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Lenae Litzinger had lived much of her life seeking to please God and others through her own efforts. Gradually she began to relinquish control and enter into more intimacy with God. As illustrated in the cover photograph of her book The Gift God Wants: Finding Joy and Peace in a Life of Surrender, she visualized taking all her "hopes, dreams, talents, all my fears, sins and failures . . . everything that I am, and placing them in a humble, rugged box with a little bow and presenting my 'gift' to the Savior." The book records her experiences as she learns to give that gift to Jesus.
What Mrs. Litzinger lacks in theological depth and biblical insight she makes up for with her honest and personal reflections on what God has taught her. The Gift God Wants is a very personal narrative. It reminded me of sitting in a church small group with a thoughtful, reflective person who bares her soul as we meet. The twenty-six short chapters, each followed with several scripture passages, are just right for daily devotional reading.
The Gift God Wants will appeal especially to young women who enjoy narrative, journal-like devotional reading. But even a middle-age dude like me can enjoy and be inspired by her writing!
Thanks to Lenae Litzinger for the complimentary review copy!


An apparatus for measuring the scattering phase function and linear polarization of aerosol particles has been developed. The apparatus uses an elliptical mirror and CCD camera to image the full angular scattering range simultaneously. An in-line aerodynamic particle sizer (APS) in the particle flow stream provides for the simultaneous measurement of the aerosol particle size distribution. This apparatus allows for a comparison of measured optical properties with theoretical model calculations based on the measured aerosol size distribution. The system was calibrated and tested using monodisperse polystyrene latex (PSL) spheres and with ammonium sulfate (AS) aerosol. We have also used the apparatus for measuring the scattering phase function and linear polarization for light scattering from irregular quartz aerosol particles. Our results show that Mie theory substantially overestimates the backscattering cross-section for quartz particles in the size parameter range X-2-4, in agreement with previous experimental work and theoretical modeling studies. We also present a normalized synthetic phase function for quartz dust aerosol in the accumulation mode size range (0.1-2.0 mu m). (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


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Bob Dylan made a surprise appearance at Farm Aid last night (September 23), marking the first time he’d appeared at the charity concert since he helped to conceive it.
The annual event was founded by Willie Nelson and has taken place since 1985 and raises money to support family farmers in the US. The idea came about when, during his performance at Live Aid to raise money to help support farmers during the Ethiopian famine, Dylan wondered whether a similar event could be worked on to support American farmers. Although Dylan was criticised for this, Nelson thought the idea had potential and worked with Neil Young and John Mellencamp to start Farm Aid.
Dylan performed at the first two iterations of Farm Aid in 1985 and 1986 alongside Young and Mellencamp. However, this year’s concert marked his return.
Dylan was joined by the Heartbreakers for a three-song set, which included his first performance of ‘Maggie’s Farm’ for 14 years as well as ‘Positively 4th Street’ and ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’
The set was streamed in full on YouTube – you can check it out below.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Cash revealed that he had come up with the idea for a project during the COVID-19 pandemic that would have seen rappers form songs based on recently uncovered and unused lyrics from Bob Dylan.
Cash said the project would have been his own spin of the 2014 Bob Dylan-tribute record ‘Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes’, in which artists like Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, and Rhiannon Giddens recorded songs featuring unused Dylan lyrics.
Cash’s version of the project, which would have been called ‘The Attic MP3s’, ultimately never came to fruition, but would ideally have featured performances from Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Post Malone.
While the project never got released, Cash told said that some progress had been made as Dylan’s team green-lit Malone’s involvement in the record and that they had sent him lyrics to work with.
The post Bob Dylan plays surprise set with The Heartbreakers at Farm Aid appeared first on NME.

domain: artistic


Another company out of the running for Obama’s ‘green car’ program
Source: Wash. Post
One of the handful of remaining contenders to win the Obama administration’s funding to build “green” cars is out of the running.
Carbon Motors announced Wednesday afternoon that the Department of Energy has turned down the company’s application for a $335 million loan to build fuel-efficient police vehicles in a Indiana town hard-hit by unemployment. The news comes 30 months after the company first applied under a special green car loan program.
Carbon Motors officials said they had been assured their application to build a new plant, and create an estimated 1,500 jobs, was nearing approval.
ahh.. going to triple check the next 500 million...
Carbon Motors officials blame the department’s decision to turn its project down — and failure to approve any recent loans — on skittishness in the wake of the failure of Solyndra. The now-shuttered solar firm won a $535 million federal loan in the first two months of the Obama administration despite staff concerns about a rushed process and the company’s questionable financial prospects


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This report effectively sums up the news, as of today, concerning Imani Perry’s arrest, the police response from Chief Nick Sutter, and the statement by Princeton University’s president, Christopher Eisgruber. Now there will be a county-wide investigation into the protocol for arrests on bench warrants. Click here for the Planet Princeton report.
Said Chief Sutter: “Regardless of it (the arrest) being 100 percent proper in the eyes of the law, there is a perception because of race. This a problem for me. It is a problem that is real and needs to be addressed. . . . No matter what the facts are, we need to listen to perspectives and get better.”

domain: news


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What can I say about myself? Well I am enjoying my 30’s! I am married and have three kids. Of course someday’s it feels like 4 lol. I live on the West Coast in the United States.
I’m quirky, and chunky and know how to take a joke! I love to laugh and live life and find humor in the small things!
This blog is a new adventure for me and I am loving it! I get to stand on my soap box and throw all my opinions out there. So we will see where they land, if anyone agrees or disagrees and what might come of it.
Things that I like cover an eclectic assortment of topics. I found my husband by internet dating and met and married in 4 months! So I love to talk about marriage, relationships, intimacy, communication, sex and so many other things we face as a married couple.
I am a Christian and am involved in my church. So I will share my journey in growing with Christ. The good, the bad, and the ugly of failing as a human. Places and events to get connected with other followers. One of the most important lessons that I am learning is how to be a good example to my kids and how to show them how amazing God is!
As I woman I have had my ups and downs which includes the fact that I have been single, married young, divorced, single and now married. I was single for most of my twenties so I will talk about the benefits and drawbacks that face single women. Just remember enjoy the journey and don’t always focus on the goal of finding a man!
When I got married my husband came with a present! Three children, oh wait…and two ex-wives! I will share with you the struggles of being a part-time parent and how to deal with exes that still are in your life and always will be.
After five years I have definitely had my triumphs and my failures in being a parent. I will share some of the tips that I have had to learn in order to be a better parent, survive, and thrive!
One of my favorite tops in life is FOOD! I love to find new places to eat, try new dishes and experience the best and the worst in the culinary world!
In addition to food I will talk about my struggle with weight and what has worked for me and what hasn’t. I will also share some of my experiences with holistic medicine for those that aren’t always keen on doctors.
I look forward to your comments and suggestions on topics!
The Sorta Funny Lady

domain: hobby


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This Puppy Found A Home!
This puppy is no longer available.
Piper is a sweet and loving English Cream Golden Retriever puppy that can’t wait to put a smile on your face. This charmer is very playful and will make the perfect pet. Piper is vet checked and up to date on shots and wormer. She can also be registered with the AKC and comes with a health guarantee provided by the breeder. To welcome this puppy into your home please contact Henry today.

