Hey all. After 15 years as a VC backed startup CEO, and going on two as an executive coach to startup CEOs, I’m continuously struck by two things:

The degree to which a leader’s self-awareness dictates her rate of improvement and, ultimately, the success of her company (reams of research on this as well, turns out)
How much harder developing self-awareness is for leaders than “regular folk”

In my experience there are four main barriers that get in our way. In case it’s helpful to someone’s journey, I’ve set them out below:

The paradox of self-awareness in leadership

For companies to succeed, they need self-aware leaders. But the deck is stacked against leaders developing that self-awareness.
That’s what Daniel Goleman found, in his book “The New Leaders.” Daniel quoted research into what distinguished the leadership of a number of highly-successful US healthcare companies from the least successful ones (based on return on equity, share price over a 10-year period). He found that self-delusion was associated with poor performance, and self-awareness with company success:
“Tellingly, the CEOs from the poorest performing companies gave themselves the highest ratings on seven of the ten leadership abilities. But the pattern reversed when it came to how their subordinates rated them: they gave these CEOs low ratings on the very same abilities. On the other hand, subordinates saw the CEOs of the best performing companies as demonstrating all ten of these leadership abilities most often.”
In separate research, Goleman also found that the more senior the managers, the more likely they were to inflate their own ratings, saying: “Those at the highest levels had the least accurate view of how they acted with others.”
Let’s recap that research, because it’s important.

Self-awareness (measured by the alignment between how you see yourself and how others see you) is critical to your success in leadership. It’s the dashboard by which you educatedly adapt your leadership to get the most out of your people, and drive successful outcomes in a changing marketplace.
But the more senior you are, the more difficult self-awareness becomes.

For entrepreneurs, particularly those in the CEO seat, success depends on overcoming these four obstacles to self-awareness:

You don’t look
You don’t ask
You don’t listen
You don’t interpret

“We cannot change what we are not aware of. And what we are aware of, we cannot help but change.” — Sheryl Sandberg

Obstacle One >> You don’t look

Running a company is all-encompassing. Many leaders wake up every day at 100mph, consumed by marketing, sales and product-market fit, never considering the impact of their personality or leadership style on the results they get. They don’t know that those things are malleable, so they don’t bother looking at them. Their leadership style is behind the “subject/object wall,” meaning it’s just “who they are.”
These are what is called “unconscious leaders.”
“About 80-85% of leaders are in the realm of Unconscious leadership, which is the world of managing and directing. The English verb “manage” literally comes from the Italian “maneggiare” (to handle, especially tools or a horse). So, these are your managers, who treat their employees as resources (literally, horses) to be directed and optimized.”
To illustrate the difference:
— Conscious leadership: my tendency to argue a point to the death comes from my ego’s need to feel like the smartest guy in the room, and is something that, when I catch it in time, I can simply choose to not indulge (and therefore to not suffer the interpersonal consequences of an argument).
— Unconscious leadership: it’s just my personality, and my employees need to adapt.
The vast majority of leaders fail because it doesn’t occur to them to look critically at their leadership style. They only see the work to do “out there,” and barrel through it ever more urgently, regardless of results or feedback.

Obstacle Two >> You don’t ask

Of the leaders who are conscious (meaning for our purposes today that they are looking actively at their leadership style, and aware that they can adapt it to change their results), many still sub-optimize their results because they don’t ask for feedback. Why? Mostly because they’re scared of the answer.
The good ol’ willful-ignorance approach.
From the same study:
“Psychologists have a lot of theories about why people are so sensitive to hearing about their own imperfections. One is that they associate feedback with the critical comments received in their younger years from parents and teachers. Whatever the cause of our discomfort, most of us have to train ourselves to seek feedback and listen carefully when we hear it. Absent that training, the very threat of critical feedback often leads us to practice destructive, maladaptive behaviors that negatively affect not only our work but the overall health of our organizations.”
The easiest way to get great feedback
Asking for feedback doesn’t have to mean a commissioned 360-degree review. It can be as simple as asking a handful of people who know you well (I suggest about eight people, both professional and personal) to give you honest feedback on how you show up in the world.
The following simple questions are a great way to get started (you can also add your own):
—In what ways do you think I am already effective?
—In what ways do you think I am less effective?
—What could I do to improve my relationship with you?
—What would be the one piece of advice you would give me about how to improve my effectiveness?
—What do my actions say about my values? What drives me?
I’ve yet to meet a leader who wasn’t impacted by the results.

Obstacle Three >> You don’t listen

“Sometimes when you get an idea in your head, it’s impossible to talk to you about anything else. You don’t listen even when you’re wrong.”
This was a real piece of feedback I was given, and I still remember the sensation that went with it. A jolt of fear, followed by rage, which finally settled into righteous indignation. The giver was misguided. He didn’t get it.
Needless to say, the conversation following wasn’t exactly productive, and I missed a chance to improve my effectiveness by evolving my leadership style. What also happened, but might not be as obvious, is that the giver never gave me the gift of his feedback again.
A leader’s reaction to feedback is the prime variable in whether or not they continue to receive feedback. Listen, and people will keep helping you grow. Don’t, and you’ll soon live in a bubble of people who tell you what they think you want to hear.
Early on in my career as a CEO (although after the incident above), I was fortunate to hire a Senior VP with decades of experience working in the C-suite. He pointed out to me how difficult it already was for people around me to give me constructive criticism, and the risk they took in doing so given my control over their paychecks. Most importantly, he showed me the impact my reaction had on their willingness to do so. Thanks to his wonderful risk (itself a pretty meta example of the concept), I saw how natural, how incredibly easy it would be for me to get isolated in my position, and with his help started to do the hard work of making it easy to tell me the bad news.
Said simply, self-aware leaders go out of their way to make it easy, and non-threatening, to give it to them straight. But make no mistake about it, this requires work.

Obstacle Four >> You don’t interpret

Even if you embrace the feedback you’re getting from the people around you as the gift it is, it’s also important to consider context. There are two main contextual considerations to keep in mind:
1. The distorting effect of your role/title
A client I worked with, the foundeCEO of a tech company, told me a story once that perfectly illustrated the invisible bubble in which CEOs live. After grabbing his food at the company holiday party, he approached the long, bench table at which his team sat. As he began to make his way to sit in one of the few gaps available on the far end of the table, he cracked a joke without thinking about it, saying, “hey, can you all just scootch down a bit?” Haha.
You can guess what happened. About 30 teammates, all at once, dutifully moved their trays of food down the table, sitting close to one another to open up a seat at the end of the table. With a flippant joke, in five seconds all his employees were cramped and he had his choice of the head of either row, the conversation carrying on without missing a beat. My client, himself quite self-aware, was shocked.
And when he told me this story, I started to question the dozens of times that my team had complimented me on my wardrobe.
We don’t like to admit it, (we all prefer to think that we are simply popular and have good fashion sense), but the reality is that most people go out of their way to please their boss. As a leader it’s important to remember this (it’s difficult if not impossible to change), so you can properly interpret any feedback you get. If you think you’re the exception to this, think again. The question is not whether you live in a bubble, but whether you’re aware of the bubble, and compensating for it in your interpretation.
This is why having a channel for anonymous feedback, although scary, is also so powerful.
2. Your own inner wisdom
After walking through the key challenges to developing self-awareness as a leader, now seems like the right time for an important caveat:
Feedback is not instruction to change.
It’s easy, especially given how much work it takes to solicit objective feedback from the people in your life, to automatically take any negative feedback we receive to heart. But not all feedback is created equal. You have to do your own analysis of that feedback, comparing it to what you believe is true about yourself and what your company needs, in order to develop a solid goal & plan for growth.
Your own leadership journey, like your mission and company values, is on the very short list of things you can’t fully delegate to your team.
—
Self-awareness, the alignment between how you see yourself and how others see you, is the raw material by which top leaders learn how to adapt themselves to the goals they want to achieve. It’s incredibly difficult to develop self-awareness as a leader, and even more difficult to maintain it through the inevitable changes implicit in growing a company.
But a growing body of research says it’s worth the effort.

My expat fatFIRE journey abroad (long)

