IPOB and MASSOB lay curses on Nigeria at 56th independence

Nigeria receives curses from IPOB and MASSOB @56

– On Saturday, October 1, 2016, Nigeria would celebrate its 56th independence anniversary despite its many challenges.

– While the country prepares for the celebration however, IPOB and MASSOB thinks there is nothing to celebrate.

  The Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the Indigenous People of Biafra ((IPOB) have said Nigerians do not have any reason to celebrate the country’s 56th independence anniversary.
  IPOB and MASSOB cursed Nigeria because of the suffering of its citizens Spokespersons for IPOB and MASSOB, Emma Powerful, and the Comrade Uchenna Madu, respectively said the groups were cursing the nation for the untold suffering it has brought on its citizens.
  Vanguard reports that in separate statements, the two organisations said the country was enveloped by unemployment, hunger, bad roads and poor electricity supply.
  The statement by IPOB said: “The Indigenous People of Biafra slashes the Nigeria government over the celebration of 56th independence anniversary on October 1st 2016.

“We curse Nigeria for allowing the suffering of its citizens. The suffering has gone to the level where every citizen in the land cannot afford to eat one square meal a day.
“What is the meaning of celebration of independent in Nigeria while there are abuse of human rights, killing of unarmed civilians? “What is the celebration of independence where more than 120,000 graduates from universities and colleges of education in every year the government cannot afford to employ five thousand people.
“What is celebration where most of Nigerians are into serious hardship and the government is planning to sell all the national assets in order to put more hard ship to its people.
Nigeria is not a better place to live.”
  On its part, MASSOB said: “Nigeria’s 56th independence according to many, is full of ups and down, even to some, it’s also full of blessing while some have lost hope claiming that this is not the Nigeria their forefathers established with the British colonial masters but for we in MASSOB, its a complete and total breakthrough for us. The mere existence justifies our Biafran struggle.

“The emergence of Buhari as the current president revived and restored the massive consciousness of Biafra actualization through the continuation of Hausa Fulani Islamic political, economical and religious conquest of the Middle Beltans and southern regions as commanded by Fulani political father, premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello during the week of Nigeria independence celebration according to Parrot Newspaper of 12th Oct 1960.”
“Ahmadu Bello declared that ‘the new nation called Nigeria should be an estate of our great grandfather Uthman Dan Fodio’.
“We must ruthlessly prevent a change of power. We use the minorities of the north as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future.

“With the enthusiastic spirit of Islamic religious fundamentalism, President Buhari, being a core Fulani man with ethnic/ sentimental hatred running in his blood, he has been carrying out the command of the Northern political father.”

How to Work with Designers

    
    A Cheat Sheet for Engineers and PMs

Once, a long time ago, I was a product manager. Then, I was an engineer. For the past seven years, I’ve been in design. Every single day, I work with people in all of these roles. Every single day, I find new ways to appreciate the responsibilities, challenges, and art behind each of these three pillars of product development. For all the engineers and PMs out there wondering how to crack the strange, retina-sharp, helvetica-typed world of design: this is for you.

To speak the language of designers, stop talking about metrics and start talking about users.

More often than not, these aren’t too far off from each other. For example, you might be talking about setting a goal of optimizing conversion rate on a registration page by X%. Said another way, what you’re trying to do is to remove the barriers that make it hard for users to sign up for your service. But see, the language here matters. Make it easier for users to sign up vs. Optimize the conversion rate on the sign-up flow. One approach speaks to the value for the end user. The other approach focuses on what the company needs to do to be successful. Designers generally think and operate in the mindset of the user.
Other translations:
Can we increase the click-through rate on this button? => How can we make sure users know about this sweet new feature and that it’s easy to use?
We need to not tank metrics with this change => We need to make sure this change doesn’t make it harder for users to do the things they want to do.
Let’s pump up the viral coefficient => Let’s encourage users who like and enjoy this feature to share it with their friends.

Designers have different strengths. These strengths should be applied to the right problems.

Designers are different. Even a class of ‘all-star’ designers would think about problems differently. This is because design encompasses many things, including:

1. Visual design: typography, contrast, hierarchy, and the good ol’ does it look good? falls into this category. Do your eyes fall on the right things? Are the details crisp or are they sloppy? More importantly, does the visual design work together as a system?
2. Interaction design: is it easy and clear to for a user to do X? Is the navigation system robust? Do transitions and animations feel satisfying and make the app feel more intuitive to use?
3. Product design: does the design successfully solve a problem? Is the thing that is designed useful? Does it have a clear vision? Does it contribute value?

Some designers are mind-blowing at visuals but not as experienced in interaction design. Some designers are brilliant product strategists but their design execution is weaker. There are incredibly difficult problems in each area of design, and having the right designers working on the problems that are well-suited to their skills is critical. You cannot swap one designer for another and expect to get the same outcome on a project. Generally, you’ll need all of the above for a strong design. If you can only have one designer on your team, it’s better that that person is a generalist rather than exceptionally good at any one area but weak in the others. If you have a team of designers, then having more specialized designers may work.

The more senior the designer, the more abstract the problem they should be solving.

To break it down more tangibly, let’s look at some examples of levels and appropriate responsibilities:

Designer Lvl 1: Design a form that lets people edit their profile. Pretty scoped—assumes there is a profile, and that the solution takes the shape of a form.

Designer Lvl 2: Design the best interface for users to edit their profile. The solution could be a form, could be a WYSIWYG inline editor, could be a modal window.

Designer Lvl 3 (broad): Design a system for editing across everything—profiles, posts, settings, etc. Now we’re not just profiles, but the editing system should be flexible enough to work across the entire app.

Designer Lvl 3 (deep): Design a way to get users to want to update their profiles. Here, the questions the designer is asking is why should users update their profile? And when? And how to best convey the value proposition?

Designer Lvl 4: Design a solution to increase the authenticity of users among your app. Maybe editing profiles isn’t even the right thing to focus on for our ultimate goal, maybe a peer-review system would be better.

