loud as I read the quotes they cited. If you're interested in this but don't enjoy reading non-fiction at a graduate level, wait for their book Social Injustice to come out in a few weeks.

Number 5: Wandavision

Chalk this one up to being too behind on the MCU for my own good. I've heard a lot of praise for Far from Home. But I still have to catch up with Falcon and the Winter Soldier, let alone the movies from this year. Still, this was a great introduction to Disney Plus for Marvel Studios. After the fallout of both Avengers movies, Wanda grieves the loss of Vision by... holding an entire town hostage and creating a series of sitcoms. Most episodes pay homage to a different era of the genre going from the black-and-white era to the modern era. I'm not sure I could have expected to have as much fun watching this as I had. As a big lover of the mutants, I almost shed tears when we saw Wanda finally become the Scarlet Witch. I can't wait to see how this ties into the upcoming Doctor Strange film... after I catch up with the rest of the MCU...

Number 4: Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation

This series will likely be anime of the year for many people. However, my nod goes to the light novel version of the series. Mushoku Tensei didn't start the isekai genre or trends it uses. But it set the tone for where the genre would end up going. With the series making its name known to the West this year, it's not hard to see why. You're not getting an escapist fantasy about a guy living out his dream. Rudeus Greyrat is someone who recognizes he screwed up in his old life and is genuinely trying to make the most of his new life. This shows up in how he helps others and is tied to other parts of the series. If it weren't for certain plot points, this might have made it higher on this list. Still, I can't deny that I've had a great time reading this. I eagerly await the reaction to certain things coming up in the anime.

Number 3: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Haha, the game with the number 3 is my number 3. I've been meaning to play this for a while. As fun as FE is, I've had extra fun playing this particular game now. My first playthrough of this game coincided with me actually becoming a teacher. I can't say that it's affected my teaching abilities. However, as an addition to the Fire Emblem series, it's great to see this game hasn't divided the community as much as many other recent entries have. It feels like every new game I play in this series becomes my favorite. However, this has been the first game I've struggled to put down in years. I'm still on my second playthrough, and I'm having a ton of fun finding out more about the world and characters. This upcoming year looks to be a big one for Nintendo, and it will be interesting to see how they impress fans.

Number 2: Komi-san Can't Communicate

Do you mean to tell me that Netflix licensed two series about a character who meets someone who helps them make a ton of friends despite their social ineptitude? And hit both out of the park? Though, I've already given EZ a spot on this list in the past. This is a series that has been hyped up for years. Shouko Komi's popularity in-universe is only rivaled by her popularity in real life. When I saw that it was getting an adaptation, I was worried it wouldn't live up to the expectations. Not because of the source material, but if the studio would do the series justice. Needless to say, those fears were widely exaggerated. This was the most fun new anime of the year (not named EZ). Admittedly, I haven't seen much new anime from this year people would consider a standout hit. However, I doubt that anything from this year would have gotten my nod over it. Word of advice, this might not be the best show to watch on Netflix.

Number 1: Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel trilogy

To think these are the Ufotable movies making the top of my list. One of my big anime goals for the year was to get into the Fate series. I have a ways to go with the millions of spinoffs. But I've seen all of the main adaptations of the series. Part of me wanted to give this spot to Carnival Phantasm, just because. However, I can't say I enjoyed anything I went through this year as much as Heaven's Feel movie trilogy. Allow me to vastly oversimplify this series. Fate/stay night is a visual novel involving a series of battles involving famous mythical and historical figures fighting alongside people who use magic. There are three different routes: Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel. I'd have liked UBW with a different ending, and the adaptation for Fate isn't great. Heaven's Feel provided a ton of satisfying endings for characters I didn't think would get happy endings. This especially goes for the main heroine of this route Sakura Matou. I fell in love with her even during the first Fate adaptation. Watching Heaven's Feel made me willing to fight anyone who would see her unhappy. Also, screw Shinji Matou.

(This is an aside for the Fate series. If you want to get into the series, here's what you need to know. Either go through the UBW television series and then go to the movies first or Fate/Zero. Once you finish one, watch what you missed. You can go through the old Fate/stay night anime before UBW if you want, but it's horribly dated and mixes things from the other routes. You can also just go through the visual novels and get into whatever you want from there. Anything else is extra.)