domain: pet


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Discover more from eva's experiments
Crypto Skepticism in 2022
Request for crypto startups at the edge of the rabbit hole - for Christmas I got a guide to "how to write unpopular takes online", and this is the result.
During the holidays, I found myself at a strange inflection point - while I’ve usually been the skeptic at the table, I was defending new crypto projects at dinner. I guess you either die a hero, or live long enough to tell other people which crypto projects you’re into at the bar.
Crypto discourse seems to be up in arms in ways other tech. discourse isn’t - people either are all in (staking bluechips and altcoins, buying NFTs, BAYC avatars, voting in DAOs, commenting NGMI or FUD), or think we’re at the tipping point of a scam (pointing to DOGE and rug pulls, linking to AirDrop fraud, gleeful comments on BTC volatility and ponzi schemes, commenting “right click save”). Within crypto, the discourse on momentum and incentives can also get heated (e.g. winter holiday Jack vs VC tango).
Very few people I know, especially people also worried about inflation, are staking BTC and bluechips with no strong opinions on the rest of the cryptoverse (or perhaps this is the silent majority.) Very few people who spent time “going down the rabbit hole” made their way back and posted publicly.It’s much easier to find informed pro-crypto takes than informed, anti-crypto takes (although perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s quite easy for sanity and skepticism to be mistaken for criticism online, and sometimes “balanced takes” are in fact meant as such).
This is not a “speculation” or a “wagmi” post- there are plenty of those online. Balanced takes are hard especially when there are fully vested interests that discredit the strengths of the positions, no matter how informed they are (e.g. Vitalik on Etherum, or Munger on fiat).
This is my attempt at summarizing what I think prevents a lot of people from fully on ramping into crypto, and some of my own outstanding questions on where we are headed in 2022.
In other words, this is a steelmanned case for being skeptical of crypto, and vice versa.(Probably will do wonders for my popularity online - oh well.)
This post is probably only interesting to people who are crypto-curious but want to do their homework, or people in web3 who want to consider the sources of skepticism for mass adoption. I found some great starter reports (which I’ve attached below) that are much better-informed than mine.
For people who want to ask more boring and niche questions on crypto + VC: Given recent developments in private markets and venture, I also tried to do my own homework for a reality check on anecdotes I’ve been hearing (e.g. 1.5-2X markups relative to the median tech startup at early stage, major redirection of talent, tradFi pivots, etc).
I don’t have conclusions to outstanding questions about the role of venture funding in crypto, but attempted to summarize findings - if you have any answers to those questions that are compelling, I may update the below.
These are smarter, better-informed, and more comprehensive takes than mine. They are also things that don’t cost that much time or money to try if you just want to see for yourself, which if you’re like me, is much more helpful than reading about it.
There are better-informed people on the difference between ZK vs Optimistic rollups, the future of bridges, or structuring a SAFT vs a SAFE. I will try to point them out so you can find them if you want to. The below assumes some understanding of the blockchain, Bitcoin / Ethereum, and browser compatibility.
Skim the Block report highlights 2022.
Read Coinbase guide on altcoin and defi tokens.
Try setting up a hot, custodial software wallet for the first time. Do something via a centralised exchange. (e.g. buying something on Coinbase, crypto.com, Binance).
Try setting up a hot, noncustodial software wallet for the first time (e.g. MetaMask, Phantom for Sol, Coinbase Wallet). Buy something on a decentralised exchange (e.g. Uniswap for Eth) or send a sum to your non-custodial wallet from your custodial wallet.
Bonus - try setting up a cold wallet for the first time (e.g. Ledger Nano X).
Try staking a coin or reading up on a consumer-fintech solution based on crypto for the first time (e.g. Eco, Celsius).
Try buying or listing a NFT for the first time. (e.g. Solsea for Sol, OpenSea for Eth).
Join a DAO (example list here).
Devs: Try building something (e.g. your own DAO in JS, a smart contract in Solidity, your NFT collection on Sol) for the first time via buildspace.so.
Reasons to be skeptical.
Here are some major reasons people are skeptical of the momentum in crypto. (Aka common Q&A from relatives on why crypto won’t disappear in 10 years or stagnate.)
I’ve given my best steel man for the skepticism, and attached my thoughts on how strong each point is in the second bullet point.
Crypto has no “intrinsic” value. Specifically, crypto has no value-add over fiat.
The steelman here was the toughest to articulate - it is easier to show the existence of some value than to show something entirely has no value.
It is fairly straightforward to see, even if you think the coins and the marketplace products themselves hold no value, that cryptocurrencies provide flexibility that is useful to a small portion of the financial industry with a new structure.
A balanced steelman here would make the case that crypto has no “intrinsic” value to the average consumer who isn’t in the financial or trading industry. Mezzanine financing may be a very useful type of debt instrument, but to the average consumer it means nothing. A measure of value here then might be the use of crypto in making purchases the average consumer might want (I’m aware this is a productivity-centric, consumerism position to take, but if you have to fault me something, fault me for using this as the premise).
A low bar to meet for “intrinsic value” is whether crypto would make for easier economic transactions - Nixon unpegging the US dollar from the Gold standard in 1971 was useful to the average consumer, because it allowed for easier flow of money for everyone who would want to make a purchase given the shortage of gold.
A higher bar to meet for “value” is whether the average person can make purchases with crypto, in ways that can’t be done with existing solutions.
The steelman here is that neither bar is met, and that crypto won’t be used for day to day functioning.
One way to see crypto’s value-add is the scale at which crowdsourcing and funding is done - an improvement of 10X in speed, or coordination size, or participant pool, over existing solutions. One post that gave examples was Balaji’s post on what has the blockchain done for us? (e.g. in intermediate international wire transfers, and in crowdfunding efforts).
Here are some examples with coordination size and participant pools:
Opening faster access to international moneyflow. the average consumer in the US can send money to someone located in Venezuela, for roughly the same amount of time and money they can send their neighbour. This is cheaper than using bank infra and sending via SWIFT. See this post on crypto international remittance as a use case.
Opening access to small and expensive marketplaces. The average consumer can sell art digitally, and trace ownership on a public network.
Opening access to large, private ownership. The average consumer can publicly find, and regularly vote on and control large crowdfunded projects that was previously too expensive on an individual level to control (e.g. LinksDAO to own a golf course, KrauseHouseDAO to own a NBA team, CityDAO to control a patch of land in Wyoming.)
Here are some protocol-specific examples (some of these may be considered regulatory arbitrage, see below).
the average consumer can buy carbon credits and vote on policy via KlimaDAO, and fundraise quickly enough to 2X voluntary credit prices in a year.
the average non-US consumer who didn’t have access to US exchanges can buy synthetic assets that track equity markets via the Mirror Protocol on Terra.
Here are some things you can do with fiat you can’t do with crypto.
Buy things at the grocery store, at the car dealership, or other retail stores
Hand the money to someone else in person
Have your bank flag or cancel your transaction if you suspect you lost your card
There are additionally some advocates for Bitcoin as a store of value in replacement of fiat and gold as an inflation hedge.
While there seems to be demand for crypto solutions in the financial industry, we are still in early days for larger consumer demand.
Crypto is legal arbitrage.
The steelman here is that all the benefits of crypto merely arises from “regulatory arbitrage”, or otherwise known as doing something you can’t do in a well-regulated space A in a less-regulated space B (mostly due to how quickly B develops). This is especially true in deFi, where regulations around investing in know your customer (KYC) are just starting to catch up to crypto resulting in lost users, and unregistered swaps fines for exchanges. The flexibility that comes with crypto leads to less recourse for large fraud, and therefore the space is due for regulation soon. A case could be made that benefits or desire to use crypto may disappear once SEC or other regulatory power catches up to crypto.
A lot of the argument countering this take rely on my perspective on the role of regulation, the type of posturing we’re seeing, as well as the Overton window around tech. regulation in the recent 3-5 years. Without passing value judgement on whether this is a good thing, here’s a claim: you can always build faster than a group of people trying to reach consensus or write about what you’re building (i.e. the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applied to regulation). It took 8 years after the initial launch of Bitcoin for regulation to come out on tokens. While this timeline has accelerated in recent years, it is upper bounded by the reactionary speed to building.
The flip-side of regulatory risk here is opportunity: who is going to be the Delaware to LLCs but for DAOs?If regulation for web3 has the chance to be different than web2 for the exact same space, will there be an opportunity for better reform? My other slightly controversial take (again without prescribing value judgement) is: if you do regulatory arbitration well for scale, is it really a headwind? (See history of Paypal early days where fraud prevention should have been part of the equation, but wasn’t, to which its early user audience and success could be attributed, which is a form of regulatory arbitrage. It got bad enough Louisiana banned Paypal.)
Any disruptive change will come with regulatory arbitrage (e.g. any of the FAMGAs brought to court for monopoly in early days). If crypto’s benefits come from speed, or from other values, arbitrage itself is not something to discount it for. This counterpoint is anchored on crypto value add existing in other forms.
Decentralisation is a net good thing BUT crypto isn’t going to be decentralised.
The steelman here is that no matter how generously you cut it, the overwhelming majority of crypto and web3 is not truly decentralised, because layer 0 (or even <0) is not truly decentralised. This is a devastating claim if you consider the only benefit of crypto to be decentralisation to justify the switchover cost (this assume many reasons for why decentralisation, in principle, is a good thing). The centralisation here is sometimes unspoken, and sometimes explicit. Taking out a US-E1 cluster can bring down an entire major crypto project. A DAO beyond a certain size will have a few key organisers who get overwhelming direction on the project. OpenSea (or any centralised exchange or marketplace) will have the same moderation issues centralised platforms had in web2 once they catch up to web2 market share.If centralized marketplaces can flag & block “stolen” NFTs—effectively delegitimizing the ledger—then what’s the point of the blockchain? The end state of decentralized protocols will likely be the same system we have today: banks reversing transactions they deem illegitimate.
Financial advantages (e.g. if you are an investor) will follow from web2 into web3, and a small portion of whale backers and investors may control a large portion of crypto and web3. Vitalik alone can sway the price of Eth if he wanted to. The case here is that crypto doesn’t contribute significantly to decentralisation for the switchover cost from fiat to be worth it.
The comparative is the type of decentralisation - in many ways, it’s not a matter of “decentralisation” but rather the smaller differences between “distribution”. We’re never going to get either extremes of centralisation or decentralisation. At best, we will get a “representative” on-chain decentralised version of our existing world. (E.g. in DAOs we’re already starting to see this type of representative democracy appear in ENS domains where people give their vote to delegates.)
Consider a supply of resources (money, power, thing X). In either a centralised world or decentralised world everyone will have some finite supply of it. The under-justified claim is so long as even a slightly larger of people feel empowered to have agency (e.g. more flexibility, convenience, speed, more thing X, more desire to exercise thing X) in some way, the type of new distribution in crypto is worth the cost.
To see this, if crypto democratised financial knowledge and vehicles in the same ways the Internet democratised information, it’s a net sustainable and good change. There are maybe 3 things you can do on the Internet that you couldn’t do before the Internet with a couple of steps or years added (try naming a few). While decentralisation can be done in existing ways (i.e Robinhood or Wealthfront democratised personalized investing), if crypto supports versions of it that don’t exist right now, it’s a net useful thing. The more interesting dimension here is “who gets liquidity” rather than “how much liquidity”.
Decentralisation is actually a net bad thing, AND the best version of crypto would have the same negative consequences.
The case here is that decentralisation and convenience are opposite each other. This is true right now due to scale of operations, but not intrinsically true to decentralisation. It also is useful to call out the types of decentralisation (political, administrative, fiscal, market). Administrative decentralisation is more convenient at scale (e.g. the most extreme form of devolution is when A sends B something without middle entities), political decentralistation is less convenient at scale but may have other value (e.g. everyone has to vote to decide on something). The case here is that economies of scale runs opposite of “decentralisation”. Multi-chain projects will necessitate having a “central”, or common denominator bridge for scale to play out. The biggest concern is that we converge towards the exact same structure on the Internet, but retain worse performance due to loss of scale.
Here are some example takes on the costs of decentralisation:
The optimistic case here first assumes a bit of anecdotal faith in open-source development at scale as a principle (and with ample evidence that it has worked in the past for what people consider web2, in prominent examples such as operating systems). Developers taking the initiative to contribute to forks and clusters of projects, have worked out the problems with decentralisation, in the majority of cases. It takes a bit of a leap to see how decentralisation benefits DAOs and project governance, but the fun thing with the internet is you can put more (and likely better-informed heads) together to figure it out. (A bit of a cop out, I know.)
Centralisation result in monopolies of some form. Monopolies come with benefits of scale, but price-fixing, quality, and lack of incentive for innovation are many well-understood economic drawbacks. To defend centralisation out of short-horizon convenience is to neglect long-horizon benefits decentralisation bring. For instance, Google has not truly made palpable significant improvements to the quality of its search engine, and there are some arguments it’s degraded over time. Facebook is able to force everyone to download Messenger or remove account handles when it wants to (this is not to say that web3 does not currently have the same problems). If Amazon wanted to push its own products over SMB sellers, it could.
The best case to make about the benefits of decentralisation is positional - unless you’re already in the 1% of authority or power, you don’t have much to lose with true decentralisation. It’s not a big leap to see that if you have an institutional chokehold on resources, there’s no benefit to decentralisation for you. The wild guess I’m making here is that the majority of people in the web2 world, or ones reading this post, are not in that position.
Already we’re starting to see some benefits, in media. A sound.xyz attempting to change how music labels work may give more power to creators, or Discord letting anyone join and see historical community records is useful to those that didn’t have access before. The web2 version of this is YouTube letting many new creators upload, leading to more diverse content and new revenue streams.
The people who argue against decentralisation in web3 likely already, both knowingly or unknowingly, advocated for decentralisation in web2 (e.g. sound.XYZ to YouTube is YouTube to MTV). The same case is made for the people who argue for decentralisation, but also for exclusivity in web3 community. It’s a matter of positional change.
The tough call here again is the extremely high risk in a middle ground - decentralisation is good in principle but bad executed poorly, shifting costs to everyone. You can make many good faith arguments for/counter this (regardless of your positional change), depending on your own mental model for the risk.