Designer Lvl 5: Identify the biggest product problem with your app/company/site and design a solution.At the highest level, the best designers drive the vision for a product.

Put another way, a senior designer will be highly generative with ideas and solutions if they feel a deep ownership with the product vision and strategy. Conversely, if a senior designer is given a junior-level task (like ‘design a form’) but feels that a form is entirely the wrong way to go about solving the problem, then they’ll probably be deeply unhappy with what they’re doing, and possibly not do that great a job either. This tension here is the source of many a morale woe with design: the more senior a designer, the more frustrated they’ll be if they do not fundamentally agree with the vision or strategy of the product.

The more time a designer spends with other designers, the better the work (and the designer)

Critique, and designers giving other designers feedback is one of the most important and effective tools for improvement. If a designer is working alone and never showing their work to other designers, it’s pretty much guaranteed that their work won’t be as strong as if they were engaging in regular feedback sessions. This is why designers should be encouraged to sit with other designers during the developmental stages of a project (when ideas are free-flowing and designs still rapidly changing) and only be encouraged to sit with engineers during the execution phase of a project (when the biggest pieces of the design are settled and it’s more a matter of implementing it.)

A lot of what designers value and strive for in their work is hard to measure.

That is because a designer’s goal is a quality experience—not just in one aspect of the app, but throughout their entire experience, and not just short-term, but also down the road. As an example, let’s talk about clutter. Qualitatively, everybody generally agrees that tons of clutter is bad. But at what point does adding one more thing become ‘too cluttered?’ It is impossible to quantify this. It is also unlikely that the addition of that one extra thing will result in your users fleeing right off the bat. But slowly, like ocean tides whittling away a rocky cliff, these additions add up until one day, your users see your site as cluttered. Then, some other app will come along that seems fresh and simple and tackles the same problem as your app. And at that point, it is already too late.

Similarly, designers will often push for consistency between different parts of an app or system. This may seem overly fastidious, since at a per-feature level, if the flow for uploading photos is coherent, shouldn’t that be enough?

The problem is, users don’t just upload photos. They’re probably also uploading videos. And if the way they upload photos and videos is markedly different and designed completely in a vacuum, that’s pretty confusing. Users will probably have a harder time uploading photos and videos. Just imagine if the File menu existed in a different place for every app—sometimes in the top left, sometimes in the top right, or bottom or wherever. That would be a nightmare.

Now, it’s true that sometimes a designer’s balance of what’s important can be off. Designers have a tendency to overvalue an individual’s experience and undervalue an entire population or network’s experience. Similarly, designers may use their own experiences as a compass for what to focus on, when in fact they are not the target demographic. (Of course, I am painting some pretty broad strokes here—obviously this does not apply to every designer.) But the fact of the matter is, it’s often hard to point at short-term quantitive metrics that will go up and down due to a design change. Things like user trust, comprehension and clarity, long-term sentiment, and delight—those things may be positively affected by what a designer is pushing for but not easy to quantify with numbers.

The most direct path to a designer’s heart is to care about the details.

Seriously, want to send hearts fluttering ablaze with joy and delight? Implement a mock with every pixel in place. Set a high quality bar that doesn’t permit jankiness. Go the extra mile to get a small design detail right. Or spend an extra night building something for the express purpose of delighting a user. Every single designer I know loves to work with engineers and PMs that value design—would gladly give up nights and weekends just to sit together and make stuff happen because everybody believes in it, and everybody on the team just wants to build some really useful, really stellar, really next-level shit.

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Letter To My Newborn Son

You are two weeks old, so there are only a few things we know about you. Your hair would make a pop star jealous, all slicked down dark brown with frosted blonde tips. Your “poo face,” with your mouth drawn in an off-center O, could be a meme. You smell like cream and mint, and I’m sad I can’t bottle that scent and revisit it for years to come. And if sleeping were a competitive sport, you stand a good chance of bringing home some medals to adorn your nursery.

When we heard that you were going to be a boy, I confess that I was nervous. I know what it is to be a girl and a woman growing up in this country. My female friends and I have swapped countless stories about life with these X chromosomes. When your older sister was born, as unprepared as I was for stepping into this new role of mother, as different as her upbringing and cultural identity would be from mine, I felt at least that I would understand her. Because I’ve been there.

You on the other hand… well, I have pretty much zero experience with little boys. I have no siblings, and none of my friends growing up were boys or had brothers. What is it like to grow up a boy? I know this only from a distance, from children’s books and boy band ballads and the reminiscences of grown men.

What will your life be like?

Every day, like a book, I try and read another page of you so I can witness your plot unfolding. But right now, your story still largely exists in my imagination. You are a swaddled little bundle of potential, and the triumphs and trials of your future loom yet unknown. And yet, while your father and I don’t know whether you’ll prefer trains or banjos or playgrounds, while we don’t know what passions you’ll pursue, or whom you’ll love, we talk about the values we hope you will live. Because they are on us to demonstrate. Because it is our responsibility to help you shape them.

I hope, first and foremost, that you will understand where you came from. There is a myth in our culture that we like to tell: that we, as self-reliant individuals, make our lot in life based on our talents. It is a lovely myth because the message is meant to empower: no matter who you are or what your origins, you can create for yourself the life that you want.

This isn’t entirely wrong — certainly I will never tell you that any dream is out of your reach — but the idea that any of us is completely self-reliant, or that our society is a true meritocracy, is misguided. We humans are social creatures, and the histories, traditions and beliefs we hold — however right or wrong — are as much a part of our identity as the cells within our body. The context under which we live matters, and you should understand that context to understand yourself and the broader world.

This is your context: you have won the world’s birth lottery. You are a citizen of the United States, the most democratic and powerful nation in the world. You were borne into a family that loved you from the moment we were aware of you, and that has the resources to take care of your every need and want. You are born a boy, and your skin is light.