I am 32/Canadian and had a very high paying career that had a short shelf life. During my high producing years I wanted to move out of Canada to another country where I could save as much as I could for my future because I knew my income would not last forever.
"Abroad" was a weird term form me. Despite being Canadian and having lived most of my adult years in Canada I felt like everywhere was abroad for me.
I was born in one of the poorest countries of Europe and lived there until I was 17 years old. The country has come a long way today but when I go back I never fit in. I definitely feel more connected with Canada than the country I was born in.
I think a big reason why I focused so hard on work was to never get back to the level of poverty I grew up as a child. Think of North Korea and Venezuela in one combo. In 1997 there was a complete lock down due to civil war and my family was lucky enough to survive because we had a vegetable garden and chickens. If you left your home you could be shot/robbed or worse be killed from stepping on a mine. The city was covered in them.
The other reason was that women got treated like second class citizens where I was born and my childhood was a living hell where I wasn't even allowed to walk on the street alone (even after they took out the mines), talk to members of the opposite sex or have any friends. Dating was not a concept and if they know you are "dating" you have to immediately get engaged and then married and have children or else you are a "whore".
I always had a bubbly personality when I was young, I liked to act, dance, and really liked learning. I was also interested in entrepreneurship and got a full scholarship at York University to study business but to my parents a woman is not suited for business and they pushed me to study molecular biology instead. I hated my University years. I battled depression and never really saw a future for myself with biology.
I ran away from home at 19 and asked my local university what help was there for someone like me that wanted to start a business. To my surprise they were very helpful and told me about grants and loans I could apply to get started. My first business was face painting and entertainment for children's birthday parties and events. I remember I got a $5000 loan and it seemed like so much money at the time. It helped me buy my first car and get started. I grew my business from just me to having 10 employees, having permanent booths in theme parks and festivals in Canada. It was hard work but I loved it. During the time I was still in university and most of my work was summeweekends so it worked out ok.
I remember I was growing more and more fed up with my studies and walked out of my last exam with a smile feeling absolute freedom. I never finished my degree and I was so ok with it even if I was one exam away from graduation. I didn't care about the crazy amounts of student loans I had accumulated. All I wanted was to grow my business and make money. It gave me that thrill that sitting in a lab using a microscope never did.
One day I became curious about online streaming and after having a few drinks with a friend I made an application on a popular site (at the time). The site was more like webcamming but you were allowed to do whatever you wanted on cam as long as there was no guys.
I didn't think much of it because I was doing well with my other business. At the time I had a rocky relationship with an ex bf and decided maybe going online and flirting with men would make me feel better about my break up. Then saw this email about the site I had previously applied had accepted my application.
I did my first stream completely clothed, having fun and chatting with people. I made $4.00 usd which was shit but I had so much fun doing it so I started researching the industry more. After a few more streams I decided this had a potential to be something big and I decided to make a business plan and focus on it entirely. I was constantly doing 10-12h on cam and loved to come up with new creative ideas to entertain people.
I went from making $4.00 my first day to making just shy off a million dollars a year. The money was not the focus but being the best at what I did was.
During my high earning years I knew I had to save and plan for my future. Most of the other performers would have one good month making $150,000 then disappear and not be relevant again. I don't know how I managed to last in the industry for over 8 years, but I am greatful that my hard work was combined with luck and being at the right place/right time.
I moved to Mexico when I was 26 years old.
My life in Mexico was great the first two years. I was dating someone that was super supportive with my work schedule. It was the honeymoon phase. We would always eat out and enjoy nice places and expensive travel. I was always frugal with everything else but vacations and experiences. Looking back my mistake was that I paid for everything and my bf at the time felt used to this cushy life that ended up expecting it. He was bad with managing money too and had a lot of debt which stupiditly I ended up paying off.
During this time I had bought various income properties in central Mexico (in a retirement village) and the agreement was that since I was making more money with my online business which required long hours on cam, my ex was supposed to take care of property management. At first he was engaged then ended up not so pationate about it. I felt used and underappreciated.
When I realized all this I was pregnant with our child. He told me he was unhappy living in a retirement village and wanted to move to a bigger city in Mexico. I told him we could try it out because it would offer more opportunities for our child as well. That's where things went downhill. He constantly ignored me and refused to help with chores in the house. I had a high risk pregnacy so I couldn't do much myself either.
After a few months he ended up cheating and experienced a mental break down, trying to commit suicide. I was crushed. I didn't know what happened and despite my efforts to send him to get the best medical help in the country he never was the same. I really wanted to help him get back on his feet again because I thought we were a team for life. I was wrong.
He ended up leaving the country one day when my son was only a few months old and has not been back in over 3 years. I have never heard back from him and I don't know if he's dead or alive.
I was crushed and myself experienced a complete burn out from work/personal loss at the time. Physically I became ill too and dropped down up 42 kg. I knew I had to do something about it because I had a son to take care of.
Looking back at it now it was an amazing opportunity for me to realize there was more to life than work. It helped me realize that I should have not provided everything just because I loved someone but let them provide and create on their own. If they refused I had to know they were using me as a wallet and to not get involved.
RETIREMENT
It's been one full year since I have been completely off work. It happened in 2020 out of all years. Before I tried to work on and off but my love for my job wasn't the same.
I can say I feel much less stressed than I did years ago. My health is better and my sleep schedule is so much better than it was before.
For the first time I now feel more Integrated in Mexico and I don't think I am missing out much not living in Canada.
Where I live it's safe, it has a high quality of life and there's a lot of international business around. Not that I want to open a new business here but I think it's important to be surrounded by other people that have seen more of the world and are also successful.
On top of that I have always felt like a hybrid of many cultures and being surrounded by people that have moved around the world means that we get to be hybrids together and they understand me better than say someone that lived in Canada/USA all their lives and never left the country.
Mexico has many bad things as well but no county is perfect. Choosing the right location to live in Mexico is very important to not be affected a lot by the bad things.
The pace of life is also much more calmer than in Canada and the US. This can be bad if you want to start a business here but it's a good place to be during retirement.
Also people are a lot less "offended" from things and I find it's easier to make friends than it was in Canada. My general perception of Canada was that people in Canada are very helpful to strangers but much colder if you want to have a meaningful friendship. Of course there are exceptions but that was my experience.
One thing I did not like about the western culture is the victim mentality that the youth of today are embracing. If they can't get something they usually blame the government for not doing enough for them.
Some women blame men for "the patriarchy" and some Canadians blame foreigners because 'they took away their cheap homes and they can't afford real estate'
Having lived in a real "shit hole" country where women get treated like crap I want to remind you that Canada and the US are the land of opportunities compared to most of the world.
Success is not guaranteed for anyone but all the information is free in English for you to look up and use it to your advantage. You don't even have to learn a second language to access it.
Being a woman or a minority gives you the same legal rights as everyone else if not more sometimes. I don't think most western feminists know what it's like to live in a muslim country.
My point is: Westerners are not grateful enough for what they have.
Complaining is human nature so of course it happens in Mexico but the majority know that their government won't do shit for them and they focus on what they can do as an individual. This can be bad too wich is reflected in the general sentiment Mexicans have for public property but that's another problem I won't get into.
Overall i am happy where I have come in my journey. I know I haven't got it all figured out despite having a 4.5 million net worth I don't feel complete being 100% retired.
I am currently building real estate in Mexico, investing in stocks and excercising to keep me busy.
After things open up I will travel more but the urge to have everything figured out which I experienced immediately once I stopped working is less.
Also: It's lonely at the top:
I like to think of myself as an easy and approachable person, however I think having a different upbringing and dedicating and reaching high levels of financial success at a very young age, makes relating to most people not as easy. I think humans form stronger bonds when they share and solve similar problems together. That's why I lurk in this forum from time to time. It makes me realize at the end of the day I'm not alone.
A lot of the questions that get asked here on a daily basis are questions that I ask myself all the time.
The funny part is that no one has the answers, I don't either and the more I live the more I realize that the answers don't matter.
The only realisation I have so far is:
The key to being rich is living in the moment, enjoying the company of your loved ones and being greatful for what you have.
Don't let your brain trick you into overthinking and stay away from the compulsion to use fatFIRE calculators all the time.
Just get out for a walk instead and leave your phone at home. We could be hit by a car tomorrow and none of that shit matters as much as you think.
Edit: since many have asked the country was Albania. I responded here how I ended up in Canada:
https://www.reddit.com/fatFIRE/comments/lh30x8/my_expat_fatfire_journey_abroad_long/gmwn401?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

The four barriers to self-awareness in leadership (or why entrepreneurs struggle to grow into leaders)

Hey all. After 15 years as a VC backed startup CEO, and going on two as an executive coach to startup CEOs, I’m continuously struck by two things:

The degree to which a leader’s self-awareness dictates her rate of improvement and, ultimately, the success of her company (reams of research on this as well, turns out)
How much harder developing self-awareness is for leaders than “regular folk”

In my experience there are four main barriers that get in our way. In case it’s helpful to someone’s journey, I’ve set them out below:

The paradox of self-awareness in leadership

Self-awareness (measured by the alignment between how you see yourself and how others see you) is critical to your success in leadership. It’s the dashboard by which you educatedly adapt your leadership to get the most out of your people, and drive successful outcomes in a changing marketplace.
But the more senior you are, the more difficult self-awareness becomes.

For entrepreneurs, particularly those in the CEO seat, success depends on overcoming these four obstacles to self-awareness:

You don’t look
You don’t ask
You don’t listen
You don’t interpret

“We cannot change what we are not aware of. And what we are aware of, we cannot help but change.” — Sheryl Sandberg