Crypto is just momentum.
The steelman here is that a lot of crypto does seem to be momentum - there’s no good case to be made for why DOGE or ConsitutionDAO has the valuation or backing they see if they weren’t fun to support without a crowd behind it (which is what constitute “speculation” or “hype” to most.) Many people won’t be in crypto if the financial incentives weren’t good. The case to be made here is that little progress will survive a winter.
Hype-as-a-product (HaaP) exists in anything - there will be a Gamestop to pour money into in any world, and there will always actors who optimize for gimmicks (and to that I say, let them.) In any market euphoria or innovation, a portion of current users is guaranteed to leave in a winter.
The question here that’s more interesting here is the exact retention percentage and critical mass. Once a space hits critical mass or a milestone, the retention rates will be high enough winter recovery becomes easier (or you can raise enough money and decrease burn rate to survive a winter i.e, Amazon’s recovery post dot com bubble).
The key milestones in my mind for crypto are
the average consumer finds it easy to set up a wallet
the average consumer prefers sending cryptocurrency to friends using a deFi wallet rather than sending fiat through Venmo
the average consumer saves via crypto “banks” rather than the bank
Suppose crypto follows the early adoption curve model (2.5%, 13.5%, 34%, 34%, 16%). Right now in the US there is an estimated 16% who has traded crypto. It took the Internet 5 years to be adopted. I am not going to give a number here for crypto milestones, just as I won’t attempt to estimate time to level 5 self-driving or nuclear fusion, because I’ll inevitably be wrong. You can probably get similar back of the napkin math fairly easily (3 growth models for pessimist, middle, optimist).
Crypto deFi solutions break if we have quantum computers.
The steel man here is existing crypto solutions aren’t post-quantum ready, relative to financial institutions. The existing financial system is reliant on AES-256 (or the “bank standard”), which is believed to be quantum resistant. A messaging app (commonly used in crypto communities) like Telegram which uses Diffie-Hellman, or Etherum which uses ECDSA, will break with the right quantum computer.
Some cryptocurrencies are starting to research or deploy quantum resistant versions (e.g. Eth 2.0 may include quantum resistant signatures such as XMSS and SPHINCS to take out ECDSA). There *seems to be* enough developer momentum to outpace the speed of quantum computing development. Keep in mind that NIST and therefore most US standards is still determining a new quantum-resistant algorithm in early 2022.
The metaverse is a dark direction for the world.
I failed to make the case and counter here, because the idea of the Sims-fication of reality is just flat out … unappealing personally.I have yet to meet anyone who is into the concept.
There is sentiment that Metaverse is a tactic for Facebook to reclaim hardware and App territory it lost via smartphones and App Stores, happened to bundle in with crypto momentum (see Benedict Evan’s post here). More interesting cases for VR might be filling gaps in reality (e.g. operating room simulation, security training). More interesting use cases for avatar lives interesting might be bringing back Club Penguin.Gamification of reality is not something (77% of those surveyed) many feel compelled to sacrifice ScreenTime for.
However - the success of the Metaverse won’t make or break crypto as a whole.
At the end of the day, it probably doesn’t matter to the markets which world gets the credit, so long as the job gets done - it doesn’t really matter if someone uses Coinbase over Robinhood if they get the same yield, or if someone publishes using mirror.xyz over Substack.It doesn’t really matter if you slap a web3 label on a solution, or not. A cryptocurrency that runs on AWS will inevitably be a mix of both worlds, and the disambiguation of the 2 worlds can be both a difficult and silly exercise.
The type of ideological momentum behind crypto isn’t personally compelling, and probably isn’t that compelling to the average consumer in the long run - my horse, and theirs, will be with what gets the job done best. If using (Metamask/Eth) to send 50 units worth of a currency cost 25 units in gas fees, and using (Paypal/USD) costs 2 units, it’s not hard to see which one will get chosen. This is not to say it doesn’t take time and scale to get to a certain goal, but novelty alone may not be enough reason to get there.
There isn’t really a conclusion, except that skepticism presents for opportunity. With 84% of the population not yet on-ramped, it is important to question which sources for skepticism attribute to the biggest adoption gap.
Reasons to be excited.
Here all the reasons I’m still excited about crypto and on-chain solutions (as well as the doubts that I have about them).
Default attitude pro-innovation and change.
If you like change or new technology, you should at least be somewhat excited about (or be able to clearly articulate what you think is missing from) crypto talent. Seeing a large flow of talent from large tech. organisations to new crypto projects and open-source hacking feels like a nice homecoming on what’s rewarded in tech culture.
The majority of crypto and blockchain use cases are in the financial industry. It’d be interesting for some attention to go to the intersection of blockchain use cases for science and other industries. For talent, funding science knowledge via web3 momentum and making it easier to get generalised dev. education seem to be good ways to go. See below on some ways we can get there.
Use cases beyond fintech.
The use case of blockchain falls far beyond decentralised P2P transactions. Under-explored applications include
understanding data exchange and privacy problems (e.g. in healthcare, or biding cases)
looking at on-chain similarities with biological and physical structures (e.g. genomics)
looking at on-chain similarities with looking at information asymmetry in commercial, cross-national projects with large coordination problems (e.g. supply chain)
creating on-chain governance projects for real-world, high-cost bureaucracies (privacy-preserving voting cases, DAOs as a service)
On-boarding as an opportunity.
Given the distribution of early adoption, on-ramping and top-of funnel presents a big opportunity (thread below).I think whoever owns the onramps to web3 (exchanges, wallets, education, etc) has a big opportunity to bundle downstream products. The simple reason is 99% of the population has not been onboarded yet.
Some other gaps (unfiltered) for mass adoption:
non-custodial, privacy first wallets (with social-based or other forms of backup)
1-tap RFID-based payments hardware (e.g. Stripe Terminal for crypto)
1-tap automated token function guides - what can each token or coin you hold do (e.g. governance, staking) without reading entire developer docs?
well-bucketed crypto S&P index outside of BTC
crypto insurance and fraud recourse for consumers
exchanges for easy internationalization (big exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase are still available based on location)
white labelled Discord with project-specific UI
Outstanding questions for crypto venture.
More involved outstanding questions for people are thinking about BUIDLING and momentum, and timing raises.
Are crypto “exits” faster? How long does it take for the median and average crypto early stage startup to exit (relative to other spaces) ?
The median timeline for a fintech startup is 3 years - if you consider the average crypto startup for a tradFi exit (i.e IPO, M&A), the timeline is in fact, the same.
What makes crypto exits and liquidity a bit more interesting is when token issues are involved. It appears that the average time to token release is 1 year. The average time between funding rounds in early stage ventures is 12-18 months.
The type of exit timing we’re seeing in crypto is then, similar to ones we would see for a tech company (factoring in that venture in 2022 is not the same venture market in 2019), holding revenue and liquidity constant.
Now the question is: how much of the revenue is self-sustaining, or sustained by funding from outside investment? For instance, if the only users a L2 protocol has are all in crypto (and that in turn is backed by venture), and vice versa in another company, such a system isn’t self-sustaining in the long-run. I don’t have a great answer to this since it’s anchored on assumptions for crypto for mass adoption within the financial industry or for consumers.
Hybrid tokenomics and shares - are SAFTs actually a good idea? What mix of tokenomics and shares make the most sense? The tokenomics that come with each mix of token issuing and equity may depend on the exact purpose of the crypto company. A mining company won’t have the same tokenomics that work well for a layer 2 company building on top of ERC-20, or a parachain or bridge protocol.
What is a good way to structure tokens, and bundle their purposes (e.g. governance, staking, API use cases for lending, borrowing, etc.)? Do people actually want to vote with governance tokens? More interestingly - is there a metric that can be the TVL for on-chain governance participation?
Structuring venture funding in crypto, vs. crowdsourcing. It’s fairly evident (and therefore less interesting for me to make the same point) that traditional venture involvement in crypto has increased over the past year or so. My questions here are around the right balance between crypto native communities and venture funding, for each type of crypto project. These concerns are particularly difficult in community based projects (e.g. see OpenSea IPO backlash.) One particular type of information shortage is around initial Dex Offering (IDO), particularly comparability to IPOs.
I did some digging to figure out some of the above exit trends, and present the below without much commentary. Here is IPOs and M&A data I pooled for 2021 via Crunchbase, Pitchbook, and crawling Coinmarketcap, Coindesk, etc, with caveats.
2021 Crypto IPOs
2021 Crypto M&As
Screenshot below, happy to share the original analysis and tags with people who are interested.
Distribution of founding date for companies who IPOed or were acquired
Distribution of founding date for companies who issued tokens
Before reading the rest of this post, here are some disclaimers and notes on my position:
You should feel free to fact-check me if anything looks off. I will add corrections with a note.
I hold long positions in certain crypto-currencies, and also in fiat public markets. I spend most of my time in fields that benefit from centralising information, credentials, and authority (AI, science, academia, institutions). I still believe that advances in fields with centralised authority and credentials are very important. I don’t think qualifications are the same thing as credentials, but in some places they seem to be the least worst proxy we have on qualifications.
I’m not speaking on behalf of organizations I work(ed) and invest(ed) for. I link content where I want to, not because I’m sponsored, told to, or necessarily agree with author stances.
Note from a good comment: this post isn’t meant to be FUD. It’s meant to be a nuanced take that help you make a decision on inroads you can work on, which gaps to look at, or decide on whether you want to spend time in crypto. (I’m sorry I wrote you such a long post, I didn’t have time to write a short one.) At the end of the day, you can see that I’m excited by building in crypto (and have taken a side) despite the skepticism perspectives here. I think a strong bias towards action and a healthy dose of skepticism can exist and should exist at the same time, and it’s important to switch between “move fast and break things” mode and “here are all the ways this won’t work” mode, so you can troubleshoot. Anything that is worthwhile and sustainable can withstand some skepticism here and there.
Thank you: Thanks to people who gave feedback and notes! Feel free to drop me a note, thoughts always welcome. Happy to share the crypto startup exits data and rounds info. I pooled with people who would find it helpful, especially people who are building.
The 2013, 2016 and 2020 crypto crowds are very different. If you were in the 2016 wave but not in the 2020 wave (or if you came back to it after a pause), my DMs are open to why this is the case. I am also especially curious to talk to smaller portions of the demographic (e.g. risk-seeking Gen-zs who aren’t interested in crypto, and risk-averse Gen-xs who are interested in crypto). For instance, If you put most of your fiat money on S&P and most of your crypto allocation on altcoins and NFTs, or if you actively invest in fiat micro caps and forex but don’t touch crypto, I would love to hear from you! Understanding what it takes to de-risk trying new things in general is interesting to me.
I’m not going to try to convince you on whether you should spend more or less time in crypto., but my position is probably evident from this post.
Crypto has exciting potential, but I think much is missing from the current momentum for it to onramp half or more of the population. I believe a winter is coming, but I don’t know when. My uninitiated take, is not that soon, and some better-informed researchers linked in this post agree. In other words, I’m a skeptic, but hopefully less of a critic. Criticizing new things is easier than doing doing the new thing, and I welcome corrections if you think I misrepresented certain lines of work here (there’s a P!=NP joke here but I will refrain).
I am excited by only a small portion of projects we see in the space, but am excited by the level of talent and interest we’re seeing. I personally would be very excited to see progress in certain directions, and would spend all of my time in the space if I find good answers to outstanding questions.
The straw man cases don’t really interest me (e.g. engaging Keanu Reeves on why NFTs are not just “right click saves”, or engaging DOGE proponents on why diamond hand threads are not moat). It’s especially easy to make straw man cases for anything new, since uncertainty itself is always a headwind.
For people who are coming across custodial vs non-custodial (self-custodial) for the first time, custodial = the platform has your private keys, non-custodial = you write down your own private keys. For instance, you save your own private key when you sign up for a Coinbase cold wallet (non-custodial), whereas on Coinbase when you buy coins it implicitly saves your key for you (custodial). Coinbase exchange is custodial, whereas Uniswap is non-custodial (referred to as a DEX).
If you want to play with a smaller amount or don’t want high gas fees, playing around with an altcoin like Solana or Terra for the first time could be a good idea. You can also try with Polkadot, but right now it doesn’t really have enough dev support for it to be easy for onboarding.
It’s interesting to consider how much of it is intrinsic to fiat, and how much of it is interesting to “trust” in the consensus of something having value.
I’m not going to touch whether Bitcoin is a better store of value or as an inflation hedge against the dollar. See page 160 in the Block's report for more, and read the Everything Bubble on recession predictions.
Wyoming or Miami might be, we shall see.
The dot-com bubble lasted around 2 years. There’s concern that crypto dot-com bubble 2.0. Assuming that we are, it’s interesting to consider Fred Wilson’s quote (he lost 90% of net worth in the bubble): “A friend of mine has a great line. He says ‘Nothing important has ever been built without irrational exuberance’. Meaning that you need some of this mania to cause investors to open up their pocketbooks and finance the building of the railroads or the automobile or aerospace industry or whatever. And in this case, much of the capital invested was lost, but also much of it was invested in a very high throughput backbone for the Internet, and lots of software that works, and databases, and server structure. All that stuff has allowed what we have today, which has changed our lives … that’s what all this speculative mania built.” He advises not going all in to speculative bubbles.
In the dot-com bubble, it was possible to IPO without steady revenue or profitability. The fragility especially came from heavy net operating losses in marketing to optimize for growth and future profitability.
I like the outdoors, physical things, and technology with good haptics (no one can convince me to give up my old phone with touchID). I am more interested in Terraforming Mars, period, than Terraforming Mars in the Metaverse. New tech. for the sake of new tech is not interesting to me personally, and it’s difficult to try to make a case for recreating a universe at the cost of the old one.
Cue rightfully deserved hate from gamers. Maybe I’m no fun but Meta will have to do better than Horizon World Workrooms.
Web2 and web3 solutions don’t have to compete, but they are de facto competitors right now. Is the same firm allowed to invest in both Mirror and Substack? The answer is apparently yes. Will I get blocked on Twitter for this footnote, only time will tell. (If anyone referenced unexpectedly made it all the way here, leaning into the blocking is the right way to go.)
Pragmatism is no fun but I never promised fun.
This is meant to be a comprehensive list, with a couple of caveats, including but not limited to 1. excluding acquisitions by Crypto companies that aren’t based with crypto tech. (e.g. Coinbase buying Agara, a customer support chat bot) 2. Consultancies and and holding companies. Some descriptions in Pitchbook and CB are not up to date, and my analysis might miss some categorizations.