These things do not guarantee you a smooth future, nor will they shield you from your own personal hardships ahead. And yet, these simple facts of your birth will make many situations easier for you, not because of anything you have done, but simply because that is how the world is wired to work. You will find that people are more likely to listen to you, agree with you, show you kindness, and give you second chances while someone else equally deserving would not get the same treatment. When you find yourself in a position where you can use your privilege to bring about greater equality, I hope you seize it.

The second thing I wish for you is that you surround yourself with people who enrich your life and make you better. We are the average of those we spend our time with. Don’t waste your energy on the trolls and takers who feel big only when others feel small, or the narcissists who think life is about keeping score with money or right swipes or membership into exclusive clubs. Ignore the ignorance of those who tell you to be cool and adhere to a tobacco billboard’s version of a man. Instead, find people whose energy lifts you up and who share their passions generously. With your true friends, you don’t need to pretend to be someone else to impress them; you don’t need to play games or conform to arbitrary rules. They will teach you new perspectives and inspire you to love the things that they love. And you, in turn, will inspire them.

Out of those friends, I hope the dearest and best one— that person you think to call when anything good or bad happens, whose conversations with you melt the hours away, whose presence in your life brings on a parade of happy days — is the one you build your family with. There is much in life you can’t control, but with whom you spend your time is up to you. Choose wisely.

Third, I hope that you will always harbor a deep curiosity for the world. I don’t doubt that you will learn much in the span of your years, but the universe is vast compared to the tiny speck that is human knowledge. It may be tempting at a certain point to pronounce yourself “made” — an expert, a fully realized individual — but I hope your ego never prevents you from undertaking the hard, tangled and often unglamorous task of gleaning for truth. Take time to behold the wonder of the universe; be humbled by all the ways you are still a beginner.

I hope you will be wrong many, many times, because you tried. I hope you can admit your failures and apologize to others when you are at fault, so that past mistakes hold no power over you. I hope you revel in the journey and not just the results, because it is in that path of growth and mastery that one’s story is made.

And finally, I hope that no matter what, you can hold these two truths in your heart at once: that the world is beautiful beyond imagination, and that it is woefully short of perfect. No matter how good or bad things are, it can be better, and it can be worse. How you feel and what you make of it will be a matter of perspective, and the greatest battles you fight will take place inside your head. The art of living well, then, lies in the balance of these two truths. May you find joy in the simple, everyday moments: the gentle undulation of your baby’s breath, the laughter over a dinner table, the sweet taste of summer fruit. May you hold fast to hope and optimism, even when other people disappoint you and break your heart, as surely they will. But may you also recognize that at every moment, there is suffering that can be reduced, injustice that should be questioned, and a better future that you can run towards.

As you lay sleeping next to me, your little fist barely bigger than my thumb, I am grateful that you are here, and I am overjoyed to be your mother. Sleep well, my little one. I can’t wait to get to know you tomorrow, and in all our tomorrows to come.

10 Things That Surprised Me About Growing Up

 

1) Nobody feels like an adult

Most of us are just faking it.

2) Many people do not care about their jobs

The idea of doing good work for good work’s sake is not universal.

3) Life goes faster every year

Luckily, someone explained this one to me when I was 9.

If we consider a lifetime as a unit of measurement, it stands to reason we can only ever comprehend ONE lifetime at a time.

Yet, what is contained in that one lifetime changes over time.

At 3 years old, it looks like this:

  

  At 27 years old, it looks like this

  

We live longer, but everything is crammed into our one precious lifetime. Days go passing into years, and then years go passing day by day.

4) School taught me a lot of things that don’t matter

The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. I tried to explain to the IRS this knowledge was probably more interesting than filling out a tax form correctly, but they don’t seem to care.

Thanks for nothing, Mr. Smith.

5) Everything costs money

Food costs money. Electricity costs money. This chair I’m sitting in costs money. The servers used to host this article cost money.

I didn’t learn any of this when I lived in my parents’ basement.

6) Everything takes longer than you think

The gurus told me one piece of art could change my life. They said fame and fortune were just a click away on the Internet.

Today, after nearly 2 years of blogging, 300+ posts on Medium, a book, countless tweets, and 93 answers on Quora, I’m bringing in my first ever money from online work — $524 dollars in royalties.

I didn’t do the calculation, but I’m pretty sure that math works out to something like $0.06 an hour. Luckily, I’ve loved almost every second of it.

7) I know nothing

I used to think I knew a lot. Wrong.

Everyone I know is smarter than me at something. It’s my job to figure out what that is and ask them a billion questions about it. When that happens, the other person lights up because they never get to talk about something they care about, and I get to learn something new. Funny how that works.

8) I am still crazy about my wife

I am genuinely shocked at how much I feel for the woman who sleeps in my bed every night. I thought the blind passion would fade, and it has. It was replaced by unconditional trust, unquestioning love, and unwavering support.
Our relationship is unmatched by anything else in my life.

9) Life is not fair

People with lots of money get more chances to fail than poor people do. I grew up on beanie weanies for dinner most nights. I wasn’t going to sell an app for $17 million at age 16.

I was shooting basketballs through a hoop since I was 18 months old. I loved basketball. I played all the time. And then, when I tried out for the 6th grade team, I didn’t make it. Everyone on the roster was about a foot taller than me.

Genetics, am I right?

10) Life is not supposed to be fair

Because of my childhood, I learned to be introspective. I learned to entertain myself. I learned to appreciate what I have. I learned to write. I learned to read. I learned how to graduate college with zero debt.

Recently, a friend has taught me we find power within life’s unfairness. Now I’m just trying to be me.

It’s going okay.

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Thank you so much for reading. In case you’re interested, I’m going to be doing a lot with my email list throughout the rest of the year.

If you want in on that (starting with 3 free goodies), you can sign up right here.

brymondm@gmail.com. thank you.