Obstacle One >> You don’t look

Obstacle Two >> You don’t ask

Obstacle Three >> You don’t listen

Obstacle Four >> You don’t interpret

Breakdown of "what's really happening" with source links to back up claims

I stumbled onto a post elsewhere by someone who did a good job of connecting the dots in regard to what is happening in the world right now. While this may not be new info to many of you, you may find it's good to share because it references links from sources most people would trust.
--
Written by Teresa Tannahill, from Cardigan, UK
Some of you want to know why they’re taking down the NHS and the economy. Destroying so many lives. Here is the explanation
This is a British perspective, but since all western governments are marching to the same drum, I think it applies to Europe and all of the English speaking countries, as well as some developing nations.
This is NOT conspiracy theory. It’s geopolitics, economics and a little science. Everything is referenced in the links.
Last year the United Nations and the World Economic Forum signed a deal to accelerate the sustainable development goals of UN Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030:
https://www.weforum.org/press/2019/06/world-economic-forum-and-un-sign-strategic-partnership-framework/
They moved astonishingly quickly to capitalise on the uncannily timed pandemic by calling for a “Great Reset”.
https://youtu.be/u5pxhSnDr4U
https://youtu.be/8rAiTDQ-NVY
The Great Reset is actually UN Agenda 21 repackaged. Agenda 21 was also the inspiration for the contentious “Green New Deal” that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez failed to get through US Congress in 2019.
You’ll see more about the Great Reset on the TV in the coming weeks. The UN hope to have most of the heavy lifting done by 2030, as detailed in their Agenda 2030 milestone document.
The climate change lobby have been warning us about the need for this for years:
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/science-environment-48964736
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/world-has-six-months-to-avert-climate-crisis-says-energy-expert
These are some of the scientists that inform the UN. Within 2 weeks of the last UK Extinction Rebellion protest in 2019, the UK government and the EU declared an official climate emergency. More than half of UK local authorities followed suit. At least 27 countries (or jurisdictions within countries) have signed up to this.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-48126677
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/28/eu-parliament-declares-climate-emergency
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_emergency_declaration
The United Nations have been pushing for a One World Government ever since they were formed after WWII. They want open borders between Canada, the US and South America. The European Union was another crucial part of their plan. It was their attempt at a United States of Europe. Instead, it became an economic disaster zone. The EU managed to completely trash their currency in just over a decade. Record unemployment and record debt. Brexit was the final straw. It was clear that other countries wanted to follow Britain’s lead. Frexit, Grexit, Italexit, Gexit, etc. The EU was on the brink of collapse. Eighty years of painstaking manipulation towards what they call a “New World Order” was swirling down the drain. Brexit forced their hand.
The Elite behind the UN often wield their power in the guise of philanthropy. They do it openly.
Ten years ago, the Rockefeller Foundation produced this document exploring ways to increase their ‘philanthropic’ power over the world. To bring about a New World Order and a One World Government. Sceptics refer to it as the “Lockstep” document.
http://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Rockefeller%20Foundation.pdf
Examine pages 1-2. And pages 18-19. Does it look familiar? We’re in Lockstep.
There are many influential people shilling for the NWO and global governance right now, including ex PMs Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Prince Charles. Bill Gates called for a One World Government in 2015 in a major German newspaper.
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/ma26/gordon-brown-calls-for-global-government-to-tackle-coronavirus
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/bill-gates-im-interview-den-taeglichen-tod-nehmen-wir-nicht-wahr-1.2324164
Banks are operating skeleton services and the disappearance of branches and cash machines from the high street has accelerated during the lockdowns. They’re also pushing for a new global currency, probably using blockchain technology. This will allow the banks to adopt negative interest rates and punish account holders for saving. Prominent economist Jim Rickards thinks that this may be as early as the first quarter next year.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/may/16/cash-could-be-the-latest-victim-of-coronavirus-and-may-never-recover
https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankellehe2020/10/11/coronavirus-can-remain-on-paper-currency-for-28-days-per-study/
The furlough schemes appear to be leading towards a Universal Basic Income for those whose jobs are unlikely to come back. This will make an even bigger proportion of the population dependent on the State.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/universal-basic-income-coronavirus-pandemic-nhs-liberal-democrats-b404498.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/leeds-becomes-largest-city-uk-call-universal-basic-income-pilot-b468654.html
The COVID-19 contact tracing app on your phone can be easily morphed into a cashless Chinese-style social credit system similar to this:
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278
At the moment, the tracking software is “voluntary”, but the API is now part of your smartphone operating system. It probably won’t be long before you won’t be able to switch it off. The UK government has already introduced a QR Code COVID-secure pass system, which came into effect two days before the London anti-lockdown protest on the 26th September. It has recently come to light that personal data from the app is being shared with police forces. Furthermore, police are being asked not to download the app onto their work phones. Possible explanations are that they anticipate a lot of close contact with the public, or are concerned about the false positive phenomenon.
The Coronavirus Act 2020 allows for DNA to be retained for longer, but it does not say why. Incidentally, they have made it a lot easier to section and forcibly medicate an individual, due to emergency changes to the Mental Health Act 1983. These changes have not yet been implemented in England, but they are in force in Wales.
The 5G network and Elon Musk’s StarLink satellite network will greatly enhance the surveillance capacity for the Chinese style Social Credit System, which might explain why rollout is being accelerated. It also explains why UK networks have been given 7 years to remove suspect Huawei equipment from their networks. Whatever is happening, it will be all over, long before that.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/venues-required-to-enforce-rule-of-6-nhs-qr-code-posters-and-contact-logs
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/14/huawei-to-be-stripped-of-role-in-uk-5g-network-by-2027-dowden-confirms
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-space-laser-starlink-internet-spacex-a9705986.html
There are already SMART cities in China where you are tracked everywhere you go. Facial recognition cameras and a cashless society enable this. If you jaywalk, buy too much alcohol, criticise the government on social media, or don’t behave yourself, they dock your social credit.
Your ‘privileges’, like going shopping or getting on a train, are taken away. You’re effectively trapped. The police can stop and search citizens anywhere. They can even look on your phone. There are plenty of news items archived on YouTube concerning this. In some Chinese cities, you only have to switch your phone off for 2 hours and the police are banging on your door.
The pessimistic view? The next UK lockdown won’t end unless we submit to compulsory tracking, testing and vaccination. Dissenters won’t be allowed to leave the house to work or travel or shop. We’re on the brink of a house arrest prison system and it will only take a year or two to implement.
I am deeply concerned about any rushed vaccine. Pharmaceutical companies are being granted full indemnity from legal action over injury caused. The 2009 swine flu vaccine was an utter disaster. The UK government has recently lost the battle to pay compensation for the brain injury caused by it.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/shaunlintern/these-nhs-staff-were-told-the-swine-flu-vaccine-was-safe
https://theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/09/ministers-lose-fight-to-stop-payouts-in-swine-flu-jab-narcolepsy-cases
There are concerns about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines currently being developed. Despite this, the vaccine development programs have scarcely missed a beat.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/health/astrazeneca-vaccine-safety-blueprints.html
https://www.rt.com/news/500987-astrazeneca-vaccine-neurological-condition/
https://www.rt.com/news/501221-astrazeneca-vaccine-neurological-condition/
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-trial.amp
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/20/human-trials-oxford-vaccine-hold-us-spinal-cord-disease-fears
https://www.ft.com/content/588cebbc-cbae-45ba-8b9a-e8ad2760c0ed
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8391769/amp/AstraZeneca-manufacturing-Covid-vaccine-three-countries.html
https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2020-09-21/health-minister-would-not-rule-out-introducing-mandatory-coronavirus-vaccine-scheme-in-wales
https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/03/every-adult-in-uk-could-be-vaccinated-for-coronavirus-by-easter-13365637
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8875931/Coronavirus-vaccine-weeks-NHS-workers.html
Chilling indeed. Especially when you consider that the government is already consulting legal experts on the mandatory vaccines.
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/9253/pdf/
The argument appears to use the precedent set by the lockdowns themselves.
The expert argue that if you can force people into lockdown to protect others, you can forcibly inject them too.
The Mental Health Act 1983 can also be used to force vaccination. If someone is judged to be a risk to others by refusing vaccination, then it would be possible to section them under the MHA 1983 and forcibly inject them. Consent will not be required.
We’re going down a very dark road indeed.
If you sit down and read all 351 pages of Agenda 21, plus its ancillary documents, you will find that it’s all about complete control and inventory of everything on the planet. Animal, mineral and vegetable. Including humans.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21
That could be partially what the vaccine is about. The virus would be a means to that end. I don’t know what it will contain, but it almost certainly won’t be immunisation against any coronavirus. There has never been a successful vaccine for a coronavirus. They are too slippery, meaning they mutate too much. There is talk of eventually utilising the quantum dot tattoo technology that Bill Gates has developed. Google ID2020 to find out more.
https://newatlas.com/medical/quantum-dot-tattoos-patient-vaccine-history/
The UN claims that there are a billion undocumented humans on this planet. And that global population is ultimately heading for nearly 11 billion. This appears to really bother Bill Gates. See his TED Talks.
As mentioned, UN Agenda 2030 is the next major milestone of Agenda 21.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf
The required changes are enormous. Yet we are seeing them all around us. Most of these changes have accelerated since the pandemic.
It can be argued that the measures “they’re” taking to “protect us” from the virus are indistinguishable from many of the stated goals of UN Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf
While we’ve been kept under house arrest, they’ve been shutting down fossil fuel power stations, oil rigs, pedestrianising city centres, disabling our food supply chain, forcing farmers to cull ‘greenhouse gas emitting’ livestock and let ‘unsustainable irrigated’ crops rot. Suppressing effective COVID-19 treatments.
https://theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/04/coronavirus-crisis-collapse-fossil-fuels-demand
https://www.carbonbrief.org/iea-coronavirus-accelerating-closure-of-ageing-fossil-fuelled-power-plants
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-livestock-insight-idUSKCN2292YS
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/ap29/millions-of-farm-animals-culled-as-us-food-supply-chain-chokes-up-coronavirus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine
The evidence is all around us. Virtually every major town and city in the UK has had permanent changes to road layout to allow for social distancing. Pedestrianisation and cycle ways. One way systems. Cities are becoming very car-unfriendly. Glasgow has lost a third of its parking spaces overnight. Google ‘social distancing centre traffic’. If there’s a vaccine coming, why are these changes permanent?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-52921978
And here is Boris Johnson promising to rewild a third of the country by 2030.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/27/boris-johnson-commits-restoring-nature-30-per-cent-britain-2030/
Here’s another surprise change, no petrol or diesel cars after 2030.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8754911/Government-plans-bring-forward-ban-fossil-fuel-vehicles-2040-2030.html
Notice the dates. This aligns with the goals of UN Agenda 2030.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. One of the goals of Agenda 21 is to end private property ownership and all farming of animals by 2050.
https://twitter.com/wef/status/799632174043561984 (My note, not Teresa's: This Tweet by the World Economic forum was removed after it gained notoriety. I believe it was the "It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and I've never been happier" video. Forbes has the article in its original form before WEF changed the title to evade negative response:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/shopping-i-cant-really-remember-what-that-is-or-how-differently-well-live-in-2030/?sh=28a692f81735 )
To recap, we can expect a cashless society, negative interest rates, social credit system, mass surveillance, mandatory vaccines, ID2020, AI, restriction of movement, health passports, rationing of food and energy, confiscation of private property, banning of private motor vehicles and crippling taxation.
Eventually? Depopulation and rewilding of the planet.
I’ve got references for everything I haven’t referenced here. I’ve been studying geopolitics since 2008 and tracking the WEC and UN’s machinations since January.
We’re being frogmarched into a dystopian technocracy. An Orwellian future. It was always going to happen, it’s just happening faster than I thought. I can only conclude that the technology needed to implement it was ready after all.
They’re even hinting at transhumanism and the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. These topics are covered in the Great Reset videos and literature. We’re living a bloody science fiction novel. These videos examines how we got here, and where we’re going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebiUd-Wb6NM&feature=youtu.be
( EDIT: another link removed because this domain isn't allowed on Reddit )
We really are in deep trouble. The world is being steered by a megalomaniac madman, Klaus Schwab, and he has the full power of the United Nations at his disposal. This is not speculation, this is fact.
The lockdowns aren’t about a virus. The virus was the excuse for the lockdowns. The whole purpose of the lockdowns is to destroy our economy and take away our freedoms. They’re implementing a hard Agenda 21, a “Great Reset” with the slogan, “Build Back Better” Only Britain won’t be better. Far from it. We will become like communist China. This man believes that China is our future.
Teresa
-- all words by Teresa except my note about the removed links

Victoria records 10 new local cases and 2 new overseas cases

Misconceptions Regarding Dogecoin and Cryptocurrency (REVISED V1.2)

This is a revised version of my previous article. I am going to try to update frequently.
Version 1.2 has the following changes - added new questions based on feedback from the community - Updated some of the spelling errors and minor typos. I don’t have an English degree 😂. The information is still factual though. If you see something glaringly wrong just comment or message me and I’ll fix it. - Updated some of the numbers to reflect current data - Rearranged the order of the questions to build upon each other better - I had to shorten certain answers to fit the length requirement.
This information below is important. I ask that you please take the time to read this entire post before making judgment or commenting. My discord group of over 100 people have grouped together the majority of the most asked questioned and misunderstandings regarding Dogecoin, into the following 20 key points. Even if you know the answers to some of these please read the entire post. Please read them below.

Question: What is Dogecoin?

Answer: Dogecoin (/ˈdoʊdʒkɔɪn/ DOHJ-koyn, code: DOGE, symbol: Ð) is a cryptocurrency invented by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system that is instant, fun, and free from traditional banking fees. Dogecoin features the face of the Shiba Inu dog from the popular "Doge" meme as its logo and namesake. It was introduced on December 6, 2013, and quickly developed its own online community reaching a market capitalization of US $5,382,875,000 on January 28, 2021. [Wikipedia, 20210203]

Question: Why Dogecoin?