As honorable mentions, the PV for Chainsaw Man might be one of the best anime I've seen, and the series will likely have a spot on this list. I did enjoy the Case Studies of Vanitas anime but not enough for it to make the list. I've been rewatching the old Sailor Moon, and I've been having a fun time. River City Girls is a great game that I can't wait to see the sequel for next year. Hilda and Cobra Kai will get new series additions after I post this, and it looks like they'll continue to be amazing. And, if you haven't given EZ a chance, the anime is an underrated gem. Give it a shot before the second season adapts some of the more crazy moments in the series.

Speaking of which, here’s my EZ list. See you!

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kathleengage696 · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Power Up for Profits

New Post has been published on http://www.powerupforprofits.com/2017/07/38-of-authors-have-no-idea-where-to-start-when-it-comes-to-marketing.html

38% of Authors Have No Idea Where to Start When It Comes to Marketing

Ask any cross-section of authors what they struggle with the most with book marketing and the answer is likely to be, “I don’t know where to start.”

I liken this to asking someone who needs to lose weight for health reasons saying, “I don’t know where to start.”

Really?

With so much information readily available through books, Google searches, websites, blogs and social media groups, it’s not for lack of knowing that stops most people from achieving an outcome. It’s taking the first step. It’s also about the fear of doing it wrong that holds many people back.

Survey Says

Not long ago, I surveyed several hundred authors. I wanted to know what stops the majority from selling more than a handful of books.

Actually, I DO know why they don’t sell many books… marketing … or lack thereof. What I really wanted to know is more about their resistance to marketing.

“What’s your greatest challenge with marketing and selling your book?” was the only question I asked.

The results were as follows:

38% knowledge 33% time 17% money 7% fear 5% other

Google Rocks

If knowledge is your challenge, start with the obvious; a Google search. There’s ample information available online on how to market a book.

Therein lies part of the problem. There’s so much information, one can easily become overwhelmed. Overwhelm can stop us in our tracks. It can also make us chase squirrel after squirrel after squirrel.

Not only is there ample information, there’s conflicting information. The question arises, “Who do I listen to?”

Whenever I want to get good, even great, at something there are three primary places I seek out information.

Those who have succeeded at “the thing”

Coaches … with a track record

Mastermind groups

Successful Authors

When I think of successful authors, I think of those who make money with their books and in most cases, are bestselling authors.

Granted, you don’t need to be a bestselling author to be successful, but often the two go together.

The term “bestselling author” can be misleading. Many people claim to be bestsellers when they get in the top 100 of an Amazon category.

You can sell ten books and get in the top 100. When someone calls themselves a bestseller by simply getting in the top 100 of a category, they are not a “real” bestselling author. It’s super easy to get in the top 100 of a category. Avoid falling into this misleading bestseller status trap.

Becoming a “real” bestselling author takes a heck of a lot more than selling ten books on Amazon.

If you want to find bestsellers, look to those who are in the top ten overall in Amazon. That takes work.

Or look to these lists on ABA IndieBound (ABA), Barnes & Noble (BAN), Publishers Weekly (PBW), USA Today (USA), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and The Los Angeles Times (LAT).

Getting on the top of any of these lists takes a heck of a lot more than selling ten books. You must sell thousands upon thousands of books within a specified period of time.

Putting a list of authors together from these resources will give you lots to work with when it comes to identifying marketing strategies.

Once you compile a list of target authors, research what they’ve done in their marketing. Granted, some of what they do may be costlier than you care to invest.

However, you will be able to find places they’ve been interviewed such as podcast shows, radio and television, magazines, blogs and trade journals.

This list is a great place to start your outreach for interview opportunities. Interviews open lots of opportunity such as other interviews, speaking invitations and people hopping right over to Amazon to buy your book while they are listening to an interview.

Follow authors and experts

One author I follow is Cheryl Strayed. As the author of several books, it was her persistence AND the release of her wildly successful book, Wild, that put her on the map…big time. Lots of people think she was an overnight success. Nothing could be further from the truth. She worked at her craft for decades before Wild turned things around.

Her level of success is one I admire. Additionally, those who enjoy her memoir, would likely enjoy my soon-to-be-released memoir. Thus, I look to her strategies as those that would work well for me.

I also follow what Reese Witherspoon is doing. In that she is the person responsible for the movie Wild being released, she is worth learning from.