The Unfairness of Feeling

  When I was five, I staged a suicide with some ketchup and a butter knife. My mom made me wear a pair of underwear that “felt funny,” and already versed in my outbursts over shoes, socks, turtlenecks, and panties, she paid my tantrum no mind. So there I strategically laid on top of a detached cabinet door in my bedroom, mindful of not staining the carpet. I wanted recognition, not revenge.
 “You’re going to ruin the wood!” she scolded with tire. “No,” I thought, that’s not what was supposed to happen. I only wanted to make her understand how shattering these feelings were for me. We cleaned up the mess but we never really talked about it. I was a very sensitive child, tangibly and otherwise, and this is one of the first times I remember believing that emotions, especially sadness, were not good.

Eventually I grew out of the clothing sensitivity, but I became more susceptible to emotional disturbance. At my seventh birthday party, all of the neighborhood kids stood around the dining room table to watch me open presents, dropping crumbs of cobbler out of their absent-minded mouths. I was happy that their attention was divided. Quietly I thanked each person for their gift and crunched the scraps of wrapping paper into a trash bag, worrying that if I did this too loudly, I would wake them from their daydreams that were saving me from the spotlight.

             

  They smiled through their fruit punch lips as I peeled the metallic pink paper off the remaining rectangular box. Oh no. Oh God, no. Not this. Panic flooded my veins and tears started cutting down my red cheeks.
“But I don’t like Barbies!” I cried. That wasn’t true. I fucking loved Barbies. This was the exact Barbie I had asked for. I was butterflied and pinned underneath a magnifying glass, and I was about to be found out. I was weak. The kids teased me, of course, and my heavy reaction only gave them more ammunition. For months I felt so ashamed and embarrassed to be me, and my brain told me again: sad is bad.

A few years later, I had no choice but to stifle my emotions — to be the strong one. My mom married a troubled man; although, I begged her not to. My grandparents had to forcefully take me away after their wedding celebration because I was afraid to leave her alone with him. For the next few years I had to be the eleven-year-old girl to pull a knife on a grown man; the girl to bandage her mom’s wounds; the girl to hold her while she cried. I had to be the girl to call the police. By the time they showed up, my mom had already wiped her tears. Unfortunately, this was something she had to learn the hard way. The first time the cops were called and saw her crying, they agreed with my step dad that she was “hysterical.” She had to hide her sadness to be taken seriously. Eventually, they divorced. We didn’t really talk about it after that. The horror was over, and we learned that things were easier when you cleaned up your face and smiled. And I got good at it. And if I couldn’t smile, I hid.

As a teenager, I kept old pillows and shirts tucked away in my closets and drawers. Whenever I reached a boiling point, I’d harbor in my bedroom and press my face into the pillow, screaming as loud as I could. When that wasn’t enough, I would rip the threads of the shirts and stab the pillows with a knife. Sometimes I hit myself, throwing my fist towards my face or, if no one was around to hear, I’d pry my tensed fingers open and let my palm slap my wet cheek.

Mood disorders have a tendency to show their onset as people stumble through their mid 20s. And like clockwork, a few years after college is when I began to cycle through the unpredictable waves of euphoria, irritability, and depression. At first it started over something silly, like breaking my Hollandaise sauce while making breakfast. Other times, in utter rage of not being able to communicate my feelings, I’d throw my cell phone across the room. Instances like this always had the same outcome: me bawling, curled up in my closet or the smallest corner of the kitchen, while my boyfriend stared in bewilderment. But those depressions were short lived, and I’d explode into a stage of productivity soon after. Within a two week period, I broke up with my boyfriend who I lived with, quit my job, began the process of donating my eggs, got an unconventional piercing, and started planning a tattoo that would cover a quarter of my body. Being at this peak of my exceptional self, I attracted a person who I thought I would spend my life with. I had sunshine in my eyes and was the embodiment of joy and what a human should be. I was flying higher than I ever had before; I was manically in love.

We were hardly apart for the next eight months, and I glowed and radiated until I could no longer sustain it. As quickly as I ignited, I smoldered. My breath sat like smoke over my rotting body for over a year. “Where do you go” he asked, “when you sink into yourself like that?” There’s always been a storm behind these sunny eyes, and now I was stuck in the eye of it. Anytime I smiled, I could feel another piece of me pulling at the reigns, like the moon dragging the sun back below the horizon so darkness can take over once again. I couldn’t talk about it. My whole life had been spent trying to camouflage my crazy.

There’s weight loss and weight gain and popped blood vessels from days of crying. There are packs of Benadryl® being eaten to stay in the sweet stillness of unconsciousness. There are moments of ferocity where you hold your breath and tie pantyhose around your neck. There are broken computers, smashed glasses and bloody knuckles. There are suicide attempts and trips to the ER and stays in the psych ward. There are hours and hours and hours of therapy.

There’s cognitive impairment from the depression and the medication. Your brain moves in slow motion, and you can’t remember when you last fed or bathed yourself. There’s the art of mixing your perfect Rx cocktail, but sometimes your meds don’t work. And sometimes they make your throat constrict in painful throbs at night. Sometimes you have to alter the dosage or change the medication all together. But it takes time for your body to adjust, so all you can do is hold on for dear life and hope you don’t hit turbulence until you reach your therapeutic level.

We don’t talk about it because it’s the hardest thing to talk about. People spend so much energy trying to keep the black holes in their lives a secret, but now all of mine is spent trying to survive. When I came out of the closet about being diagnosed with type II Bipolar Disorder, an Internet troll mocked me: “my mental illness makes me special.” Instantly he confirmed my lifelong fear — the fear of my feelings being bad! I felt discredited and patronized. And, even worse, the fear of people accusing me of seeking some sort of special treatment or pity. I don’t want your pity. I want the respect of being listened to. I’ve put too much time and money into self-care for you to doubt my diagnosis, or worse, belittle it.

But something else happened, too. People thanked me. They had questions and stories and together we had strength. I helped a few people begin the process of getting psychiatric service dogs. A few weeks later, I was an active listener for someone across the country attempting suicide. My relationship with my family improved. I think I showed them that they no longer needed to sugar coat their feelings. If having a mood disorder means learning how to love myself and build stronger relationships, then I will happily shed my skin of shame and sanity. I will proudly wear my badge of Bipolar Disorder. My name is Ashley, I’m mentally ill, and I want to talk about it.