domain: economics


text:
Sveta Matskevich grew up in the Ukraine and came to Israel in 1992. She joined the Tel Dor project in 1995 and worked her way up from recorder to area supervisor, assistant architect and data-base administrator.
She finished her B.A. in archaeology and history of art at the Hebrew University in 1997, and wrote her M.A. thesis on the stratigraphy and pottery analysis of the early Iron Age layers in area B1 of Tel Dor.
She participated in the publication of material from Tel Dan and En Gedi in Israel, and in several excavation campaigns in Tiryns (Greece).
Her interests also include the uses of computers in archaeology: database systems, computer-aided drafting, visual presentations, and Web publishing.

domain: history


Four BYU choirs and the BYU Philharmonic Orchestra will perform three Christmas concerts in the de Jong Concert Hall
Performance Dates and Times: Dec. 1-2 | 7:30 p.m. | Dec. 2 | 3:00 p.m.
Location: de Jong Concert Hall, Franklin S. Harris Fine Arts Center, BYU
Price: $17 ($5 off with BYU or student ID, $1 off for senior citizens or alumni)
Tickets: Available in person at the BYU Ticket Office in the Harris Fine Arts Center or Marriott Center, by phone at 801-422-2981 or online at byuarts.com
Celebration of Christmas, the annual musical extravaganza, will bring the joy of the Christmas season to Brigham Young University. The concert will include performances by all four of BYU’s top choirs, BYU Singers, BYU Concert Choir, BYU Women’s Chorus and BYU Men’s Chorus, as well as the BYU Philharmonic Orchestra. BYU Concert Choir and BYU Men’s Chorus will be directed by Rosalind Hall, BYU Singers by Andrew Crane, BYU Women’s Chorus by Jean Applonie and BYU Philharmonic by Kory Katseanes.
The choral portion of the program will open with the combined choirs singing a sparkling arrangement of “Ding! Dong! Merrily on High” by Ryan Murphy. The individual choirs will sing holiday standards like “Jingle Bells,” sung by the BYU Singers, and “Away in a Manger,” by the BYU Women’s Chorus. Other selections will include some of the most notable carols written for choir such as “Welcome Yule” from “Salvator Mundi,” a carol sequence by William Mathias which will be sung by the BYU Men’s Chorus.
The BYU Choirs’ new music video for “Wishes and Candles,” by Stephen Paulus, will also premiere at the concert, featuring all four choirs. The video will also be available to view on Youtube on Dec. 1. Last year’s video, “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” can be seen here.
The BYU Philharmonic will open the orchestral half of the concert with selections from “The Nutcracker,” followed by one of the most popular orchestral Christmas pieces, “Sleigh Ride.”
The orchestra will be joined by Joshua Lindsay, vocal performance professor and director of opera for the BYU School of Music. Lindsay will sing “Ave Maria,” by Franz Schubert, and “Esta Noche,” a traditional Spanish Carol arranged by John Rutter.
The final number will be a gorgeous arrangement of “Silent Night” for combined choirs and orchestra by David Zabriskie. It is sure to be the perfect finale to an evening that will set audiences off feeling the spirit of the season.
As a special gift, the BYU Men’s Chorus wishes you a Merry Christmas with its newest free song download, “It Is Well with My Soul,” arranged by Lane Johnson. This annual tradition is a continuation of the choir’s free album of missionary hymns, “Set Apart.” The new song can be downloaded on Dec. 1 here.
Writer: Amanda Shrum


text:
Central Wisconsin's Largest Stamp Store since 1997
Monday, November 18, 2013
PPRS Winter 2 Release
Today we are featuring the Winter 2 Release from Prickley Pear Rubber Stamps. These elegant stamps are perfect for this winter's card projects. I am using the Birds in Holly that I stamped on white card stock. Then I colored the image with Copic Markers and then cut them out. I popped them up over a doily die from Cheery Lynn Designs. The background paper with the musical notes seemed to fit perfectly with the Let Heaven & Nature Sing sentiment. Then to add a bit more holly foliage, I used the holly sprig die from Cheery Lynn Designs. Prickley Pear is giving away a prize package to one lucky commenter, so be sure to comment along the way for a greater chance to win! You may want to start at the PPRS blog and work your way through the release. If you arrived here because you were visiting Brenda's Blog, then continue on to Jessica's blog. These adorable stamps are available now.