Coaches and mentors

There’s nothing to compare with knowledgeable coaches and mentors to help you through the times you most need a skilled guide. I’ve worked with some amazing coaches in various areas of my life including business, speaking, writing, health, fitness and finances.

Currently, I have a writing coach (even though I’ve been writing for decades). As well, I have a fitness coach (even though I’ve studied health and fitness extensively).

I doubt I will ever outgrow the need for coaches. The day I think I have it all figured out is the day I’m destined to fail.

Coaches push us, guide us, get us through the times we hit a wall.

A good book marketing coach is worth their weight in gold. However, make sure you hire someone who really knows what they are doing.

Mastermind Groups

I can’t say enough about the power of a mastermind group. Basically, a mastermind group is a group of like-minded individuals with a common goal.

The first place I learned about mastermind groups is in the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. A classic, Think and Grow Rich is a favorite of entrepreneurs around the globe.

It would be worth picking up a copy and immersing yourself into the information outlined by the author to learn more about mindset, mastermind groups and success.

There are mastermind groups of every type. Overall, they are designed to provide support, inspiration, problem-solving and ideas.

Some groups have a specific leader while other groups change out leadership. As with anything, there are groups you will resonate with and others, not so much.

The goal with a group is to find those who will push and encourage you while stretching you to be the best you can be.

Do It Yourself or Hire Someone

If you’re serious about becoming a successful author, do what successful authors do…learn how to market and/or hire someone to help you with your marketing.

Even when you hire someone, it helps to know as much about the marketing as possible. The more you know, the more you will gain visibility as an author. The more visibility you gain, the more books you will likely sell. The more you sell, the more you can keep doing what you love to do…write books.

After all, isn’t making money while influencing others through our writing the dream of most authors? It sure is for me.

Think You’re Ready

On August 24 – 25, 2017, I’m hosting a very intimate gathering in my office for serious minded authors who are READY to deep dive into their book marketing. This is NOT for those who are not willing to play full out and have a fully developed plan at the end of the two days. Limited to six participants. To find out if this is for you, please email me at [email protected]. Subject line: 2 Day Author Deep Dive Inquiry.

Find Like Minded Authors in our Facebook Group

Click here to join

Save

#Amazon.com #Amazon.com bestseller.#Authors #become a bestseller #best selling author.#bestsellers #bestselling author.#book marketing #internet marketing #making money online

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newstfionline · 7 years

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Venezuela is starving

By Juan Forero, WSJ, May 5, 2017

YARE, Venezuela--Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, has the drawn face of an old man and a cry that is little more than a whimper. His ribs show through his skin. He weighs just 11 pounds.

His mother, Maria Planchart, tried to feed him what she could find combing through the trash--scraps of chicken or potato. She finally took him to a hospital in Caracas, where she prays a rice-milk concoction keeps her son alive.

“I watched him sleep and sleep, getting weaker, all the time losing weight,” said Ms. Planchart, 34 years old. “I never thought I’d see Venezuela like this.”

Her country was once Latin America’s richest, producing food for export. Venezuela now can’t grow enough to feed its own people in an economy hobbled by the nationalization of private farms, and price and currency controls.

Venezuela has the world’s highest inflation--estimated by the International Monetary Fund to reach 720% this year--making it nearly impossible for families to make ends meet. Since 2013, the economy has shrunk 27%, according to local investment bank Torino Capital; imports of food have plunged 70%.

Hordes of people, many with children in tow, rummage through garbage, an uncommon sight a year ago. People in the countryside pick farms clean at night, stealing everything from fruits hanging on trees to pumpkins on the ground, adding to the misery of farmers hurt by shortages of seed and fertilizer. Looters target food stores. Families padlock their refrigerators.

Three in four Venezuelans said they had lost weight last year, an average of 19 pounds, according to the National Poll of Living Conditions, an annual study by social scientists. People here, in a mix of rage and humor, call it the Maduro diet after President Nicolás Maduro.

For more than a month, Venezuelans have protested against the increasingly authoritarian government of Mr. Maduro; by Friday, more than 35 people had been reported killed in the unrest. The country’s Food Ministry, the president’s office, the Communications Ministry and the Foreign Ministry didn’t return calls or emails requesting comment for this article.

“Here, for the government, there are no malnourished children,” said Livia Machado, a physician and child malnutrition expert. “The reality is this is an epidemic, and everyone should be paying attention to this.”