Real Madrid star discloses all truth about Ronaldo-vs-Zidane scandal

Real Madrid star discloses all truth about Ronaldo-vs-Zidane scandal

– Cristiano Ronaldo was spotted questioning Zidane’s decision for substituting him.

– The Real Madrid star reacted angrily to the manager’s decision.

-Toni Kroos reacts to the incident Real Madrid and Germany international.

  playmaker Toni Kroos has reacted to the latest incident between manager Zinedine Zidane and Cristiano Ronaldo. Recall that the three-time Balon d’Or winner was substituted in the 72nd minute of Saturday’s 2-2 draw against Las Palmas and he immediately showed deep frustration by his failure to score in the game.

  Furthermore, Ronaldo couldn’t even look at Zidane and his sulk lasted for several more minutes as he watched the closing stages of the match from the sidelines. And speaking about the case, Toni Kross reacted: “The stories are bigger than what they really are. It’s impossible for any player to play up to 60 games per season.”
He stressed: “The coach decides who must play and who must be substituted.”
  The midfielder explained: “Ronaldo trained with the team completely normally, as well as before the last game. He is ready for playing tomorrow.”
Ahead of the Champions League game against Borussia Kroos notes: “For us this is a good test. We can see where we are and what we can do this season. We’re in good form.”

Dealing with Feelings: Factorial Emotions

Feelings about feelings, how do they work and why are they so terrible?

 

Me neither, half-naked Ashton.

The only math lesson I remember having any impact on me was when we started using punctuation to dress up those drab little numbers.

I couldn’t even remember what it was actually called, so I just Googled “exclamation point in math,” because that’s what the factorial situation looks like: 4! 57! 1.54!

When we use these excited numbers — FOUR HELL YEAH WOOOOOO! — we multiply all the integers involved from the number on down. So HELL YEAH FOUR actually means 4 x 3 x 2 x 1, which is 24. So instead of cool, thrilled-to-be-itself four, we get a much bigger number, something different, something made up from a bunch of different relationships that lead up to four.

Feelings and numbers occupy some of the same space in my mind, because both flummox and interest me, and I often see patterns in both that I don’t have the language to explain (hence, this series, as far as feelings go). So it would make sense, then, that factorial numbers are like what I call primary and secondary feelings, or, feelings about feelings.

For me it usually works like this: I have a real, human emotion, one that is too big for me to handle (this can be a positive or negative feeling, it’s the size that matters). If it’s too big for my system to handle, I’ll get uncomfortable, then I’ll start feeling overwhelmed.

Let’s say someone I knew died. That’s a situation ripe for huge feelings — loss, sadness, anger, regret. I’ll find myself mired in sadness and mourning, which is absolutely normal and OK, but then, after a while, this terrible process will start in my head.

“Why are you so sad, they weren’t even your family,” that oily voice will say in my head. “You should be embarrassed at how intensely you’re feeling this, and it’s not even your pain.”

Suddenly, I’ll be ashamed of having had those initial emotional reactions, like I’m embarrassing myself by having feelings so close to the surface. If this were math, I’d write it as “Grief!” but in the factorial sense, as if I’m multiplying the grief with shame, sadness, and all the other little emotive pieces that make it up.

Before long, it’s a pile-up, and I’m not even sure what feeling I’m responding to, the primary one or the secondary, tertiary feelings that came after.

Here’s the key: The primary feeling is OK.

“Wait,” you’re thinking. “What? You hate feelings, how can one of them be OK?”

Well, aren’t you clever! And yes, it’s true, I don’t love feelings, but that won’t stop me from having them. So at this point, it’s down to parsing which ones are real and therefore can be dealt with, and which ones are liars.

The primary feeling of sadness or grief after someone dies is a normal part of being human. Sometimes we just have feelings, and that’s got to be OK or else you’ll spend all your time with secondary emotions. We — and by “we” I’m including a very big shoutout to myself — need to learn how to accept that we have emotional responses and reactions to events in our lives. It’s all part of being alive.

But those secondary feelings, the ones that say I should be ashamed of how sad I am because maybe I didn’t know the person or I wasn’t affected as much, those are the liars. Sure, they feel real, because in and of themselves, they are. A feeling of shame just is — but in the secondary-emotion context, it’s a liar.

I shouldn’t be ashamed of having a big feeling, my therapist tells me, and I’m starting to believe her. So I’m working on battling that shame, because it’s an easy fight to rationalize: It’s not reflecting reality, even if it feels like it is. It’s not a fair fight, so the secondary emotion can be shouted down and ignored.

I struggle with understanding which feelings are real and which aren’t, which is why I now have a built-in system. If I’m feeling worthless or like garbage, I check with someone else. “True or false: I am garbage,” is a text several lucky friends have received, and they’ve always responded in a way that reinforces the truth.

“No. Of course not. You are not garbage. You are amazing,” they’ll write, and it’ll make me want to cry, not only because of the sweetness, but because I feel so lost, so stuck in my emotions that I can’t see the truth of their words.

But instead of adding more shame to the pile, shame that I might want to feel for not being adept enough at emotions to understand what’s real and what’s not, now I try to trust my friends, to believe them when they tell me the truth. Because the truth is, our feelings are dynamic and complex and terrifying and exhilarating, and if they really are like math, what’s the harm in asking for some help instead of insisting on becoming a math professor on your own?

The Age of the Instagram Eyebrow

You can probably tell a woman’s generation by the thickness of her eyebrows. I was a teen in the 90s, when a uniformly tweezed, slender arch was the norm—and when you pluck that much you just aren’t going to get it back. Now my natural brow’s not thick enough to be on trend. There’s been a resurgence of the big brow, attributable mostly to Cara Delevigne, who was among the first wave of supermodels to make Instagram and other social media a core pillar of her publicity strategy.