Answer: For the Lolz. Well, not quite. Initially as a purely meme-driven alternative to the likes of Bitcoin and Litecoin, Dogecoin in-fact boasts very low transaction fees and fast transaction times, very little network congestion, and most importantly, is designed to be used as a daily means of exchange, like your morning cup of coffee. Also, it is really fun, and who doesn't like the Dog ?!
1/2 - second perspective) Question: What Is Dogecoin? And why Dogecoin?
Answer: Back a few years ago, some crazy people banded together in support of a cryptocurrency known as Dogecoin. Similar to other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin, the people's crypto, finds itself with the support of hundreds if not thousands of individuals pushing for this currency to succeed. But why is that? Unless you have been absent from every social bubble, you may have heard of Bitcoin. For the purpose of this explanation, you will find that Bitcoin is not exactly an easy thing to equate to Dogecoin, but lets think about the criteria of a Cryptocurrency.Bitcoin did not find its foothold overnight. In fact, it took several years. A lot of people fought tooth and nail for their belief in the coin. Crypto, in a nutshell, is a decentralized form of currency that finds its value in a combination of individual asset involvement, ease or difficulty in security of an exchange, creating a method of reliable, secure, trustworthy exchange, and other reasons.
Think of it like this: to exchange goods and services without currency, one must barter. I can barter a service (a haircut, for example) towards someone who needs a haircut, and in exchange they can barter a good or service to me.Currency then becomes an "IOU" (I Owe yoU) so that, if somebody needs me to cut their hair, they can give me an IOU for a good or service they control. When enough people begin adopting this, a centralized currency eventually takes hold. Crypto seeks to take this a step further and, insteal of relying on building up a centalization in terms of valuable metals or debt, it is built up solely on the exchange of goods and services. Dogecoin, compared to other cryptocurrencies, finds itself in a strange position where the origins did NOT see it soaring to the moon in any situation. Funny how things can change in time. Dogecoin has pros and cons to it. Comparing it to other cryptos, it does not face a supply cap like Bitcoin does. It is not a directly equated asset, such as how Bitcoin can be attributed as a digital gold asset. Mining dogecoin is also much simpler (comparitively) and does not face difficulty spikes, a source of Bitcoin slow-down. In essence, in 50 years, Dogecoin will still be around, still be mined, still be traded. Bitcoin will cease to be created, hoarded, and become the digital currency of the affluent.

Question: Places to buy dogecoin places where you can spend Dogecoin?

Answer: Refer to dogecoin posts by the moderators for a list of businesses that accept doge as payment.

Question: Cryptocurrencies vs stocks. The main differences between them.

Answer: A stock is a type of investment that represents an ownership share in a company. Investors buy stocks that they think will go up in value over time. ... A stock is an investment. When you purchase a company's stock, you're purchasing a small piece of that company, called a share.
A cryptocurrency: (crypto for short) is a digital a sset designed to work as a medium of exchange wherein individual coin ownership records are stored in a ledger existing in a form of computerized database using strong cryptography to secure transaction records, to control the creation of additional coins, and to verify the transfer of coin ownership. It typically does not exist in physical form (like paper money) and is typically not issued by a central authority. Cryptocurrencies typically use decentralized control as opposed to centralized digital currency and central banking systems. When a cryptocurrency is minted or created prior to issuance or issued by a single issuer, it is generally considered centralized. When implemented with decentralized control, each cryptocurrency works through distributed ledger technology, typically a blockchain, that serves as a public financial transaction database.
When comparing crypto to stocks, the main thing to keep in mind is that cryptocurrencies have few if any regulations applied to them. It is still the "wild west" of trading. You can be scammed, skimmed, pumped-dumped, as so forth, much more often and more easily than with stocks. Terminology is similar to exact between the two, but both require a certain mindset. Crypto is almost always a long-haul game, where stocks can be short play or long haul. Cryptocurrency is literally money. Cryptocurrencies intended purpose is to use it to exchange goods and services. The way paper money is.

Question: Is Dogecoin a product of the Wallstreet Bets movement? What differentiates dogecoin from GME/AMC?

Answer: no. The rest of this article explains why. 6. Question: Difference between cold storage, internet wallets and Robinhood
Answer: Coldstorage - in the cryptocurrency world cold storage refers to physical objects/devices that contain your cryptocurrency.
Wallets are an electronic program of service that stores your cryptocurrency. There a number of different wallets - but I personally use Dogecoin.info
Robhinhood- as of right now robinhood does not actually give you cryptocurrency when purchased through them. From Robhinhood’s cryptocurrency page: “We don’t currently provide you with access to your wallet or your wallet address. You own the cryptocurrency assets in your account, and you can buy or sell them at any time. We’re evaluating features to allow you to safely transfer coins to and from Robinhood, and we’ll update you when these features are available.” If you would Like to use your Dogecoin or cryptocurrency in general for exchange of goods and services - it is recommended to either ask Robinhood who to give us access to our wallets or find another exchange.

Question: Dogecoin vs Bitcoin - their competitive advantages and disadvantages. Answer: information explaining the advantages and disadvantages of Bitcoin vs Dogecoin will be explained throughout this article.
Question: Is Dogecoin a meme or should it be taken seriously?

Answer: We have all witnessed the power of a meme, the depths it can reach in society, especially in recent years. We have seen it many times before with video games, consoles, Oreos, or as of late even toilet paper... A meme has inherent value in the form of “widespread information”. A meme can spread an idea across diverse communities, and even entire countries literally overnight. This can bring about lasting effects on culture and society. If correctly taken advantage of, Doge can become the dominant meme currency of the internet, and amass real-world value just by being a popular, recognisable meme itself. This is where the saying “Dogecoin is the people’s coin” comes from. This is marketing 101. If your idea, or product is too complicated or not enough people know about then it doesn’t matter how technologically sound it is. Dogecoin have the best technology? No. Can it be improved upon. Definitely. In fact, the original developers have started working on the project again. An analogy I like to use is this. McDonald’s makes hamburgers. They have a clown as a mascot. A literal personification of a joke. Does make McDonald’s make the best hamburgers? No. Does McDonald’s have “value” in their industry? Undeniably so. So what does McDonald’s do correctly? They provide a cheap, easily accessible, and brand able product to the masses. Which is what dogecoin does for cryptocurrency.

Question: Mining Dogecoin. How new Dogecoin are created and enter the market/supply. Is there an infinite supply of Dogecoin being produced? Comparison to Bitcoin and the US dollar.

Answer: mining is the process of creating new cryptocurrency by solving a computational puzzle. mining is necessary to maintain the ledger of transactions upon which cryptocurrency is based. Miners have become very sophisticated over the last several years using complex machinery to speed up mining operations. Approximately 600,000 dogecoins are produced per hour and 5,256,000,000 (5.26 billion) per year and there are currently approximately 128,000,000,000 (128 billion) Dogecoin. Now let’s compare this information to what we know about Bitcoin. Bitcoin currently has a supply of 18.5 million. Currently 900 Bitcoin are mined per day or 328,500 per year. However, unlike Dogecoin, Bitcoins mining rate is not fixed. Bitcoin has something known as a Bitcoin halving which means at some point in the future instead of 900 per day being mined 450 are mined. Now let’s compare Dogecoin and Bitcoin to the US Dollar. The US Dollar has an estimated paper money supply (more on this covered in a later section) of approximately (1.2 to 2 trillion) and in 2019 the federal reserve printed 188.3 billion paper dollars. This means that there is 10 times more supply of dollars to Dogecoin and the government prints 37 times more dollars than Dogecoin is mined per year. It is also important to note that this increase in supply of Dogecoin is fixed. It never changes. The federal reserve can change how much they print any given year. Many people think that this means that the supply of Dogecoin is infinite or infinitely increasing. That is not true in the span of our life time. It will take approximately 24 years for the supply of Dogecoin to double and it will take 360 years for the supply of Dogecoin to reach the current supply of the US Dollar. That’s without taking into account the fact that federal reserve adds more dollars each year than Dogecoin adds to its supply each year. Technically speaking the supply of Dogecoin will eventually reach infinity if given enough time but you have to remember that infinity isn’t an actual number. You can’t mine “infinite” dogecoin because infinity isn’t a number. It’s a mathematical concept to describe something that is boundless. Dogecoin doesn’t have a boundless increase. It has a fixed increase a set amount added at a specific interval. So in practical terms for the purpose of using Dogecoin as a legitimate currency, this infinite argument against Dogecoin doesn’t matter. In fact it’s actually way better than Bitcoin at exchanging goods and services because of this fact. That is why the price per Bitcoin is 40,000 dollars and the price per Dogecoin is .07 with a realistic possibility of only reaching $288.60 at current market conditions. That is why it costs .00012 Bitcoin for milk but only 50 Dogecoin for that same commonly traded commodity. That’s why Bitcoin will be treated like digital gold. That is why Dogecoin will be considered the next dollar. The price per coin are inherently different because their supplies are different. More will be covered on this topic on another section of this article.

Question: Does Dogecoin have value? How does Dogecoin increase in price or decrease in price?

Answer: Yes. Dogecoin has value. It is currently valued at between .06 and .08 as of writing this. If didn’t have value then it wouldn’t be bought or sold at all. Anything can have value as long as enough people assign it value and agree to it. The value of any means of exchange is fundamentally driven by supply and demand. If two parties agree that X amount of asset A is roughly worth the same as Y amount of asset B, you effectively have established a market. That’s why the US dollar and other fiat currency has value even though it just a piece of paper. The difference between fiat currency and cryptocurrency is that fiat currency is determined by centralized government and other underlying economical/market conditions. Cryptocurrency is meant to be a decentralized form of fiat currency. Now as to why the price changes from say .05 to .06 (random numbers using this as an example for explanation purposes. It is not exact) this value is driven primarily by supply and demand. We already know the supply of Dogecoin, so for the purpose of this the main driving factor in the change in price is demand. But the demand for Dogecoin isn’t just one person. It’s the entire group of people who own Dogecoin. So if at any given time lets say 10 people with 1000 Dogecoin want to sell. But only 5 people want to buy 1000 Dogecoin. This means that the sellers “value” Dogecoin less at its current price than buyers do. 5000 Dogecoin less. This changes to price from .05 to .49. The same applies if more people wanted to buy. Then the price would go from .05 to .051. An algorithm repeats the process over and over constantly updating the price. However that’s only one way to change the value. The best way to increase the overall value of the currency in the long run is by eventually by exchanging your coins for goods, services, or just by tipping and trading with other Dogecoin holders. This gives Dogecoin utility. Which basically means that it can be used for something other than just buying Dogecoin at .05 and selling it .06. That is why you see people pushing to accept Dogecoin as payment. If legitimatize Dogecoin as a cryptocurrency and currency when companies allow you to exchange it for goods and services.

Question: Circulation of currencies. The importance of buying, selling, and holding - and the differences between them.

Answer: To briefly explain this, a lot of people have been saying “buy and hold” or “I’m never selling!” - which in itself is great start. But there remains a lot of misinformation around the topic, for example that simply "buying and holding Doge" will drive up the price indefinitely. Unfortunately, that is just not true. Buying, holding, and selling are all intricately connected with each other. ALL of those three states are essential for a (digital) currency to flourish. Holding does neither hurt or raise the value of the asset, but rather it helps to establish a baseline, which is also called "setting a floor". Those who have diligently kept on holding their coins, have allowed Dogecoin to stabilize at roughly 0.07 USD cents for the past few days. Remember, this remains a huge gain from where Dogecoin has been just weeks ago. The reason the price is not changing much from this baseline right now is because few are buying and few are selling their Dogecoin, specifically due to topics which will be covered in other sections here. However, an active circulation of a currency is critical to establishing it as an effective means of exchanging goods and setting it up for long term growth. More on the value of Dogecoin in another section.

Question: Establishing a floor or a baseline.

Answer: The day to day trends of Dogecoin may appear strange at first sight, but those who continue holding onto their Doge are affecting or rather creating the floor. The floor is essentially the lowest value Dogecoin will drop to at current market conditions. The floor is currently 0.07 USD cents. Which is up from 0.008 USD cents just a few months ago.