The Sudanese model Alek Wek appeared on the November 1997 cover of the U.S. edition of Elle magazine, in a photograph by French creative director Gilles Bensimon. It was, as is so often the case in the beauty business, a global production.
Wek, with her velvety ebony skin and mere whisper of an Afro, was posed in front of a stark, white screen. Her simple, white Giorgio Armani blazer almost disappeared into the background. Wek, however, was intensely present.
She was standing at an angle but looking directly into the camera with a pleasant smile spread across her face, which wasn’t so much defined by planes and angles as by sweet, broad, distinctly African curves. Wek represented everything that a traditional cover girl was not.
More than 20 years after she was featured on that Elle cover, the definition of beauty has continued to expand, making room for women of color, obese women, women with vitiligo, bald women, women with gray hair and wrinkles. We are moving toward a culture of big-tent beauty. One in which everyone is welcome. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone’s idealized version can be seen in the pages of magazines or on the runways of Paris.
We have become more accepting because people have demanded it, protested for it, and used the bully pulpit of social media to shame beauty’s gatekeepers into opening the doors wider.
Eye of the beholder
Technology has put the power to define beauty in the hands of the people. Mobile phones allow people greater control of their image, and include apps that come with filters used for fun, appearance, and entertainment.
Wek was a new vision of beauty—that virtue forever attached to women. It has long been a measure of their social value; it is also a tool to be used and manipulated. A woman should not let her beauty go to waste; that was something people would say back when a woman’s future depended on her marrying well. Her husband’s ambition and potential should be as dazzling as her fine features.
Beauty is, of course, cultural. What one community admires may leave another group of people cold or even repulsed. What one individual finds irresistible elicits a shrug from another. Beauty is personal. But it’s also universal. There are international beauties—those people who have come to represent the standard.
For generations, beauty required a slender build but with a generous bosom and a narrow waist. The jawline was to be defined, the cheekbones high and sharp. The nose angular. The lips full but not distractingly so. The eyes, ideally blue or green, large and bright. Hair was to be long, thick, and flowing—and preferably golden. Symmetry was desired. Youthfulness, that went without saying.
This was the standard from the earliest days of women’s magazines, when beauty was codified and commercialized. The so-called great beauties and swans—women such as actress Catherine Deneuve, socialite C.Z. Guest, or Princess Grace—came closest to this ideal. The further one diverged from this version of perfection, the more exotic a woman became. Diverge too much and a woman was simply considered less attractive—or desirable or valuable. And for some women—black and brown or fat or old ones—beauty seemed impossible in the broader culture.
In the early part of the 1990s, the definition of beauty as it applied to women began to loosen thanks to the arrival of Kate Moss, with her slight figure and vaguely ragamuffin aesthetic. Standing five feet seven inches, she was short for a runway walker. The British teenager was not particularly graceful, and she lacked the noble bearing that gave many other models their regal air. Moss’s star turn in advertisements for Calvin Klein signified a major departure from the long-legged gazelles of years past.
Moss was disruptive to the beauty system, but she was still well within the industry’s comfort zone of defining beauty as a white, European conceit. So too were the youthquake models of the 1960s such as Twiggy, who had the gangly, curveless physique of a 12-year-old boy. The 1970s brought Lauren Hutton, who stirred scandal simply because she had a gap between her teeth.
Even the early black models who broke barriers were relatively safe: women such as Beverly Johnson, the first African-American model to appear on the cover of American Vogue, the Somali-born Iman, Naomi Campbell, and Tyra Banks. They had keen features and flowing hair—or wigs or weaves to give the illusion that they did. Iman had a luxuriously long neck that made legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland gasp. Campbell was—and is—all va-va-voom legs and hips, and Banks rose to fame as the girl next door in a polka dot bikini on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Wek was a revelation. Her beauty was something entirely different.
Her tightly coiled hair was sheared close to her scalp. Her seemingly poreless skin was the color of dark chocolate. Her nose was broad; her lips were full. Her legs were impossibly long and incredibly thin. Indeed, her entire body had the stretched-out sinewiness of an African stick figure brought to life.
To eyes that had been trained to understand beauty through the lens of Western culture, Wek was jarring to everyone, and black folks were no exception. Many of them did not consider her beautiful. Even women who might have looked in the mirror and seen the same nearly coal black skin and tightly coiled hair reflected back had trouble reckoning with this Elle cover girl.
See and be seen
Fashion and beauty magazines present a paragon of aspiration, often setting beauty standards for women across cultures. The magazines also serve as giant advertisements for the industries dependent on selling these ideals to willing customers.
Wek was abruptly and urgently transformative. It was as though some great cultural mountain had been scaled by climbing straight up a steep slope, as if there were neither time nor patience for switchbacks. To see Wek celebrated was exhilarating and vertiginous. Everything about her was the opposite of what had come before.
We are in a better place than we were a generation ago, but we have not arrived at utopia. Many of the clubbiest realms of beauty still don’t include larger women, disabled ones, or senior citizens.
But to be honest, I’m not sure exactly what utopia would look like. Is it a world in which everyone gets a tiara and the sash of a beauty queen just for showing up? Or is it one in which the definition of beauty gets stretched so far that it becomes meaningless? Perhaps the way to utopia is by rewriting the definition of the word itself to better reflect how we’ve come to understand it—as something more than an aesthetic pleasure.
We know that beauty has financial value. We want to be around beautiful people because they delight the eye but also because we think they are intrinsically better humans. We’ve been told that attractive people are paid higher salaries. In truth, it’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s really a combination of beauty, intelligence, charm, and collegiality that serves as a recipe for better pay. Still, beauty is an integral part of the equation.
But on a powerfully emotional level, being perceived as attractive means being welcomed into the cultural conversation. You are part of the audience for advertising and marketing. You are desired. You are seen and accepted. When questions arise about someone’s looks, that’s just another way of asking: How acceptable is she? How relevant is she? Does she matter?
Today suggesting that a person is not gorgeous is to risk social shunning or at least a social media lashing. What kind of monster declares another human being unattractive? To do so is to virtually dismiss that person as worthless. It’s better to lie. Of course you’re beautiful, sweetheart; of course you are.
We have come to equate beauty with humanity. If we don’t see the beauty in another person, we are blind to that person’s humanity. It’s scary how important beauty has become. It goes to the very soulfulness of a person.
Beauty has become so important today that denying that people possess it is akin to denying them oxygen.
There used to be gradations when it came to describing the feminine ideal: homely, jolie laide, attractive, pretty, and ultimately, beautiful. The homely woman managed as best she could. She adjusted to the fact that her looks were not her most distinguishing feature. She was the woman with the terrific personality. Striking women had some characteristic that made them stand out: bountiful lips, an aristocratic nose, a glorious poitrine. A lot of women could be described as attractive. They were at the center of the bell curve. Pretty was another level. Hollywood is filled with pretty people.
Ah, but beautiful! Beautiful was a description that was reserved for special cases, for genetic lottery winners. Beauty could even be a burden because it startled people. It intimidated them. Beauty was exceptional.
But improved plastic surgery, more personalized and effective nutrition, the flowering of the fitness industry, and the rise of selfie filters on smartphones, along with Botox, fillers, and the invention of Spanx, have all combined to help us look better—and get a little bit closer to looking exceptional. Therapists, bloggers, influencers, stylists, and well-meaning friends have raised their voices in a chorus of body-positivity mantras: You go, girl! You slay! Yasss, queen! They are not charged with speaking harsh truths and helping us see ourselves vividly and become better versions of ourselves. Their role is constant uplift, to tell us that we are perfect just as we are.
And the globalization of, well, everything means that somewhere out there is an audience that will appreciate you in all your magnificent … whatever.
We are all beautiful.
In New York, London, Milan, and Paris—the traditional fashion capitals of the world—the beauty codes have changed more dramatically in the past 10 years than in the preceding hundred. Historically, shifts had been by degrees. Changes in aesthetics weren’t linear, and despite fashion’s reputation for rebelliousness, change was slow. Revolutions were measured in a few inches.
Through the years, an angular shape has been celebrated and then a more curvaceous one. The average clothing size of a runway model, representative of the designers’ ideal, shrank from a six to a zero; the pale blondes of Eastern Europe ruled the runway until the sun-kissed blondes from Brazil deposed them. The couture body—lean, hipless, and practically flat-chested—can be seen in the classic portraits by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Gordon Parks, as well as on the runways of designers such as John Galliano and the late Alexander McQueen. But then Miuccia Prada, who had led the way in promoting a nearly homogeneous catwalk of pale, white, thin models, suddenly embraced an hourglass shape. And then plus-size model Ashley Graham appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 2016, and in 2019 Halima Aden became the first model to wear a hijab in that same magazine, and suddenly everyone is talking about modesty and beauty and fuller figures … and the progress is dizzying.
In the past decade, beauty has moved resolutely forward into territory that was once deemed niche. Nonbinary and transgender are part of the mainstream beauty narrative. As the rights of LGBTQ individuals have been codified in the courts, so have the aesthetics particular to them been absorbed into the beauty dialogue. Transgender models walk the runways and appear in advertising campaigns. They are hailed on the red carpet for their glamour and good taste but also for their physical characteristics. Their bodies are celebrated as aspirational.
The catalyst for our changed understanding of beauty has been a perfect storm of technology, economics, and a generation of consumers with sharpened aesthetic literacy.
The technology is social media in general and Instagram specifically. The fundamental economic factor is the unrelenting competition for market share and the need for individual companies to grow their audience of potential customers for products ranging from designer dresses to lipstick. And the demographics lead, as they always do these days, to millennials, with an assist from baby boomers who plan to go into that good night with six-pack abs.
Social media has changed the way younger consumers relate to fashion. It’s hard to believe, but back in the 1990s, the notion of photographers posting runway imagery online was scandalous. Designers lived in professional terror of having their entire collection posted online, fearing that it would lead to business-killing knockoffs. And while knockoffs and copies continue to frustrate designers, the real revolution brought on by the internet was that consumers were able to see, in nearly real time, the full breadth of the fashion industry’s aesthetic.