Dr. Machado and her team of doctors are seeing a dramatic increase in emaciated infants brought to the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas, where they work.

The problem is no better in towns like Yare, south of Caracas, where the government’s leftist movement was long popular. “To eat,” said Sergio Jesus Sorjas, 11 years old, “I sometimes go to the butcher and I say, ‘Sir, do you have any bones you can give me?’ “

The boy receives nutritional formula or a traditional Venezuelan corncake from the parish priest. Sergio said he hasn’t tasted meat in months: “Sometimes, I don’t eat at all.”

The Catholic charity Caritas and a team led by Susana Raffalli --a specialist in food emergencies who has worked in Guatemala, Africa and other regions tormented by hunger--are monitoring conditions here.

The most recent Caritas study of 800 children under the age of 5 in Yare and three other communities showed that in February nearly 11% suffered from severe acute malnutrition, which is potentially fatal, compared with 8.7% in October. Caritas said nearly a fifth of children under age 5 in those four communities suffered from chronic malnutrition, which stunts growth and could mark a generation.

“What’s serious is not that we’re at the crisis threshold, but rather the velocity at how we got there,” Ms. Raffalli said.

By World Health Organization standards, Caritas’s findings constitute a crisis that calls for the government to marshal extraordinary aid. But authorities have resisted offers of food and aid from abroad.

The country’s growing malnutrition is made worse by a breakdown in health care, the spread of mosquito-borne illness and what the Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela has called a severe shortage of medicines.

Belkis Diaz watched her newborn, Dany Nava, wither away last summer from lack of food. There was no baby formula, and Ms. Diaz couldn’t nurse, said Albertina Hernandez, the baby’s grandmother.

“We couldn’t find food, we couldn’t find the milk, and he began to get thinner and thinner,” Ms. Hernandez said.

By the time Dany arrived at the hospital, he had a serious cough and soon died. “He was so, so tiny,” his grandmother said.

In past years, the farms south of here produced at capacity, everything from chickens to soybeans.

Alberto Troiani, 48 years old, still works the hog farm that his father, an Italian immigrant, founded in the 1970s. His business has now been battered by price controls, a shortage of supplies and criminal gangs.

The farm has gone from 200 female pigs, each producing a dozen piglets, to 50. Mr. Troiani can’t afford the high-protein feed and medicines he once used. Full-grown pigs now weigh 175 pounds instead of 240 pounds.

What is worse, he said, walking past half-empty pens, is seeing his pigs sometimes bite off the tails and ears of others.

“We used to send 120 to 150 pigs a month to slaughter,” Mr. Troiani said. “Now it’s 50, 60 animals, a joke.” He makes 93 cents per kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of meat, he said, but needs $1.17 to make a profit. Since 2012, 82% of Venezuela’s pig producers have closed, and production has fallen 71%, according to industry representatives.

Mr. Troiani talked about leaving Venezuela with his mother, Yolanda Facciolini, 69 years old, who arrived from Italy in the 1960s. He said he would have no buyers: All around him, people are abandoning their farms. Thieves take what is left behind, he said--copper wire, tractors, weed killer.

The agricultural companies the government has taken over, including milk factories and distributors of fertilizer and feed, are closed or barely operating, according to economists and farm groups.

“The system is created so you can’t win,” said Alberto Cudemus, who heads the national association of pig farmers. “The government thinks its survival is in communism, not in us, not with production. And that’s where they’re wrong.”

Diogenes Alzolay, 65 years old, once had two small construction companies and later drove a cab. He is now trying to sell the freezers of the small store he once ran along with his books, lamps, photocopier and taxi.

He and his wife, Nidea Cadiz, need money to feed their children, who include a 2-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl. He also has three teenagers, ages 13, 16 and 19.

On a recent day, Mr. Alzolay was frying sardines. To stretch the food they have, a couple of family members skip eating one day to leave enough for the others. Meals are sometimes the local corncakes known as arepas, vegetables, mangoes and the occasional canned fish.

“I’ve thought about running away, but I can’t do it because of our very little kids,” Mr. Alzolay said. “Getting to this extreme makes me want to cry.”

Nine in 10 homes said they don’t make enough money to buy all their food, according to the poll of living conditions. Nearly a third of Venezuelans, 9.6 million people, eat two or fewer meals a day, up from 12.1% in 2015, the poll found; four of out five in the nation are now poor.