Question: Should Dogecoin have a cap on its supply. Inflation and deflation Infinite supply / no cap vs cap in regarding to cryptocurrency.

Answer: First of all - the original developers of Dogecoin have already stated that they will NOT be adding a cap. Adding a cap fundamentally changes Dogecoin at its core level and they’re just not going to do it. Here is the direct answer from the Dogecoin developers: “The interest was already built by people trying to trick others in buying an asset they themselves do not understand and your link is to a petition that tricks people into asserting social pressure towards changing the core parameters of an asset that have been there since its launch. We believe that what you're really doing is trying to get rich at the cost of others and when that failed because you ran out of victims and money, you come here asking us to bail you out. However, we will not bail you out, as with great freedom comes great responsibility. We take ours seriously and we hope that you will too in the future. We have now closed this topic. Request denied.” - Patrick lodder Dogecoin developer.
Second response “A, block reward is needed to secure Dogecoin network in a decentralized manner. Dogecoin is merge-mined with Litecoin, and that makes it somewhat secure against PoW attacks. But if Dogecoin reward will be too low, some Litecoin miners may drop Dogecoin, and our security will suffer. From this point of view, bigger reward is better. If you propose reducing the reward over time, you must also propose a solid way to keep Dogecoin secure. Now about the economic aspect. Current Dogecoin issue rate, taken relative to current total amount, is low, it's almost nothing compared to all the other factors that affect Dogecoin value. If you look at Dogecoin price chart since the introduction of current issue schedule, you will not see effects of "inflation" for all the wild price changes caused by other factors. And this already low issue rate gets even smaller over time, compared to total amount of dogecoins. The only real reason for these "cap" proposals is trying to "sell" Dogecoin to investors under the premise of possibly increased scarcity in the future. In my opinion, we don't need to try to appeal to investors. Dogecoin value will be increasing because of strong community and increased usage. And the fact that Dogecoin value increases is already enough for investors to jump in and increase it even more.”
You can read the full response to this directly from the developers here: https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/issues/1674
Even if they DID add a cap it would actually be LESS beneficial for Dogecoin as a currency. Her
Here’s some Basic economics explaining why. Inflation and deflation are common economic terms used to explain the change in the inherent value of a currency. This means that that 1 US Dollar today does not have the same value or “worth” as it did, for example, in 1950. Inflation is a situation of rising prices in the economy. A more exact definition of inflation is a sustained increase in the general price level in an economy. Deflation on the other hand occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0%, that is a negative inflation rate. While inflation reduces the value of a currency over time, a sudden deflation of a currency increases its relative value. This would allow more goods and services to be bought than before with the same amount of currency. Deflation can be a factor in leading to a recession and also result in a deflationary spiral.
10a) What does all this mean with regards to cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin versus Dogecoin?

 Well - Bitcoin is stagnant or deflationary over time, while Dogecoin is inflationary overtime. This is due to the way they are architected and mined, and how new coins are added into their respective markets - covered in other section. What gets misunderstood is which one is “better” or rather "the lesser evil".

10b) Dogecoin doesn't need a supply limit like Bitcoin, because in the long run it will be much easier to exchange Dogecoin for goods and services, than with other crypto currencies or regular currencies for that matter. If Bitcoin wants to become a real global currency with buying power, not just a speculation tool to exchange it for a few thousand debt based USD, when it hits a new record high every few months or years, its supply will have to grow inevitably. Our current money is backed by signatures on debt contracts, not on real values. But it works, because we believe in it, even if it will be our downfall if it continues like this. Dogecoin is different. Dogecoin has a set amount of coins entering the market by the minute. There are plenty of spreadsheets out there showcasing exactly how much many Dogecoin will be in circulation at any given moment of time. People get confused because they think inflation is a bad thing, when in fact it is actually beneficial in small quantities and beneficial to the longevity of a currency.
Currencies have inflation - commodities don’t. Dogecoin is better suited to be a currency than Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is better suited to be a digital version of gold.

Question: Financial aspects of Dogecoin. Who will profit from it? What will happen if Dogecoin has exponential growth? A zero- sum game. Explaining that you only realize a loss or profit at then time of sell.

Answer: To clear things up - cryptocurrency is essentially what economist call a Zero Sum Game. A zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants. What this means is that across a group of people who engage in selling and buying Dogecoin, if one person gains another person loses. For example if you bought at 0.08 and sold at 0.03 someone made a profit of 0.05 cents per Dogecoin while you lost 0.05 cents per Dogecoin. The important thing to understand is that in these situations the only way you truly lose or gain anything is when you sell. You don’t realize your gains or losses until you complete that transaction. What this means is that if Dogecoin does increase exponentially the people who have been holding since the price has been low will gain astronomical returns on their investment, while others who joined late will not.

Question: Stability vs Volatility Answer: This describes basically how stable something is over a set period of time. Volatility is how much prices change over time. Stabilization of Dogecoin is important for the overall health, however, cryptocurrencies are known to and will likely remain very volatile for the foreseeable future.

13a) Question: Pump and dump vs long term growth and the difference between them.
Answer: "Pump and dump" is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. Pump and dumps are illegal. While a subset of people are trying to pump and dump Dogecoin, the legitimate community is focused its long term growth and stability which is achieved through the rest of the topics addressed here
13b - second perspective) Essentially many people are just coming onto DOGE because it has low barrier to entry, and enticed by the idea of coming in low, selling what they have and running with the profits short term. This has lead to pumps and dips, and a lot of misinformation being thrown around. I should clarify some points for those who are coming in, instead of repeating the HODL and diamond hands rhetoric. Planned pumps are not what Doge needs. Pumps of this nature usually have an attached implication, which is that people will plan on selling, capitalising on the hype and then buying low to wait for the next pump. This leads to money being taken out of the coin, resulting in the lower price we now see. This means that planned pumps are essentially feeding sellers. We are not doing this in secret. This is a public forum and people with the intention have the information needed to drain us dry if we let them. Essentially, if we want Doge to grow, planned pumps need to stop being openly advertised, or they need to die altogether. Of the two, the latter is the easiest, and it is what this post will be focusing on. Sustainable Growth is now the way. Pumps are fine when they're unpredicted - Elon Musk is living proof of that. However, planned pumps will result in our good boy coin shooting down to the dips, where sellers can reinvest and wait to harvest our money again at the next pump. If however, we grow the price slowly, the floor will increase in a much more stable fashion, resulting in smaller dips. This will mean that the insane dips where sellers truly farm their coin at become very inhospitable to them, as they'd need to put more and more money to receive less and less profit. Essentially, by slowly growing the coin with organic 'food' instead of steroids, we can slowly choke out those parasites who are ruining the growth of the coin by making every dip a horrible investment for their time and efforts. Sure, buy at the dips. Sure, hold the coin. But don't plan any more pumps. The less room you give to the sellers, the doubters and the paper hands, the more coin you can collect and the more profit that awaits you in the future. Conclusion If we come together as a community, Doge will truly live up to the hype - the people's currency. If we choose to continue listening to planned pumps, we have a very difficult, long and risky road ahead of us. Sustainable growth will beat large planned spikes any day.

Question: Elon Musk - Is he important for Dogecoin? The impact of celebrities and big business supporting Dogecoin Celebrity/Influencer Involvement

Answer: Elon Musk, Mark Cuban As many may know, Elon is highly involved when it comes to “meme culture.” we can see Elon has tweeted several times concerning “doge,” reposting memes found from Reddit, as well as concerning himself with the ripples of the recent stock news. Mark Cuban, another notable wealthy, down-to-earth, community-involved individual, has recently mentioned “#dogecoin” specifically. Regardless of whether these people have positive intentions towards $DOGE or not, their mention carries weight and public opinion and is a good assumption that new eyes are looking at us as a result. It should be noted that they have tweeted neutrally to positively towards $DOGE, not indicating a full-send support but they clearly are not talking down the possibilities.
Big business allowing Dogecoin to be supported as means of exchanging goods, and people like Elon musk supporting and backing this cryptocurrency are important to proving its value and legitimacy.
However, it is important to remember that this is not the sole determining factor in the price. The price is determined by everything covered above.

Question: Is getting Dogecoin to increase to the equivalent of one US dollar possible? Can and will it really happen? What will change if it does happen? How high can Dogecoin realistically rise in price? Market cap explanation and comparison to US currency and global FIAT currency.

Answer: Yes, despite not having a fixed or capped supply, the value of the currency can rise based on its relative value against other currencies in the market. You can find examples of this in the FOREX market where currency pairs are traded, like Euro against US dollar, or US Dollar against Japanese Yen. As the value of Dogecoin rises, more and more businesses will recognise its potential and importance, and subsequently begin to accept it in exchange for goods and services. This will also help to grow the developer community around Dogecoin.
Market cap = price x supply. Price is determined by supply and demand (buying snd selling of Dogecoin. Supply is determined by mining Dogecoin.
The current market cap of Dogecoin while writing this article is 9,000,000,000 (9 billion). if Dogecoin were to reach $1 today it would have a market cap of 128 billion dollars. Since the current supply of Dogecoin Is 128 billion in circulation. Bitcoin (the most successful cryptocurrency currently has a market cap of approximately 700,000,000,000 (700 billion dollars). This means that at $1 the total supply of Dogecoin would be “worth” about 1/7th of Bitcoins total supply. The estimated supply of the US dollar is 2,000,000,000 (2 trillion) since 1 dollar = 1 dollar (LOLZ) the market cap of the US currency is 2 trillion. If Dogecoin were to reach this market cap - the price can be calculated through dividing the market cap (2 trillion) by the supply (128 billion). This means that dogecoin would equal the entire US currency’s (M0 money supply in economics) at $15.60. This is definitely not impossible but highly highly improbable to ever reach this value any time soon. As in like 3-10 years away minimum. Now the entire supply of the entire worlds fiat (paper) currency is 37 trillion dollars. You can apply the same logic from above and see that the value would be $288.60 This is the theoretical limit to how much Dogecoin can be worth due simply to the fact that if it was valued at anymore than that amount it would be “worth” more than the entire world’s paper currencies combined which is not possible without adding more supply. It’s important to note that this number is not static. Which means if the market conditions change such as an increase in supply or change in price the numbers will change.

Question: What is a 51% attack? Can it realistically happen? What are the implications if it were to happen? Answer: A 51% attack refers to an attack on a blockchain most commonly bitcoin. Such an attack is possible but still just hypothetical. It requires group of miners to control more than 50% of the network's mining hash rate or computing power.