In the past, runway productions were insider affairs. They weren’t meant for public consumption, and the people sitting in the audience all spoke the same fashion patois. They understood that runway ideas weren’t meant to be taken literally; they were oblivious to issues of cultural appropriation, racial stereotypes, and all varieties of isms—or they were willing to overlook them. Fashion’s power brokers were carrying on the traditions of the power brokers who’d come before, happily using black and brown people as props in photo shoots that starred white models who had parachuted in for the job.
But an increasingly diverse class of moneyed consumers, a more expansive retail network, and a new media landscape have forced the fashion industry into greater accountability on how it depicts beauty. Clothing and cosmetic brands now take care to reflect the growing numbers of luxury consumers in countries such as India and China by using more Asian models.
Marked by beauty
We’ve been chasing beauty for millennia, primping and painting our way to a more desirable ideal. Cultures in every era have held different standards of feminine beauty and myriad means of achieving it, from the toxic lead cosmetics of the past to today’s Botox injections. But the standards often serve the same aims: to attract and retain a mate; to signal social status, wealth, health, or fertility; and of course, to simply feel beautiful.
Social media has amplified the voices of minority communities—from Harlem to South Central Los Angeles—so that their calls for representation can’t be so easily ignored. And the growth of digital publications and blogs means that every market has become more fluent in the language of aesthetics. A whole new category of power brokers has emerged: influencers. They are young and independent and obsessed with the glamour of fashion. And fashion influencers don’t accept excuses, condescension, or patronizing pleas to be patient, because really, change is forthcoming.
The modern beauty standard in the West has always been rooted in thinness. And when the obesity rates were lower, thin models were only slight exaggerations in the eyes of the general population. But as obesity rates rose, the distance between the reality and the fantasy grew. People were impatient with a fantasy that no longer seemed even remotely accessible.
Fat bloggers warned critics to stop telling them to lose weight and stop suggesting ways for them to camouflage their body. They were perfectly content with their body, thank you very much. They just wanted better clothes. They wanted fashion that came in their size—not with the skirts made longer or the sheath dresses reworked with sleeves.
They weren’t really demanding to be labeled beautiful. They were demanding access to style because they believed they deserved it. In this way, beauty and self-worth were inextricably bound.
Giving full-figured women greater access made economic sense. By adhering to traditional beauty standards, the fashion industry had been leaving money on the table. Designers such as Christian Siriano made a public point of catering to larger customers and, in doing so, were hailed as smart and as capitalist heroes. Now it’s fairly common for even the most rarefied fashion brands to include large models in their runway shows.
But this new way of thinking isn’t just about selling more dresses. If it were only about economics, designers would have long ago expanded their size offerings, because there have always been larger women able and willing to embrace fashion. Big simply wasn’t considered beautiful. Indeed, even Oprah Winfrey went on a diet before she posed for the cover of Vogue in 1998. As recently as 2012, the designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died last year and who himself was 92 pounds overweight at one point, was called to task for saying that pop star Adele was “a little too fat.”
Attitudes are shifting. But the fashion world remains uneasy with large women—no matter how famous or rich. No matter how pretty their face. Elevating them to iconic status is a complicated, psychological hurdle for the arbiters of beauty. They need sleek élan in their symbols of beauty. They need long lines and sharp edges. They need women who can fit into sample sizes.
But instead of operating in a vacuum, they now are operating in a new media environment. Average folks have taken note of whether designers have a diverse cast of models, and if they do not, critics can voice their ire on social media and an angry army of like-minded souls can rise up and demand change. Digital media has made it easier for stories about emaciated and anorexic models to reach the general public, and the public now has a way to shame and pressure the fashion industry to stop hiring these deathly thin women. The Fashion Spot website became a diversity watchdog, regularly issuing reports on the demographic breakdown on the runways. How many models of color? How many plus-size women? How many of them were transgender? How many older models?
One might think that as female designers themselves aged, they would begin to highlight older women in their work. But women in fashion are part of the same cult of youth that they created. They Botox and diet. They swear by raw food and SoulCycle. How often do you see a chubby designer? A gray-haired one? Designers still use the phrase “old lady” to describe clothes that are unattractive. A “matronly” dress is one that is unflattering or out-of-date. The language makes the bias plain. But today women don’t take it as a matter of course. They revolt. Making “old” synonymous with unattractive is simply not going to stand.
The spread of luxury brands into China, Latin America, and Africa has forced designers to consider how best to market to those consumers while avoiding cultural minefields. They have had to navigate skin lightening in parts of Africa, the Lolita-cute culture of Japan, the obsession with double-eyelid surgery in East Asian countries, and prejudices of colorism, well, virtually everywhere. Idealized beauty needs a new definition. Who will sort it out? And what will the definition be?
In the West, the legacy media are now sharing influence with digital media, social media, and a new generation of writers and editors who came of age in a far more multicultural world—a world that has a more fluid view of gender. The millennial generation, those born between 1981 and 1996, is not inclined to assimilate into the dominant culture but to stand proudly apart from it. The new definition of beauty is being written by a selfie generation: people who are the cover stars of their own narrative.
The new beauty isn’t defined by hairstyles or body shape, by age or skin color. Beauty is becoming less a matter of aesthetics and more about self-awareness, personal swagger, and individuality. It’s about chiseled arms and false eyelashes and a lineless forehead. But it’s also defined by rounded bellies, shimmering silver hair, and mundane imperfections. Beauty is a millennial strutting around town in leggings, a crop top, and her belly protruding over her waistband. It is a young man swishing down a runway in over-the-knee boots and thigh-grazing shorts.
Beauty is political correctness, cultural enlightenment, and social justice.
In New York, there’s a fashion collective called Vaquera that mounts runway shows in dilapidated settings with harsh lighting and no glamour. The cast could have piled off the F train after a sleepless night. Their hair is mussed. Their skin looks like it has a thin sheen of overnight grime. They stomp down the runway. The walk could be interpreted as angry, bumbling, or just a little bit hungover.
Masculine-looking models wear princess dresses that hang from the shoulders with all the allure of a shower curtain. Feminine-looking models aggressively speed-walk with a hunched posture and a grim expression. Instead of elongating legs and creating an hourglass silhouette, the clothes make legs look stumpy and the torso thick. Vaquera is among the many companies that call on street casting, which is basically pulling oddball characters from the street and putting them on the runway—essentially declaring them beautiful.
In Paris, the designer John Galliano, like countless other designers, has been blurring gender. He has done so in a way that’s exaggerated and aggressive, which is to say that instead of aiming to craft a dress or a skirt that caters to the lines of a masculine physique, he has simply draped that physique with a dress. The result is not a garment that ostensibly aims to make individuals look their best. It’s a statement about our stubborn assumptions about gender, clothing, and physical beauty.
Not so long ago, the clothing line Universal Standard published an advertising campaign featuring a woman who wears a U.S. size 24. She posed in her skivvies and a pair of white socks. The lighting was flat, her hair slightly frizzed, and her thighs dimpled with cellulite. There was nothing magical or inaccessible about the image. It was exaggerated realism—the opposite of the Victoria’s Secret angel.
Every accepted idea about beauty is being subverted. This is the new normal, and it is shocking. Some might argue that it’s even rather ugly.
As much as people say that they want inclusiveness and regular-looking people—so-called real people—many consumers remain dismayed that this, this is what passes for beauty. They look at a 200-pound woman and, after giving a cursory nod to her confidence, fret about her health—even though they’ve never seen her medical records. That’s a more polite conversation than one that argues against declaring her beautiful. But the mere fact that this Universal Standard model is in the spotlight in her underwear—just as the Victoria’s Secret angels have been and the Maidenform woman was a generation before that—is an act of political protest. It’s not about wanting to be a pinup but about wanting the right for one’s body to exist without negative judgment. As a society, we haven’t acknowledged her right to simply be. But at least the beauty world is giving her a platform on which to make her case.
This isn’t just a demand being made by full-figured women. Older women are insisting on their place in the culture. Black women are demanding that they be allowed to stand in the spotlight with their natural hair.
There’s no neutral ground. The body, the face, the hair have all become political. Beauty is about respect and value and the right to exist without having to alter who you fundamentally are. For a black woman, having her natural hair perceived as beautiful means that her kinky curls are not an indication of her being unprofessional. For a plus-size woman, having her belly rolls included in the conversation about beauty means that she will not be castigated by strangers for consuming dessert in public; she will not have to prove to her employer that she isn’t lazy or without willpower or otherwise lacking in self-control.
When an older woman’s wrinkles are seen as beautiful, it means that she is actually being seen. She isn’t being overlooked as a full human being: sexual, funny, smart, and, more than likely, deeply engaged in the world around her.
To see the beauty in a woman’s rippling muscles is to embrace her strength but also to shun the notion that female beauty is equated with fragility and weakness. Pure physical power is stunning.
“Own who you are,” read a T-shirt on the spring 2020 runway of Balmain in Paris. The brand’s creative director, Olivier Rousteing, is known for his focus on inclusiveness in beauty. He, along with Kim Kardashian, has helped popularize the notion of “slim thick,” the 21st-century description of an hourglass figure with adjustments made for athleticism. “Slim thick” describes a woman with a prominent derriere, breasts, and thighs, but with a slim, toned midsection. It’s a body type that has sold countless waist trainers and has been applied to women such as singer and fashion entrepreneur Rihanna who do not have the lean physique of a marathoner.
Slim thick may be just another body type over which women obsess. But it also gives women license to coin a term to describe their own body, turn it into a hashtag, and start counting the likes. Own who you are.
When I look at photographs of groups of women on vacation, or a mother with her child, I see friendship and loyalty, joy and love. I see people who seem exuberant and confident. Perhaps if I had the opportunity to speak with them, I’d find them intelligent and witty or incredibly charismatic. If I got to know them and like them, I’m sure I’d also describe them as beautiful.
If I were to look at a portrait of my mother, I would see one of the most beautiful people in the world—not because of her cheekbones or her neat figure, but because I know her heart.
As a culture, we give lip service to the notion that what matters is inner beauty when in fact it’s the outer version that carries the real social currency. The new outlook on beauty dares us to declare someone we haven’t met beautiful. It forces us to presume the best about people. It asks us to connect with people in a way that is almost childlike in its openness and ease.
Modern beauty doesn’t ask us to come to the table without judgment. It simply asks us to come presuming that everyone in attendance has a right to be there.