Growing up, people my age got our makeup advice the same place we got our dubious sex tips: from glossy magazines. Back then, you did things — even ill-advised things like wearing a stick-on bindi or carrying an inflatable handbag — because celebrities had done them, or because some words about the newest trend had come down from on high, nebulous fashion authorities placing them into a box quote in Elle magazine.

Today, we get our beauty instructions primarily from social media and a new sort of celebrity; not the movie star or magazine editor, but the passionate consumer who knows how to put on makeup so well that everyone wants to watch them on YouTube, follow them on Instagram, and look as boldly staged and beautiful as they do online.

Among the best new skills I’ve learned as an adult is how to do a basic “Instagram eyebrow.” The knowledge anchors me, tells me I’m not that old, that I am keeping up. A search for “eyebrow tutorial” on YouTube brings up more than half a million results, most of them young women in all colors and nationalities creating the same dense, severe look. Every month, over 50 million people watch more than 1.6 billion minutes of consumer-uploaded beauty content on the site. I’m one of those people, and can now approximate the brow on myself, at least enough to feel all right showing my face in the club.

Imagine a big eyebrow perfectly outlined in dark liner, filled in with powder. The liner creates the illusion of a bigger, bolder brow than is natural, while at the same time creating a stark frame for the eye. The bit of the brow closest to the eye is blunt, even square-edged, and the rest wings outward toward the temple in a clean, sharp-trending line. No matter how many tutorials I follow, I’ll never quite be able to perform the brow exactly. At its most correct, it should look as if it were airbrushed on with a stencil. That’s the dream. That’s the Instagram eyebrow.

Or, at least that’s the most current understanding. There’s actually some confusion about what the phrase “Instagram eyebrow” means, because it’s changed some over the years. It can refer to the distinctive, dark-powdered checkmark I’ve just described, now written almost daily on the face of every makeup fan. Or, it can reference its meaning closer to 2014, when the term caused a sensation—thanks specifically to a “really frightening” brow fade of sorts at the inner eye, an almost “ombre” effect where the tonality of the brow shifted as it traveled to its thinnest point.

It was around then that someone finally noticed a brow that looks on-trend in a filtered photo looked very strange in real life. That was almost irrelevant, though. How it looks on Instagram matters most, especially as we are increasingly offloading our self-images onto social media. As we spend more and more time online, the person you appear to be on Instagram or Facebook could soon be more relevant to you, and more real to other people, than whomever you are offline—if indeed you are ever really offline.

Lately, my friends and I have rejoined Snapchat, lured in by the weird but fun filters that add animation overlays or other modifications to selfie pictures and videos. Some of them are intentionally absurd, like cartoon animal ears and noses. More interesting, though, are the subtle effect-filters that make your eyes just a little bit bigger and more luminous, your nose a shade smaller, your skin soft-focused. My filtered self is beautiful in an unearthly way. All my friends know I don’t look like that, sure, but what if that isn’t the point?

 The author with (left) and without (right) a Snapchat filter.

Some futurists once believed that the whole web would become a world unto itself, a true 3D environment where users would create full-body avatars to act out “second lives” for them in virtual space. While that future hasn’t exactly materialized, we are building avatars, in a sense. And a viral culture of increasingly bold and unusual beauty products has grown to serve these versions of ourselves — a beauty culture increasingly genderless, unconcerned with appealing to patriarchy, and detached from the conventional fashion industry.

The five Kardashian and Jenner sisters are masters of the Instagram eyebrow; they make it look effortless. They are the perfect aspirational figures for the Instagram era — we believe they are basically normal people who have mastered the art of projecting a second self into the social media realm with the help of some cutting-edge products and good strategy. We feel both able and free to create a second self, too, to participate joyfully in calculated selfie-craft, to make ourselves up not as much for the outing itself as for the “‘grams” we’ll post. We know that we’re all projecting an unreal image. We don’t mind.

The Kardashians certainly helped bring contouring — a visual sculpting technique formerly of Old Hollywood and, more recently, almost exclusively the province of drag queens — into common parlance. Like the Instagram brow, contouring can be severe, a look crafted to be photographed, not deconstructed. It is a performance of one’s own face, one that can be turned up louder and louder until the face has almost stylized itself. It’s just within the last few years that I’ve suddenly begun to feel I was selling myself short by owning only a sheer foundation or tinted moisturizer, and just a little bronzer. So, I started doing the eyebrow. But after that I needed a darker bronzer with which to whisk stark gutters underneath my cheekbones. Then I got a concealer, and then a highlighter, two creams both lighter than my face where the former is matte and hides blemishes, and the latter is sheer and reflects light. I now own a veritable color wheel of cream highlighters, each for different areas of my profile.

I started using foundation sponges for the first time in a nearly 20-year makeup-wearing career. I got a “Unicorn Tears WonderSponge” as part of my Birchbox, a subscription beauty sample service I signed up to based on a Facebook ad (no regrets). I started using primer, and now I use a full-face primer as well as a primer just for my eyelids. I have learned, basically, which parts of my face need to be matte and which parts should glimmer subtly under light. It’s not that I think I “need a lot of makeup” — that rhetoric, about needing makeup, feels fusty — it’s that I want to be part of this new performance of beauty, unconcerned with what the man on the street would think of my look.

Beauty in the age of social media is about inhabiting a liminal performance space, about participating in performances led by trendsetters — where being a trendsetter may no longer require you to be skinny and white. It’s often more about photographing innovations and color experiments that create a sensation and make other people want to try them than it is about what makes the most sense to wear to work.

This “gloss strobing” highlighter technique is designed for maximum luminosity in photos, while these bizarre geode-themed “crystal lips” are probably meant only as Instagram art and not for going to lunch. Bitter Lace Beauty’s rainbow highlighter palette (a swipe of the shimmery powder appears like an actual rainbow of colors on your skin) reportedly sold for over $1,000 on eBay when its launch earlier this spring couldn’t meet initial demand. The soft prism of hues it enables does look amazing in photos, but I’ve never seen anyone wearing it on the streets of London, nor even on the cover of a magazine. Just a few months later, “even hotter than rainbow highlighter” was “thermal highlighter,” a high-shine, multicolored experiment inspired by compiling shimmery eyeshadows to reflect what you might see in a thermal-imaging body scan. Essentially, it gives faces the odd, futuristic look of a heat map.