The attackers would be able to prevent new transactions from gaining confirmations, allowing them to halt payments between some or all users. They would also be able to reverse transactions that were completed while they were in control of the network, meaning they could double-spend coin.
They would almost certainly not be able to create new coins or alter old blocks. A 51% attack would probably not destroy bitcoin or another blockchain-based currency outright, even if it proved highly damaging.
You may have seen an article going around talking about the 51% attack and why it will cause Dogecoin to go to zero. Regarding the 51% Hashrate attacks, Yes, they are real, and have been ever since cryptocurrencies aka Bitcoin started. The article even mentions an example. Now, if a large group of people with a lot of resources very effectively coordinated, they could indeed make a 51% attack on Dogecoin happen. But not just on Dogecoin, but also on many other, small cryptocurrencies. This is nothing new, this has basically been known for the last 10+ years. But the author of the article needs clicks, so there goes the horror-scenario headline... Possible - yes, absolutely. Likely, not very. Unless you have a large sum of people with a few resources each coordinating perfectly - that is in my honest opinion very unlikely - you could have governments, very large hedge funds, or maybe Elon Musk build a vast array of mining farms and do said 51% Hashrate attack. But again, that effort would only be worthwhile if those groups had a definite interest in destroying Dogecoin. There are probably other cryptocurrencies that would be more interesting from that perspective, such as litecoin. Of course, despite the sensationalist headline, for them clicks, the author covers their own backside by stating the following: "In conclusion...Pretty much all the crypto besides Bitcoin and Ethereum are at material risk of a 51% attack, and it's not just a theoretical risk." This problem is not tied specifically to Dogecoin, but to every single cryptocurrency. Now let’s do some math to calculate exactly how much it would cost in order to succeed in pulling off a 51% attack on Dogecoin. Dogecoin has a hash rate of 299.17 TH/s or 299,170,000 MH/s. If you were to use an RTX3090 which costs $2,000 US Dollars, and has a hash rate of 121 MH/s. You would need 1,260,964 RTX3090 at a cost of $2,521,928,926 dollars ($2.5 billion). Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No.

Question: There is a lack of developer support for Dogecoin. The technology is outdated. Why would anyone come work as a Dogecoin developer when there are thousands of other cryptocurrencies?

Answer: the original Dogecoin developers have already began working on the project with the new found support of the community and companies accepting Dogecoin as payment. The short answer is there is already development being done due to recent weeks bringing Dogecoin back into relevancy.
The long answer is this: Given the recent surge in Altcoins, both from a financial perspective and media coverage, there is now a very good chance that new developers will come back to Dogecoin in time. There are plenty of people with coding experience, also those who have already worked on cryptocurrency concepts in general.
As of early 2021, there are around 4000 cryptocurrencies in existance, probably several thousand more hidden as drafts or stealth projects. These days, there are well-paid positions in the up-and-coming cryptocurrency space. There is, as always, a shortage of developers. Thus, how can Dogecoin compete with the wider market and successfully attract developers? Well, there are a number of different reasons Dogecoin will be able to attract good developers. Basically, why does anyone work on anything? Why did the original Dogecoin developers even create Dogecoin in the first place? For fun, because it was interesting, because Bitcoin got the ball rolling, to be part of something exciting.
Remember - when Bitcoin was created were those developers simply looking for short-term financial gain? No, they were likely not. Bitcoin took a while to take off. And so did Dogecoin. Bitcoin has inherent limitations for day-to-day use, while Dogecoin has received too little attention over the past few years in terms of development. But, the idea that developers will not work on Dogecoin is just a big misconception. Dogecoin is becoming too popular for developers to stay away.
Also, once Dogecoin legitimatizes itself more widely, working on the project as a developer will become inherently more valuable, both financially and non-financially, due to the fact that it will make its way back in the top tier cryptocurrencies.

Question: if all of the above information is true why the cryptocurrency full of people who are trying to discredit Dogecoin as legitimate cryptocurrency.

Answer: The cryptocurrency is horribly misinformed. cryptocurrency is a specific subset of society who has an extremely knowledgeable background in computer science and computer coding. They may have a solid understanding of the technology aspect of cryptocurrency but the reason why Dogecoin will be successful is based on economics, mathematics, social theory and statistics as WELL as the underlying technology. Each of these topics is extremely intricate and each field requires years to fully master. No one person has all of the knowledge of all aspects of a cryptocurrency so when someone is attacking Dogecoin on why it won’t be successful is probably misinformed. Dogecoin is already successful. It’s been proven already. The question is HOW successful. Which nobody really knows the answer to. cryptocurrency is full of gatekeepers who horde their knowledge while the Dogecoin community is focused on explaining and educating new people. cryptocurrency is notorious for being extremely serious and feel threatened that something that started at as a joke/meme has the potential to be at cryptocurrencies intended purpose - exchanging goods and services - than Bitcoin or any other popular cryptocurrency which is deflationary in nature.

Question: Will cryptocurrency replace fiat currency. Will cryptocurrency be the next world currency. Will the next world currency be Dogecoin? Answer: People don’t realize the worldwide paradigm that is taking place right in front of our eyes. People are starting to see that traditional fiat (paper) currency back by centralized governments and debt are flawed and can be improved upon. Cryptocurrency is the future whether the people who can’t see it or try to disagree believe it or not. It’s inevitable. I knew it was inevitable in 2013 when I first heard about Bitcoin. A cryptocurrency will replace fiat currency in the future. Will it be Bitcoin? ETH? Dogecoin? Some other cryptocurrency that doesn’t exist yet? I don’t know. What I do know is that the only cryptocurrency that has inflationary tendencies that line up with traditional fiat currency very very well, allowing for an ease in the transition, a community dedicated to its success regardless of the cost, a mascot that allows for ease for spread of information to the masses thereby assisting with mass adoption is Dogecoin.

Thank you for reading this post in its entirety. It took a large amount of collective effort of people in my discord. I appreciate them to no end. We have over 100 people in that discord and we are here to stay. We are interested in explaining Dogecoin, reducing the scare factor and backing up Dogecoin through economic, social, financial, mathematical theory, etc. Per Dogecoin rules I cannot give out this discord, but if you are interested message me. It goes into greater detail on every one of these topics, with resources, links, articles etc. thank you and above all else remember that at the end of the day this is a meme cryptocurrency from 2013. But the people have spoken, and this is now official the people’s currency as well. Dogecoin🚀🪐🚀

My city has been cutoff from the world and overrun with monsters. I have a set of rules to stay alive. HOLY SHIT & A MR. BAILEY EXTRAVAGANZA...oh, and also Rule #10 I guess