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Sophomore – Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design
“Human Nature” is a mixed media sculpture meant to highlight the human relationship between conservation and pollution. It was handmade from entirely recycled, recyclable, and compostable components. The use of these materials is important, keeping the process of creating artwork sustainable to work alongside the message. The human face placed in the center of the trash can is meant to convey the realization of the effects of pollution on our earth.
I chose to center my piece around conservation, which is extremely important to me. I am a U of M sustainability ambassador and constantly seek ways to be environmentally friendly. I wanted to focus this piece on the human relationship to how we pollute the environment. I wanted to show in my artwork how by polluting the planet, humans are really just harming themselves. I represented this by hand-sewing a human head and placing it in the middle of the garbage. I chose to create an expression of almost shock or disgust in the man’s head as he sits in the center. I want the head to be the primary focus of the work. This garbage has been sourced from entirely recycled materials. These are materials that I have used the contents of and saved over time. The entire piece is recyclable when it no longer has a use. The work is mixed media, with many different components. There are recycled boxes, bottles, straw wrappers, fabrics, yarns, etc. I used cardboard to create the garbage can. Throughout my process, I chose not to use a lot of supplies based on their level of sustainability. For example, I did not want to incorporate acrylic paint into my work because it is primarily made of plastics, which do not decompose over time. I chose to fill the head with scrap fabric instead of new stuffing. Stuffing is usually also plastic. I want to bring awareness to the concept of sustainability as well as the environmental impact that humans are creating. In order to do this, I feel as if I need to be practicing sustainability in my own processes. The process in a way becomes a huge part of the artwork itself.

domain: design


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Skrillex Reveals New Jack U Track At Exclusive Sirius XM Show
Skrillex played at an exclusive Sirius XM show in New York City yesterday, and the fans in attendance received a nice surprise. The superstar producer wowed the small crowd with a new Jack U track. Check it out below.
Jack U has been one of the most talked about acts in 2014, which comes as no surprise. Even a false rumor that Diplo was booed off stage following a Jack U set at Burning Man set the blogosphere ablaze. It's clear that the dance music world is captivated by Jack U, and we can't wait to hear more new music from Skrillex and Diplo's side project.
[H/T: Dancing Astronaut]
Cover photo credit: Rukes
Follow Jack U:

domain: entertainment


THE NEWSGHOST, NIGERIA – At the end of last month, First City Monument Bank (FCMB) announced the launch of a revolutionary USSD banking service. The service known as the Easy Account is absolutely operated by means of USSD shortcode and account holders will have their phone numbers as their account numbers.
Owing to the USSD technology, it will be possible to access all the usual banking services on your mobile phone without the use of internet. According to the bank, opening this account will not require any visit to the bank or presentation of any document – all you will need is your phone number.
Launching this kind of bank account in Nigeria is a bold and innovative step towards realising financial inclusion across the country.
The USSD code for opening the Easy Account and operating it from your mobile phone is *329#. Your account number will be your phone number with the first zero.
FCMB is renowned as the first bank to be established in Nigeria without government or foreign support.
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Raising the need to develop a new vaccine for tuberculosis, Soumya Swaminathan, former chief scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), said India, considering its accelerated timeline for TB elimination than the rest of the world, should be in the lead, and scientists and researchers around the country as well as globally should come together to develop a better vaccine.
“We need a new vaccine, better diagnostics and point of care. Why can’t we have a rapid test for TB like we have for COVID-19?....The technology, science, researchers and companies are there. I think what is needed is a call, a mission to come together,” she said, delivering an oration on “Towards Health Equity - a vision for India”, organised to mark the 25th year commemoration of REACH, a NGO working in the area of TB, on Friday.
For diseases, which have good vaccines available, there is hope that they could be controlled or even eliminated at some point, she said, adding: “There has to be a global call. We now have genetic sequencing done everywhere. There are new platforms - the mRNA platform, viral vector, DNA, protein subunit and the traditional vaccines. All of these platforms were used for COVID-19. We should be testing all of them for TB also.”
Noting that developing a TB vaccine was not going to be easy, she said with the right investment and collaboration, it was possible to make progress. Dr. Swaminathan earlier pointed out that the BCG vaccine was 100 years old.
She said that findings of the National TB prevalence survey - conducted by Indian Council of Medical Research and WHO - were worrying. Considering the country’s goal of achieving TB elimination by 2025, the prevalence was 300 per 100,000, bacteriologically confirmed TB cases, she said. “The prevalence was the same when I joined the Tuberculosis Research Centre as a young doctor in 1991. That has to make us think why we are not making a dent though there are national programmes and global funding. Still our prevalence is very high, and Tamil Nadu’s prevalence is 322 per 100,000 for all forms of TB. The death rate is around 4%-5%, while it is 6% in T.N. Diabetes, alcohol and TB are very high in T.N. compared to the national average,” she said.
In India, the main risk factor for TB is undernutrition. “This is why we find TB incidence is higher in lower economic groups, especially in tribal and remote rural areas and in the urban poor. This becomes an issue of equity. How do we address this? Why is the TB rate four times more among this group?” she observed.
She called for a science-based approach to be applied to TB control now. “Doing more of the same thing is probably not going to help. We need to brainstorm on where the challenges and gaps are,” she said.
Outlining learnings from the prevalence survey, she said, “First, can we start a massive active case finding programme using X-ray. Second, we need to use more molecular tests. On average, in India, only 20% of patients have access to the first molecular test. During COVID-19, we have done 900 million tests. If we could have scaled up so fast for COVID-19 as there are laboratories everywhere that can do not only PCR but also sequencing, why can’t we use these facilities for TB,” she said.
Health Minister Ma. Subramanian, who released REACH’s new logo and charter on the occasion, said that 96,500 new TB patients were identified in the State last year.
Nalini Krishnan, executive secretary and co-founder, REACH, said TB was still a challenge. “But with new strategies and ‘END TB’ goal, recognition and inclusion of the community, we think this is the best time in the history of TB control to redirect, change our outlook and achieve our common goal of creating a TB-free world,” she said. N. Ram, Director, The Hindu Publishing Group, introduced Dr. Swaminathan. Ramya Ananthakrishnan, director, REACH, Rajivan Krishnaswamy, president, REACH executive committee and Sheela Augustine, deputy director, REACH spoke.