This is makeup for its own sake, no more or less than plain delight in performance and experimentation. It almost doesn’t matter that each trend lasts only a few months, or that someone out there has spent a thousand dollars on space unicorn makeup with few to no practical venues for wearing it outside their home.

These performances of our meatspace faces live only in social media feeds, where it’s considered beautiful to sport thermal heat map faces, crystal lips, and oddly dark, oddly perfect Instagram eyebrows. We aspire to be a popular avatar — like a Kardashian — more than we aspire to a prior age’s more conventional markers of achievement or beauty. Is it really too far off to imagine that future makeup may even be crafted primarily for our avatar faces, our real ones the afterthought? Or that soon you’ll surely know a woman’s generation by the adornment of her online face?

For the record, the beauty icon of my youth, Kate Moss of the heroin-chic figure and wispy eyebrow, did not join Instagram until last week.

 

This post is part of How We Get To Next’s Sartorial month, looking at the future of fashion throughout September 2016. If you liked this story, please click on the heart below to recommend it to your friends.

Read more from How We Get To Next on  www.brymond4u@blogspot.com

The Battle vs. The War

What the hell is wrong with us?

I watched the debate last night; and frankly, I could have written this post before I wasted my time. I bounced back and forth between disagreeing and agreeing with aspects of what both of them said. The problem is this: even when I found myself agreeing with what was said, I didn’t actually believe it. It just felt like Kabuki theatre. At this point, do you think that they even believe themselves?

I will let others in the media pick apart all the inconsistencies — what each of them wore, which candidate sounded more presidential and who ultimately won. I can’t imagine there will be any surprises as I suspect most of the media outlets picked the winner long before the broadcast began. Too cynical? Maybe. But if a recent Pew Research study is to be believed, my cynicism regarding the media is shared by a majority of the country.

It is well known at this point that politics has become a team sport (I have a post coming on that topic). But what I saw last night brought to mind the gladiator games of ancient Rome. Not because it was a death match, but because the whole spectacle of it seems to be aimed at distracting us from the real issues we are facing as a country.

Both of these candidates are playing an old game. They are so entrenched in doing battle over the details that they’re losing sight of the war. Yes, some of the details are important. But at no point in the debate was there an acknowledgement that there is more to this election than the same tired, rehashed topics of the past year: Birthers, emails, ISIS, stamina, tax-returns, etc.

These candidates, and their respective parties, are dinosaurs.

When did “your team is worse than mine” become the prevailing motive in our country for engaging in the democratic process? How many people are truly for their candidate as opposed to being against the candidate from the “other side”?

Listen to this clip from Bono. His perspective on America is so powerful and clear.  https://youtu.be/rfuOOwJxsdU

 

[Bono, if you happen to read this, I would love to talk with you again, on or off the air.]

As a foreigner, it’s possible that Bono is able to see America more objectively, which may allow him to more accurately assess America’s greatness. But I can’t help but think that it’s a sad state of affairs when the clearest, most salient voice on the value of America isn’t coming from an American citizen, let alone the next President.

The idea of America has been bastardized.

   It is not about owning a home, two cars and a white picket fence. It is not about retiring with a nice little nest egg and a gold watch. It is not about healthcare. It is not about anything the next President spoke about or even seemed to understand. America is an idea; it is a simple idea, but one that had never been tried before. A government created by the people for the people. A government where the people decide who would govern them and not the other way around.

In the words of William Wallace, “FREEEEEDOM!”    America is far from perfect. We need to improve. But if our history has taught us anything, it’s that more freedom leads to far better outcomes than less freedom. That said, freedom, in and of itself, will not lead to utopia.                                                           

We will continue to fight wars.

The economy will again suffer recessions and, God forbid, depressions.

There will continue to be violent crimes and riots in the streets.

Terrorism will not go away.

There will be tough times ahead, but we will always overcome if we remember (as Simon Sinek would say) our “why.”

  America is great because the idea of America is perfect; not because the world uses the dollar as the reserve currency (for now) or because we have the largest and most powerful military. America won’t be great if it moves to a single payer healthcare system or increases the federal minimum wage. Each of these may make America incrementally better or worse (to each their own) but it will all be for naught if we lose sight of what America is.

For more years than I can count, I have been learning and trying to teach our history. The founders, the Constitution, the rise of progressivism, etc. But the longer I live through this kakistocracy, I find that at times I am fighting more to preserve the map our founders bestowed upon us rather than the idea itself. Even as a constitutionalist, I find that it’s easy to forget that the Constitution is not the end, but the means. We need to focus on our “why” before we focus on the how.

  I have profound admiration for our founders. I think the Constitution is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, document penned by man. I believe the balance between a democracy and a republic and the checks and balances of our three branches of government were inspired. But these things are not the ends, just the means. We speak about the Constitution being a check on the government, but why?

To protect our freedom. Nothing more, nothing less.

If “We the People” want to amend our founding document in order to provide more freedom, let’s have that conversation; but it has to start with a fundamental understanding of the ideal. There are many smarter than I who may have ideas for how it might be improved — I certainly don’t, which is why I choose to defend the Constitution. But I look forward to hearing and engaging in that conversation. Unfortunately, that’s not the conversation the candidates (or the media for that matter) have been engaged in during this election cycle. Last night was no exception.

  But don’t worry, I’m sure it was the other side’s fault. When times are tough, just point the finger across the aisle, right? When our team wins, we get to enjoy a brief endorphin rush and then, four years later, we get to battle it out all over again. And again… And again… We’re fighting the battles but we’ve all but forgotten why we waged the war.