Cesar Augusto Palma, 75 years old, lays out the grim arithmetic of high inflation on a fixed income. His pension is now worth about $10 a month, he said, enough to buy four boxes of milk.

His grown daughter and three grandchildren are financial dependents. Mr. Palma and his grandson Germain, 11 years old, eat less food to leave more for the two younger children. Germain’s once-thick hair is turning yellow.

“They need it more than me,” said Germain, who weighs 50 pounds instead of 70 pounds, about the average for a boy his age. Nearby, his brothers, Cesar Augusto, 10 years old, and Angel Jose, age 4, try to fly a handmade kite.

“I am hungry,” Germain said. “I feel like a pain in my belly.” Asked his favorite meal, he said, “Arroz con pollo,” rice and chicken, which he last ate in 2015.

At the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas, Ms. Planchart cried when she recalled the ways she tried to feed baby Jean Pierre and her four other children. She went through trash bags, searching for bits of corn or bread free of maggots.

“I’d stand there and say, ‘I can’t do it,’ “ she said, worried of being seen by neighbors. “I said to myself, ‘If I don’t do it, this, what will I take to my children?’ “

Ms. Planchart had a string of jobs: cashier, hair salon worker, cook. Then the work disappeared; inflation and food shortages made everything worse. At one point, she said, a neighbor cooked a dog.

As she watched Jean Pierre grow thinner and then stop moving, she decided to seek help from Dr. Machado and other malnutrition experts at the hospital. The doctors don’t have vitamins, antibiotics or serum for sick babies.

“We’re not feeding him well in this hospital,” Dr. Machado said. “No boy like this is going to get better with bananas and cheese.”

Ms. Planchart, meantime, rocked Jean Pierre in her arms, a balm for both.

“He hasn’t fully recovered,” she said of her baby, who now has chickenpox. “The idea is for him to get his weight up and that we get his metabolism to where it should be. But he’s delicate.”

#Venezuela #Venezuelan economy #hunger in Venezuela #malnutrition in Venezuela #starvation in Venezuela

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bigdatanewsmagazine · 7 years

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Interview with Eric Siegel: Popularizing Predictive Analytics with Song and Dance – The Predictive Analytics Times

By: Mélanie Roosen, L’ADN

Originally published in l’ADN (in French)

Hilarious consultant, former professor, and rapper in his off hours, Eric Siegel shows us that data can be fun, and used wisely, quite effective.

With your videos, you managed to provide a very accessible view of data. This is quite interesting, considering data is usually considered a “cold” topic, interesting experts exclusively. How did you turn the geek stereotype into something cool and pop? What is your ambition behind that approach?

When we made the predictive analytics rap music video (www.PredictThis.org), the parody practically wrote itself. After all, the USA’s Chief Data Scientist designated – in a famous article – his own profession “the sexiest job of the 21st century.” But aren’t firemen supposed to be the sexiest? That a geek is actually cool is nothing if not ironic.

I’ve always thought it was helpful and fun to explain a technical concept with a supposedly “cool” song. As a computer science professor at Columbia University around the year 2000, I sang educational songs to my students, such as a rock ballad about the angst of debugging your computer program.

[embedded content]

Can you tell us more about your book, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die?

The book reveals how predictive analytics works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a “how to” for hands-on techies, the book serves lay readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.

I’m a former academic so this conceptually complete introduction to the topic serves as a textbook at over 35 universities. But it does read like a textbook – it is more in the accessible, entertaining “pop science” mode – accessible and relevant to any reader. OTOH, the final 3 chapters cover advanced topics of interest even to the experienced experts.

Amongst the many correlations you talk about in your book, which one is your favorite? The funniest?

Well, I like to lead with the link between ice cream consumption and shark attacks. As one increases, so does the other. Is this because eating ice cream makes a person taste better to a shark? Probably not. The more widely accepted explanation is that it is seasonal: When the weather is hot, more people swim and also more people eat ice cream.

When you find a connection in the data, it is only a correlation – a link that indeed helps predict – but it does not necessarily tell you anything conclusive about causation. When you try to answer “why” and find the explanation, you are seeking a causal explanation, which cannot necessarily be concluded definitively from the analysis itself. As they often say, “correlation does not entail causation.”