domain: medical


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Over 50% of the traffic in parking lots are from people looking for parking.
(Is anyone else seeing an ad where the post’s text should be?)
It varies, but in busy areas, it can be a significant amount
When we study the issue here, will we become more educated, or might we manage to develop ways to make the situation better? I do not think there is a question that looking for parking contributes to traffic. It is probably more a question of whether this is a main factor, and whether intervening in this would effectively relieve the traffic issue.
Regardless, we are implying that there is frequently, and in many locations, a shortage of available parking. It would be useful and caring for our elected officials to address this, since they can. I can describe many parking regulations that are oppressive, and manage to make many lives difficult. The only reason these are not being addressed is because the present situation insures that there will be illegal parking that can then raise money for parking fines. This is bizarre, but commonplace.
When all cars are self-driving, maybe they’ll also help each other find parking spaces, and then do self–parking.
When the government collects fine money, it has an incentive to cause people to break the law.

domain: sociology


In 2013, Stiftung Warentest tested hazelnut chocolate for their leading magazine, called Test. Stiftung Warentest is one of the most important consumer organizations in Germany. Ritter Sport is a high-quality producer of chocolate in Germany. Their hazelnut chocolate did not pass the test. It was given the grade of unsatisfactory. Stiftung Warentest accused Ritter Sport of labeling an artificial flavoring as a natural flavoring. Ritter Sport rejected the accusation. They went to court and won the trial. Using the Ritter Sport versus Stiftung Warentest case, we analyze whether negative headlines really undermine the credibility of a quality label by examining Stiftung Warentest and their Test label. In addition, we examine what can be done to restore or, more generally, increase the credibility of a quality label. Based on a quasi-natural experiment, we find that the negative headlines on Stiftung Warentest have undermined the credibility of the Test label. We also find that the credibility of the Test label can be restored by providing reference values to the tests, strengthening the independence of Stiftung Warentest, and using laboratory methods in the tests.


WHITEVILLE, Tenn. – With an influx of jobs, people and new businesses to West Tennessee, the City of Whiteville is planning to revitalize its downtown area.
“We have material coming in. We have a building that needs to be demolished,” Whiteville Mayor Gene Bowden said. “It’s going to become a green space, and we’re going to build a pavilion and it can be used as a farmers market or for entertainment purposes.”
Bowden says he wants to take the opportunity to expand with other areas in West Tennessee.
“People are nostalgic for what happened in the old downtown neighborhoods, and so we want to bring that feeling back, but we have to bring the businesses back down,” Bowden said.
Wondering how a city center with few shops became lively and bustling?
Bowden says one business can make or break the area’s popularity.
“You have to start with one company. A company comes up with a product that people love,” Bowden said. “People are going to be attracted there. This will trigger foot traffic and people will start talking.
Before new companies settle in the area, the objective is to start the first phase of the project.
That is, adding the first pavilion, demolishing one of the downtown buildings, and creating green space for picnic tables and lights.
“We’re preparing downtown for these businesses to come here, and we would really like them to come here and become our family,” Bowden said.
Bowden says if residents have questions, concerns or suggestions, they can visit Whiteville City Hall during business hours to discuss those recommendations.
Find more local news here.


The Town of Colchester/Burnham Memorial Library is seeking a Library Associate to provide patron
service, general research, clerical and technical work. This individual will be responsible for the integrity
of the library’s online catalog, classifies, and oversees processing of library materials, and serves as
library liaison to town IT staff.
Requirements: Associates degree in technology or database maintenance related fields, or equivalent
combination of education and experience and/or training. Experience with Integrated Library systems
(ILS), Bachelor’s degree or library certification preferred. Hourly range is $19.84 – $21.24 depending on
qualifications and experience, plus a competitive benefit package.
For consideration please submit application, cover letter, resume, and references to Chad Bouvier,
Assistant Human Resource Director at: firstname.lastname@example.org. The Town of Colchester is an Equal
Opportunity Employer. For full job description visit: https://colchestervt.gov/321/Human-Resources
Position open until filled.
– Posted 6/19/21


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A few months back, Weekender caught up with local author Elke Feuer, who had just released the electronic version of her thriller, “For the Love of Jazz”.
Elke’s coming back to Books & Books on Thursday, 27 June, at 7pm to launch the physical edition. Here’s what’s been happening in the meantime.
How has reaction been to the e-book?
Fantastic! So far everyone who’s read the book loves it. It’s not just friends and family, so that’s a great feeling. I’m hoping people who don’t have e-readers find the same enjoyment with the paperback book.
And now it’s in print; how did that come about?
The publishing company has a 3 to 6 months turnaround from e-books to print. It’s a process called print on demand (POD). Basically your book goes “live” on all sites the paperback will be available for purchase. You order it, they print and send it to you. Pretty amazing!
How did you construct the novel?
I started with a story idea then wrote out the main things I saw happening in the story. I then signed up for an online writing class at Gotham Writers’ Workshop. I ended up taking four classes, worked through all the main plot points and developed the characters and setting. I reviewed all the feedback from the teacher, fellow students, and picked what I wanted to add to the story. Next it was editing, editing and more editing until I was happy with the flow of the story and that each plot point wrapped up nicely in the end.
The story started out as a romance and ended up with other elements: ghosts, mystery, and suspense. I learned a lot about myself, the book, and the whole process of writing a story from start to finish. It was a gruelling yet wonderful process.
What’s next for you?
Oh boy, where do I start? I have two book signings coming up this month here in Cayman and another one in Georgia at an RWA (Romance Writers of America) Conference in July. I’m very excited to meet and connect with readers, and meet in person, writers I met online over the past year.
I’m working on organising events for local authors to connect with each other, and for people in Cayman to meet local authors. I’m very excited about that!
I have two books I’m working on right now:
The first is “The Trouble with Soul Mates”, a contemporary romance about a woman who meets her soul mate in her dreams. Half of the book is set in Cayman the other half in Ireland.
The other is “Deadly Bloodlines”, another romantic suspense, about the daughter of a serial killer who returns to Cayman after 20 years and is faced with family secrets, and a copycat killer determined to finish what her mother started.
“Deadly Bloodlines” is now part of a three book series (“Deadly Race”, “Deadly Family”) aptly called the “Deadly Series”. All three are based in Cayman.
Join Elke at Books & Books on Thursday, 27 June at 7pm.


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A BIRMINGHAM woman is finally fulfilling her childhood dream – in her retirement.
At the age of 50 Lynda Kettle, from Harborne, is a professional artist, after taking early retirement from a 30-year career as a television production set designer.
Based at the BBC’s Pebble Mill Centre, Lynda worked on TV classics such as Angels, Howard’s Way and Two Point Four Children.
She had wanted to be a professional artist since she was 11.
“A school teacher and my father both inspired my dream of becoming an artist,” she said.
“But my mum wanted me to follow my sister’s more academic example.”
As a compromise she studied art at Stourbridge College of Art and Birmingham College of Art. Lynda went on to specialise in theatre design which led to her working in television.
In retirement she picked up her paintbrushes as a hobby producing sea and skyscapes along with architectural scenes of Birmingham.
She sold limited editions of her work online.
But her career really took off when she took a job as a part-time receptionist at Birmingham University where through contacts she began painting commissions.
Lynda is now a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and the Birmingham Watercolour Society and works from a studio in Stoke Prior, near Bromsgrove, where she also offers private art lessons.


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We are proud to announce that Zara Larsson will perform at Scandinavium in Göteborg on November 19th and at Avicii Arena in Stockholm on November 21st with Einár and Jelassi as very special guests!
Tickets are out this Friday at 09.00 on Live Nation Sweden website: https://www.livenation.se/show/1335241/zara-larsson-the-poster-girl-tour/stockholm/2021-11-21/se
Zara Larsson released the deluxe version of her latest album ‘Poster Girl’ on May 21st!
Listen to ‘Poster Girl (Swedish Summer Edition)’ on all music platforms: https://zaralarsson.lnk.to/PosterGirl_SummerEdition
Watch Zara Larsson’s live in concert in collaboration with IKEA and Live Nation!
Zara Larsson’s new album ‘Poster Girl’ is out now on all music platforms! Have a listen: https://zaralarsson.lnk.to/PosterGirl


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February 12, 2021|Personal Transformation, Wellness
It is the best "F" word ever! Freedom! When you spend time to get to know yourself, and then to be that person that you have uncovered, you will feel the amazing sensation of being free. We are living in a time when we are being asked to succumb to many restrictions. Allow those restrictions to be the impetus to look within. If you could be, do and say whatever you wanted, without restriction, what would that look like? How can you take small steps to incorporate those personal choices into your daily life? Each time you do, you will grow in Freedom. Let me know how it goes!

domain: psychology


text: My uncle is celebrating his 80th birthday with a surprise Card Shower. I decided that this week's Sweet Stampin' Challenge theme would work perfectly: White/Cream and One Other. I chose brown as my one other color. He still has a small herd of cows so this image by CTMH is perfect. I did make a second card (next post) as my parents need one also.