Eli here, yada yada, you know the drill.
Great, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’d like to start with: holy shit. Holy shit, y’all. Holy fucking shit.
Let me elaborate. Right after I wrote up my last story, I posted it, and then I opened up a new document in Microsoft Word. Mostly because I like to leave a document open all the time and type my thoughts into it. A virtual journal, of sorts. It helps me process things and think through my feelings; I like to imagine it as self-led therapy. (Considering my fragile mental state, it clearly doesn’t solve everything, but it certainly doesn’t make things any worse).
Anyway, all this to say that I had a Word document open, like I usually do. And like I often do, I left the room before typing anything to get a snack, and when I returned, that’s where the holy shit comes in. Because, guys: there was writing on the page.
It said this: sorry can’t talk. might be noticed. would be taken away. can type. don’t say anything.
And no, it wasn’t a ghost or an invisible monster or something. Because guess who was sitting right next to the keyboard, his fluffy tail curled around his feet, staring at me with his intelligent eyes?
If you guessed Mr. Bailey, well, first of all, it wasn’t that hard based on my last sentence. But also, you’d be right. That’s correct, friends: holy shit, because Mr. B apparently 1) understood me when I tried to set up a communication system, 2) can, in fact, communicate, but won’t do it verbally because it “might be noticed,” 3) knows something about us being listened to and/or watched, and 4) to reiterate, can basically fucking talk.
Now, his words on the document said not to say anything in response, and damn, I can’t tell you how hard I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying that string of holy shits out loud. I think I’ll have a dent in my tongue for the rest of my life.
Somehow I managed, and I sat down at my computer, and I typed back. It took him longer to respond since he essentially walked across the keyboard to type, stepping precisely on certain keys. And then I had to wait for him to finish, letter by letter, until I could respond. It only took a few back-and-forths for me to realize that this was wildly inefficient, so I gestured for him to wait. Then we ventured out to that utterly decimated Best Buy and scavenged in the broken glass and bodies until we found another keyboard.
Did you guys know that you can hook up two keyboards into one computer, and once it calibrates, the computer can accept input from both of them, nearly simultaneously? Well, you can. And that’s what I did. So now Mr. Bailey has his own keyboard, and we can type back and forth with less waiting and transition time.
Now, I bet you’re all wondering what he said. I have his permission to post part of our conversation here (I saved the Word document, obviously, because it’s not every freaking day your cat begins to talk to you). So I’ll post some direct fragments. I’m also going to relay a story he typed out for me, but I’m going to edit and dramatize it, because it took him forever to type it out, and even then he only used sentence fragments and I pieced the details together. I think he’d like a more polished version of that part. (He meowed in agreement as he read that over my shoulder).
A few things before I continue my Mr. Bailey extravaganza post. First of all, isn’t my cat the coolest thing in existence? Like seriously. I thought he was the best before, but now I’m pretty damn sure there’s no animal cooler than him in the entire world. Can your pet talk and use a computer? No? Didn’t think so. Guess Mr. B is cooler. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
Second, he knows surprisingly good English. I assume from reading over my shoulder as I write journal entries to myself or stories to share with you guys, and from listening to me talk. (I know you didn’t hear that, but he meowed in agreement to that too). But he doesn’t really use capital letters or punctuation other than periods, except when Word edits stuff automatically, so don’t criticize his grammar when I include direct quotes, okay? I mean, he’s pretty self-confident with a healthy ego, but no one likes unhelpful criticism over the internet. And he’s a motherfucking cat who can type, so give him a break.
Third, I think this ties in well to Rule #10. If you guessed that’s another general rule rather than a specific monster-oriented one, you’d be correct.
Rule #10: Not everything is as it seems. Don’t trust everything you see or hear, and don’t judge a book by its cover.
Yes, I know, a tired cliché. And you’re also probably like, Eli, isn’t that rule covered in the Ashley rule, or the MJ rule? Well, both yes and no, and also, shut up. Those rules deal specifically with the food created by Ashleys or the humans imitated by MJs; Rule #10 is simply a more general version with a broader scope, and it encompasses a lot more things. For instance, screams in the distance? Could be human, but probably not. Probably monsters fighting and/or trying to draw people out. So don’t trust it. Dead bodies in the street? Probably human corpses, but if they’re not pretty rotten by now, maybe not. MJs have been known to play dead to get you to come closer to them. So don’t trust them. Purple flowers in the ground? Might be actual flowers, but might be the eyes of a Sandra. (No, seriously. I almost stepped on one once because it was camouflaged, laying on the ground. I barely got my earplugs before it was on its feet and singing. That was a close call). Don’t trust them.
And yes, a cat that seems smarter and acts not quite like a cat? Maybe not 100% a normal cat. Still a cat, not a monster…but not a normal cat.
So without further ado, here’s the first part of our conversation, directly from that document, with minor edits for clarity.
Mr. Bailey: sorry can’t talk. might be noticed. would be taken away. can type. don’t say anything.
Eli (after freaking out silently for several minutes): So you can talk? You understand me?
Mr. Bailey: yes.
Eli: But you waited this long to talk to me?
Mr. Bailey: didn’t always know how. learned from listening and watching you.
Eli: Cool, cool. But you don’t want a system of meowing because you “might be noticed”?
Mr. Bailey: yes.
Eli: Well, that’s great. Who might notice and why would they take you away?
Mr. Bailey: don’t know who. but they always listen. sometimes watch too.
Eli: What do you mean? How? Are they watching now?
Mr. Bailey: listening devices in dome. can hear everything. cameras in monsters and some buildings. not this building. always listen, sometimes watch.
Eli: How do you know that??
Mr. Bailey: can hear them whirring and clicking. hear them transmit in dome, hear them under monster skin.
At this point I told him he was a badass, and then asked for significantly more clarification and details, because as you can imagine, my head was fucking spinning so hard it was in going into orbit. I won’t directly relay the rest of the somewhat repetitive conversation, but here’s the gist: Mr. B thinks there are audio transmitters all over the dome, too tiny to see, that relay any noise in the entire dome back to whoever is running this shitshow. There aren’t cameras in the dome, at least as far as he can tell, but there are cameras spread out around the city, and in almost every monster. He first noticed something weird pretty early on, when he heard clicking – like a camera shutter opening and closing – in a dead monster body, and some investigation and focused listening led him to hear the same sound in almost every monster we’ve ever come across. Which is a really comforting realization.
Once he realized the sound their cameras make, he listened for it everywhere. The house I was staying in before this one had cameras, and he wanted me to leave. Looking back, it makes sense; we only stayed there for two weeks because he was constantly freaking out and driving me crazy. At the time I thought he didn’t like a smell or something, but I guess he was acting like a psycho on purpose to get me out of there. When we got to this neighborhood, he thoroughly examined every inch of the house before settling in, and I thought that was just him doing his normal cat thing, but no. He was checking for cameras. What a little goddamn genius.
That’s why typing is safer than some kind of meowing system. He’s worried if they know he’s onto them, they’ll come after him, or maybe both of us. Maybe they’ll decide whatever sick game they’re playing should come to an end and just fucking apocalypse us. He just doesn’t know, so he figured he should play it safe. I support that, because I too would like to make it out of here alive. That was my New Year’s resolution, after all, and I intend to keep it. I’d love to go to a functioning restaurant again before I die, if nothing else.
And before you panic about my posts being monitored too, don’t worry. I hide my IP address and use different VPNs. I figured out how to do all that before I even started posting, because I had theories about being watched and didn’t want to risk my stories being seen by the assholes controlling all this. Not to mention that internet and cell service are so shitty that maybe it hasn’t even occurred to them that I’m trying to communicate outside the dome, and maybe they’re not checking. Who knows? Depends how dumb they are. I hope they’re dumb. All this to say that posting here should be pretty safe. But thanks for your concern.
There was also a lot of conversation about how he came to be…well, a little more than your average cat. Now is the time for me to relay that story.
Just like with my own stories, let me take you back. This time, all the way back, to the very first day this all happened, aka the day I saw my family torn apart in front of me, aka the day I don’t want to relive, but am okay with reliving from Mr. Bailey’s view. This part of his story all took place before we crossed paths anyway. It probably happened while I was seeing my family torn apart in front of me, come to think of it. But I’m not going to think of that little detail.
You may remember that I fled to the pet store and found Mr. Bailey the night this all started. That leaves about ten hours between the descent of the monsters and our meeting. During those ten hours, a lot of shit went down. I mean, seriously. I know I’ve used the term “all hell broke loose” several times, but this was the original hell breaking loose. The big one, the one where hell may as well have actually opened up all its doors and let out its demons, because things went south about as quickly as I imagine they would with demons running around.
It was about noon when the dome appeared. I don’t know if it descended or rose from the ground or fucking shimmered into existence, because I didn’t see it happen, and whatever it did, it did fast. Mr. Bailey doesn’t know either; like any normal weekday, he was inside the pet store, dozing on a cat bed up on a shelf.
Then the monsters appeared. No one knows where exactly they came from, either. But it was chaos. Bloody, horrific chaos. None of us had ever seen any of these monsters before, obviously, so none of us knew how to fight them. Hell, I’m pretty sure most of the population didn’t believe in monsters until they were being eaten by them.
I’m not going into detail right now about the terrors I witnessed, because this isn’t my story. Also because I don’t want to. My self-therapy isn’t good enough to make me want to discuss my family’s death or Rule #1 yet. (Stay tuned to see if my mental health improves or plummets! Only time will tell).
Mr. Bailey remembers vague bits and pieces of the first few minutes. People running by the store screaming; unfamiliar creatures that smelled like death chasing them; sounds of bones crunching and claws ripping into flesh. The store owner panicked when he saw what was happening. Who wouldn’t? But instead of trying to hide – he hadn’t been noticed in the empty little store yet – he decided to make a run for it. His car was right out front, after all. Literally ten steps from the door.
He called Mr. Bailey to come, and though he was scared and confused, Mr. B listened. This was his owner; the man had raised and cared for Mr. Bailey since he was a kitten. And Mr. B loved him. He wasn’t about to abandon him now.
The store owner grabbed his keys and raced for his car, Mr. B at his side. They made it inside, but not much further. As the owner put his keys in the ignition, the car shook and an awful half-growl, half-screech that would come to be recognizable as the distinctive sound of a Caleb surrounded them.
A Caleb appeared at the driver’s side, and neither of them had time to react before it smashed its fist through the window. The owner tried to shove it away, but if that tactic worked, well, there’d be a lot more people still alive.
The Caleb started scratching and clawing at anything it could reach, which happened to be the owner’s chest and arms. Long slashes blossomed across his torso and blood flew as both the owner and the Caleb flailed, painting the windshield red.
And Mr. B couldn’t stand by and watch. He always was braver than most cats, and at that moment he was pissed off, scared, and threatened by the monster attacking the person he loved. That was enough for him to leap across his owner and latch himself onto the Caleb, digging his claws in.
The Caleb shrieked, probably more surprised than hurt, and stumbled backwards. As it swung its long arms, trying to grab Mr. B, he clawed his way up the Caleb’s chest to its head. And then he just started scratching and biting any piece of the Caleb near him: skull, arms, face. The Caleb almost got ahold of him a couple times, but Mr. B held on for dear life and clawed its hands enough to make it temporarily draw back. Then Mr. B, mostly by chance, struck gold: in his flurry of teeth and claws, he happened to stick a paw in one of the Caleb’s eye sockets, and since it was already there, he started scratching the ever-living shit out of that empty hole where an eye should be.
Maybe not quite as good as a laser, but it was effective enough. Smoke began to exude from the eyehole. The Caleb shrieked and flailed wildly, apparently so distraught by the pain that its swinging arms now didn’t even come close to knocking Mr. B off.
It seemed to be working, and Mr. B’s paw was twisted at a weird angle and hard to pull out anyway, so he just kept scratching around in the eye socket. Thank God he did. The Caleb staggered backwards, still shrieking, until its heels hit the curb and it fell hard onto its back, Mr. B still holding on tight.
Luckily, he was more on its face than the back of its head by this point. I say luckily, because when the Caleb hit the concrete, it hit hard enough to crack its skull open. Mr. B was splashed with thick purple Caleb blood and little bits and chunks of Caleb brain. (Yes, they apparently do have a brain, but let’s not dwell on that surprise). He finally withdrew his claws and stepped off the dead Caleb, giving himself several quick licks to smooth his fur and remove at least a little of the mess.
He looked over to his owner, who was still sitting in the car, bleeding profusely but alive. He had been watching, and when Mr. B emerged victorious, his terrified and pained expression turned to a smile. He looked at Mr. Bailey and said, “You saved my life, Mr. B! You’re the best goddamn cat there ever was. Come on, get back here, we gotta get out of here!”
And Mr. Bailey understood him for the first time. He stood there on the curb for a second, trying to make sense of how he knew what a human was saying…and he stood there a second too long. Suddenly, another Caleb was leaping over the car from its passenger side. Mr. Bailey let out a yowl, but he was too late. The Caleb was already at the broken driver’s side window, and Mr. B’s owner was caught off-guard; Mr. B was still much too far away to help when he heard the scream and a horrible ripping noise. He couldn’t see what had happened with the Caleb in between him and the car, but he saw more blood spray across the windshield, and he listened to the scream cut off, and he knew it was over.
He kept going, though, because he was hoping to get revenge. He took a flying leap and landed on the Caleb’s back, clawing it and yowling in fury as he tried to reach its head, since he had now put together that the eye was a weak point (he wasn’t sure why he was thinking so much more distinctly than he ever had, but now wasn’t the time to question it). Unfortunately, this Caleb was apparently more flexible, because it managed to reach its long arms around, grab him, and fling him off before he ever got to the top of that nasty Caleb summit.
He landed on the curb near the dead Caleb, and the alive Caleb started to walk over to him, making its awful noise. Mr. B thought he was done for. He probably would have been, except there was a scream from the street; both Mr. Bailey and the Caleb turned to see a woman, fleeing from what would eventually come to be known as a Brent.
Luckily for Mr. Bailey but not so luckily for the woman, the Caleb decided she was more appealing, and it turned and sprinted after her, leaving Mr. Bailey lying on the curb, out of breath but unwounded. The only evidence that Mr. B had tried to get his revenge were a series of crazed claw marks down its back.
Mr. Bailey made himself go look at his owner briefly; his head had been torn off and was sitting on the passenger’s seat. He sat there for a moment and paid his respects, but then he couldn’t bear to look at it anymore, and he went back inside.
At this point, Mr. Bailey was devastated, but he was also confused and intrigued, because he was suddenly seeing everything differently than he ever had before. He was thinking in a way that he assumed humans usually thought, and he swore he could read a few of the words printed on food bags and toys around the shop. His empty food bowl was printed with, “MR. BAILEY” and he was pretty sure that was his name.
It was a “weird process” (his words) that he doesn’t think he can adequately explain to humans who have always had that capacity for thought and logic. But he would like to emphasize that it was very strange, and very confusing; yet it also provided a distraction from the fact that he had just failed to save his owner.
So he thought about it, and looked down at his brain- and blood-covered fur, and came up with his theory. He swallowed Caleb flesh and blood while attacking it; he knows he did, because he bit it anywhere he could reach, and he was in too much of a frenzy to worry about spitting anything out. Then, he was splashed with its brains, and during his quick wash, he suspects he ingested more blood and at least a few small pieces of the brain.
It’s all only his theory, of course. But it’s the best one he has, and I sure don’t have anything better, so I’m on board. It seems like something he swallowed – the flesh, the blood, the brains, or some combination of the three – made him more than your average cat.
He says he was thrilled when I got there a couple hours later. He remembered me from my visits to the store when I was younger. He was scared and lonely, too, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do in the following days; me walking in changed that. I told him how much he comforted me that first night, and he said I comforted him too. I guess I never realized that we’d both lost our families that day.
As for the Caleb that killed his owner? Don’t worry. Apparently it stuck around the area, because it was the same Caleb that attacked me in the pet shop the very next morning…and therefore the same one I killed by discovering the magic of laser pointers. Mr. B recognized it when it charged at me; he saw the claw marks on its back. And you know the rest. He helped me take it down, and it was not only his revenge, but the start of a beautiful monster-killing partnership.
Anyway, Rule #10. Things aren’t always what they seem. He may not just be a cat, but he sure is pretty great. I have a conversation partner now too, kind of, as long as we’re careful. Beats writing a journal to myself.
I’m worried about all the monitoring shit, obviously, but that’s a problem for after I share this post. To end the Mr. Bailey extravaganza, I will say this: I love him. I’m glad we have each other. He’s a badass. I’ll let him reply to strangers on the internet if he really wants to, because he deserves it.
…And yes, I may really feel all those things, but you can bet your ass he encouraged me to type them .