Can you give us an example of a brand that has managed to use data to improve its business?

My book’s central table has 181 mini-case studies, so I’m not sure where to start. This includes examples from Airbnb, the BBC, Citibank, ConEd, Facebook, Ford, Google, the IRS, LinkedIn, Match.com, MTV, Netflix, PayPal, Pfizer, Spotify, Uber, UPS, and Wikipedia.

Retailers like Target and many major banks dramatically improve profit by more intelligently targeting their marketing with prediction.

And how about improving the well-being of its consumers?

Healthcare applications are growing rapidly – we’ve even launched an annual Predictive Analytics World event focused on this: the PAW Healthcare conference.

The applications include diagnosis, treatment optimization, hospital admission prediction, targeting compliance intervention (who’s not taking the meds they should be taking?), drug development, drug testing processes, and much more.

How can so-called traditional sectors, such as agriculture, use data efficiently?

Most major sectors are moving into predictive analytics, recognizing the value of optimizing mass-scale operations by way of predicting – for each individual – the likely outcome or behavior. Such predictions directly inform the decision or treatment taken with each individual person, corporate client, voter, automobile to be fixed, building to be inspected for fire risk, etc.

This is a big change to current processes. You can’t just crunch the numbers – you need to take the predictions output by the analytics and use them to drive better decisions. You have to act on them. This means a change to the current process.

Change always meets some resistance. But the value and tremendous results other organizations are achieving pushes this change forward. There is no stopping it.

To match these changes across sectors, we’ve been launching more and more industry-focused Predictive Analytics World events, including PAW Business, PAW Healthcare, PAW Workforce, PAW Manufacturing, PAW Government and PAW Financial Services.

In some sectors, such as health, insurance, or banking, the use of data can impact the relationship between the brand and the consumer. How should companies communicate about the topic?

The choice to not reveal your use of data – to hide what you’re doing – will backfire and only hurt trust. Transparency is critical.

But this must be done prudently. For example, when US retailer Target revealed they’re predicting who is pregnant in order to target marketing, they did it in a clumsy way that resulted in a PR snafu bar none. In my perception, they assumed the public would find it as purely positive as their internal audiences had. Read this article for more info.

In the end, consumers greatly benefit as well. Beyond improving a corporation’s efficiency and profit, the value of predictive analytics for consumers is unquestionable: less junk mail (and better for the environment), more relevant ads, better movie, music, and books recommendations, effective email spam filters (they depend on predictive models), better Google search results, more engaging Facebook feed ordering, more robust healthcare, and increased safety by more effectively targeting the inspection of buildings, manholes, etc.

What would be the greatest danger of data misuse?

How do we safely harness a predictive machine that can foresee job resignation, pregnancy, and crime?

I actually devoted an entire up-front chapter of my book – “Chapter 2: With Power Comes Responsibility: Hewlett-Packard, Target, the Cops, and the NSA Deduce Your Secrets” – to the issues in privacy and other civil liberties.

And how do we achieve value for law enforcement and national security without infringing on rights? See my op-ed in Newsweek on that.

Beyond all that, what if automated security screening discriminates by religion? This isn’t just a prejudicial mindset – it would be the systematic action of pre-judging based on a protected class.

This power/technology is like a knife: It can be used for good or for evil. It is valuable and powerful – that means it can be dangerous, but the idea of universally outlawing it is definitely not on the table.

Related info:

Eric Siegel’s book: Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie or Die (John Wiley & Sons, 2016)

Eric Siegel singing and dancing: Geek Professor Drops Rap Video, Tries to Dance

About Eric Siegel:

Eric Siegel, Ph.D., founder of the Predictive Analytics World conference series and executive editor of The Predictive Analytics Times, makes the how and why of predictive analytics understandable and captivating. In addition to being the author of Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die, Eric is a former Columbia University professor who used to sing to his students, and a renowned speaker, educator, and leader in the field. He has appeared on Al Jazeera America, Bloomberg TV and Radio, Business News Network (Canada), Fox News, Israel National Radio, NPR Marketplace, Radio National (Australia), and TheStreet. Eric and his book have been featured in Businessweek, CBS MoneyWatch, Contagious Magazine, The European Business Review, The Financial Times, Forbes, Forrester, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek, Quartz, Salon, Scientific American, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and WSJ MarketWatch. Follow him at @predictanalytic.

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