White Noise | Week 3 | Chapters 12-20

Hi everyone! Thanks for letting me cover this week's reading. This is my first time doing something like this so please be gentle.
Summary
I tried to keep my summary to just salient plot points, not interjecting any opinion throughout, and some minor details of some scenes will inevitably be missed:

Gladney takes a German lesson from Howard Dunlop, by Dunlop's request facing each other. Gladney politely pries into Dunlop's backstory and learns of his other teaching subject matters: Greek, Latin, ocean sailing, and meteorology as a result of the death of his mother. Dunlop employed common small talk ('nice day') as a tool to begin interacting with the world again. Upon returning home, Gladney runs into Bob Pardee (Denise's father and Babette's ex-wife). Pardee briefly mentions fundraising for the Nuclear Accident Readiness Foundation, then takes the older kids to dinner. Gladney and Babette go off to her reading session with Mr. Treadwell with Wilder in tow, but the Treadwell household all appeared to be missing. They go to the police to report the encounter and meet back up with Pardee and the three. The next day the police begin "dragging the river" for the missing.
Babette informs Gladney that Heinrich was down by the river to watch the search, and that the Treadwells were found alive (albeit shaken) by the mall. They had spent a total of four days there, and confusion remained surrounding why they went there and why they did not call for help. Gladney posits that a combination of their old age and the strangeness of the area made them feel helpless. Adele T, a psychic, was brought in by the police to find the Treadwells. Although she failed to find them, she did uncover some heroin and a gun. Apparently, she often finds evidence of crimes, however they are never what she is looking for in the first place.
Denise confronts Gladney regarding Babette's supposed memory lapses. She mentions a bottle of "Dylar" she found in the trash, though she can't find the drug in her reference books. Gladney insists there is nothing to worry about. They briefly discuss Heinrich's name, German names, Hitler (shocker). Steffie joins, and they browse the german-english dictionary for similarities. Heinrich too joins, and brings up an airplane crash he saw on the tv. The family situated themselves in front of the tv that Friday as is tradition, and they were captivated by the destruction and disaster that they saw.

The following Monday, Murray expresses his concerns that he has failed to establish himself as the resident Elvis expert (Dimitros Cotsakis managed to interview Elvis' family after his death). Gladney offers his presence in an upcoming lecture.
Gladney joins the New York emigres for lunch. Gladney asks Alfonse why "decent, well-meaning and responsible people" are so enamored by disasters on tv. Alfonse posits that due to the bombardment of information that pollutes our lives, we need catastrophes to captivate us. The emigres tell various stories, and Alfonse asks the group where they were when James Dean passed. Nicholas Grappa was the only one without an answer.

Gladney joins Murray's lecture, and they engage in a back and forth throughout, comparing Elvis' and Hitler's upbringings. Gladney suggests that after Hitler's death, people joined in just to be a part of a crowd. They then realize that the class around them have become a crowd. Gladney thinks that at this point he needs no crowd - death in the classroom is purely professional.
Wilder begins crying and doesn't stop. They take Babette to her posture class and Jack waits in the car. Gladney waits in the car with the crying child, he entered a sort of meditative state, finding some weird solace in the never ending noise. Wilder stops crying on the way home, and the rest of the family is extra careful around him as to not trigger anything further.
Denise confronts Babette about Dylar (the mystery drug from earlier), but nothing of substance is uncovered. They arrived at their destination, the mall, and in a hardware store Gladney encounters Eric Massingale from the college. Eric tells Jack that he looks so different, so harmless, away from work, spurring a desire in Gladney to shop. Gladney then engages in some retail therapy. Upon returning home, they disperse.
Gladney goes to Iron City to pick up his 12 year old daughter, Bee. He is met instead by the child's mother, his ex-wife, Tweedy Browner. Bee is set to join them in the airport in a couple hours, and Tweedy wants them all to spend some time together. Jack and Tweedy drive around the city, and Tweedy expresses her dismay with her current life situation, how she still loves Gladney (calls him Tuck), and complains about her new husband Malcolm who appears to be an extremely secretive diplomat. Gladney shuts down all of her attempts to reconnect and reminisce.

They return to the airport to some sort of hysteria. Gladney gets an old man to describe what happened, and the man responses with telling a visceral story of an almost crash. Bee joins her parents, and asks about the media in relation to the almost crash, expressing disappointment that there was no media to report on the events. Tweedy believes that young children flying alone is necessary for their development.

Bee has a somewhat disharmonious presence in the house for the rest of the family. She is mature beyond her years, and has an air of pomposity around her. Gladney and Bee discuss Tweedy, Bee expressing worry for her mother and suggesting she is still in the midst of some sort of crisis. Gladney drives her back to the airport. He then stops at a graveyard taking in the presence of the dead.
Gladney reads obituaries: Gladys Treadwell dies as a result of 'dread' from her stay at the mall, a man in Glasboro died due to a car failure, the lieutenant governor and a mechanicsville man also die. Gladney compares these people to himself. He thinks about historical figures and how they dealt with death. He and Babette discuss who should die first, both arguing that it should be them. Babette insists that as long as children are in the house they will not pass.

Babette leaves and Murray enters, Gladney makes coffee for Murray while Heinrich proselytizes him for his wasted motions. Gladney deliberates internally some more about his and Babette's death.
Gladney goes upstairs and the whole household is stunned to see Babette's face on the tv. Gladney's initial thoughts go dark - is she, dead, missing, something else? They realize her class is being broadcasted and they watch in silence completely captivated. Afterwards Wilder cries (again) and the rest of them go down to await her return. Murray takes some notes on Wilder's crying.
Analysis
This whole section, to me, was characterized by this underlying sense of dread. Disaster appeared to be around every corner, and the shift towards a somber tone especially towards the end came into focus. Specifically, the focus on death is present throughout. Gladney's academic focal point of Hitler seems oddly fitting, as he can be seen as a figure of death. The final chapter of the section boasts some interesting dialogue between Gladney and Babette about the inevitable encroachment of death, followed by Gladney's own personal thoughts regarding the matter. Gladney's studies can be seen as escapism from these dark thoughts, as in the classroom he suggests death is purely professional. Throughout the section there are "almost" tragedies that happen very close to our cast of characters, but they never seem to be direct. There are more mentions of the Mylex suits, there's the Gladwell disappearance (and ultimately death), there's the near plane crash, the fire on tv, but nothing too close to home. This distant tragedy is echoed very directly in chapter 14th by Alfonse, who suggests that we need these far away distractions to captivate us.
The recurring theme of contemporary life drowning us out is up front as well. The contrast between the Gladwell's horrifying experience with the mall, and the Gladney family's overwhelmingly positive experience later in the section was staggering. I'm not sure if that was a reflection on the age of the subjects, but if anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. Wilder's crying, and specifically Gladney's reaction to it, can be considered a parallel to the 'White Noise' we all experience in our day to day lives. Murray's notetaking to end the section is in line with his position as an academic in the sphere of American Culture. Gladney's only solace from this White Noise can be found when he dives headfirst into his Hitler studies, or in the scene in the graveyard, where his persistent fear of death asks as a sort of consistent comfort for him.
The classroom scene was very similar to some of the scenes in "Mao II", with the emphasis on human's propensity to form crowds. In Mao, the disdain of the crowd seemed greater, but Delillo has some consistent critiques on the prevalence of crowds throughout the world. While the crowd of students in the classroom can hardly be considered malignant, the ease at which it formed is likely the reason for this critique.
Gladney is an effective narrator for the style of this book. His tone is rather warm, although there is some sort of robotic quality in the way he interacts with the world and his family yet all of his relationships are rather endearing. His constant interjections with thoughts of his family, of death, and of his short rambles add to the overall feeling of uncertainty that I felt throughout my read thus far.
Questions

What are your thoughts on the stark differences between Gladney's many kids? Babette and Tweedy couldn't be more different: is this a reflection on Gladney of some sort, or are these just to be different types of characters in a story?
How does the choice of academics as characters in the forefront contribute to the overall themes in part 1?
Which "throwaway" scenes do you feel have more weight than on the surface? Why?
What clear differences do you see in modern 2021 life and life in Blacksmith in the 80s?
What moods did you feel in part 1?
What's the significance of Dylar?

Quotes
"Now she watched him with a tender sympathy, a reflectiveness that seemed deep and fond and generous enough to contain all the magical counterspells to his current run of woe, although I knew, of course, as I went back to my book, that it was only a passing affection, one of those kindnesses no one understands." (58)
"Some people always wear a favorite color. Some people carry a gun. Some people put on a uniform and feel bigger, stronger, safer. It's in this area that my obsessions dwell." (63)
"Because we're suffering from brain fade. We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information." (66)
"Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone. Crowds came for this reason above all others. They were there to be a crowd." (73)
"It was as though he'd just returned from a period of wandering in some remote and holy place, in sand barrens or snowy ranges - a place where things are said, sights are seen, distances reached which we in our ordinary toil can only regard with the mingled reverence and wonder we hold in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions." (79)
"They'd come back to listen. They were not yet ready to disperse, to reinhabit their earthbound bodies, but wanted to linger with their terror, keep it separate and intact for just a while longer." (91)
"There was a moment in which our locus of pettiness and shame seemed palpably to expand, a cartoon of self-awareness." (96)
"Let us both live forever, in sickness and health, feeble-minded, doddering, toothless, liver-spotted, dim-sighted, hallucinating. Who decides these things? What is out there? Who are you?" (103)

Next up:

Chapter 21 / pages 105 - 156 (all of part 2)
03/02/2021
Lead: u/ WhereIsArchimboldi
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I am 35 years old, make $56,000 ($231k combined), live in Seattle, and work in higher ed administration

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.

health risks meaning in english video

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Health and safety signs and meanings - YouTube

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WHO | Global health risks

health risks meaning in english

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health risks meaning in english video

health risks meaning in english top

Health and safety signs and meanings - YouTube