  The debate only confirmed what I’ve come to fear the most: that in the fog of our partisan battles, we have lost sight of the idea of America — our North Star. And without it, we seem to be losing our dignity, our ability to reason, our principles, our empathy, even our basic decency. I wonder how many of us have noticed. I wonder how many people care.

As Rome is burning, our politicians boldly declare “let them eat cake!” My apologies for mixing metaphors.

SURPRISING UPDATE on comedian Juluis Agwu’s medical condition

Julius Agwu is recuperating - Manager

– Three weeks ago, Julius Agwu missed his on show (Crack Your Ribs in London) because he was hospitalized.

– His wife Ibiere said he was admitted for stress related issues.

– Two weeks after and his US manager has revealed he is still recuperating.

  Julius Agwu is a top Nigerian comedian who was recently admitted into a UK hospital for stress-related issues three weeks ago. The comedian had to cancel his UK shows because of this.

  His wife Ibiere took to social media to clarify reports and said: “Julius was admitted due to stress-related issues that necessitated proper rest and rehabilitation. By the grace of God Julius is doing well and receiving adequate care.”

  Now, two weeks after her update, another update has come up as his manager has spoken out on his condition. The manager said: “He’s doing very well. He’s going to take all the time he needs now to have the much-needed rest he’s allowed to elude him in Nigeria. He’s in great shape.”

  This comes as a great relief to his fans who have since been praying for his health to improve.

Julius Agwu on hospital bed after his surgery in 2015.

Yinka Olukunga shares adorable photos of her twins

Much-loved Nnenna and Friends star, Yinka Olukunga, has shared adorable photos of her family!

  Yinka Olukunga got married to her husband Rotimi in Decembler, 2014 and the lovely couple are blessed with adorable twin girls.

  The beautiful actress and her husband few days ago celebrated their daughters’ Olivia and Maia’s first birthday with these stunning photos.

Yinka Olukunga made her debut in the Wale Adenuga Production’s Super-story TV series as Nnenna.

Eight years down the line, the actress, model and singer has become a household name among kids and teenagers.

FUNNY but SAD photos that show how Nigerians are managing recession

Hilarious photos that depict recession

  Since the government announced that the country is in recession, Nigerians have found various ways to cope with failing economy. Many have opted for cheaper means to feed and reasonable ways to manage their resources.
  The minister of finance has said “recession ” is just a word but that seems not to be the case for many Nigerians. Recession in Nigeria has taken its toll on a number of things and trust Nigerians to show their sense of humour even in the serious situation. In these times, people are managing their resources. While some people are lamenting others are trying to survive and the pictures of their effort is extremely funny.

Check out the hilarious photos below
1. Obasonjo might be feeling it too
2. Gala has finally felt the change
3. Wise is he who can mange
4. The effects of recession is real
5. This man striped naked for #10,000. Man must chop
6. Serve your fatherland even in recession.

Don Jazzy again: You won’t believe what D’banj said about him (video)

D'banj refers to Don Jazzy as reason he sang Superstar

– D’banj has revealed the reasons behind his single Superstar
– The award winning singer also spoke about his two latest songs Emergency and Superstar
– He says many believed he will amount to nothing after leaving Don Jazzy

  Dapo Oyebanjo popularly known as D’banj gave reason why he wrote and sang his latest single Superstar. D’banj revealed that the beat of the song was produced by the same person that did that of his last hit, Emergency. He said he heard the two beats same time but decided to get down with Emergency first and then Superstar.

you, that says a powerful Amen.. God
will shower immeasurable blessings on
you, this week. Ooosssshhhheeee #ifnobegod #CREAM

  The singer in an exclusive interview with Channels TV said he did not go spiritual in his latest single despite the fact that the song sounded spiritual. He said he owned everything he is and has to God who had stood by him all through even when people had thought he cannot achieve anything without Don Jazzy.

  D’banj an Don Jazzy started out together in Nigeria when they formed Mo’hit Records under which D’banj churned out hit songs. The duo parted ways and it seems D’banj have lost the touch till he sang Emergency.
  Don Jazzy went ahead to start Mavin Records and has artists like Tiwa Savage, Dr Sid, Korede Bello, Reekado Banks and Di’ja on his label. D’banj started DB Records where he had Tonto Dikeh at a point.

GOOD NEWS: 30,000 unemployed Nigerians to get jobs

Dangote's refinery set to provide jobs to Nigerians

– 30,000 youths are expected to be employed by Dangote by 2019
– The company said it will help in the diversification of the economy
-Only three countries in Africa have refineries and Dangote’s project will save Nigeria money

  Alhaji Aliko Dangote is set to put smiles on the faces of 30,000 unemployed youths as his 17 billion-dollar refinery project is set to provide jobs to the employed in the country.

  In an interview with NAN, Mr Olakunle Alade who is the chief operating officer of Dangote's Industries Limited said that by the first quarter of 2019, the company would have employed Nigerians.
Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and Alhaji Aliko Dngote at his refinery Alake noted that the refinery which is located in Lagos would be the single largest stream in the world.

He said: “The refinery and fertiliser projects will create job opportunities for the communities and Nigerians when it becomes operational.
“The refinery will have a refining capacity of about 650,000 barrels of crude a day.” He noted that local refining of petrol will bring the price down and help the country to save money.
  The project which also has petrochemicals and fertiliser plants is expected to help in the country’s plan for diversification.
  He said that 98 per cent of basic engineering on the fertiliser plant had been executed, while the construction had progressed by 30 per cent.
“By the time we finish our gas pipeline it will be able to generate about 12,000mw which can be exported to other African countries.
“We will have the capacity to store four billion litres of products and load 2,680 trucks per day.
“The project will aid the country with about 7.5 billion dollars forex savings on importation.
“It will also generate five billion dollars for example earnings from savings and another 5.5 billion dollars export earnings.”
  Alake noted that by 2019, Nigeria will be able to save five billion dollars on oil importation. He expressed optimism in a readily available market to purchase the oil only three countries in Africa had effective and functional refineries.
“By the time we complete this project, there will be opportunity to take on agriculture and say bye to poverty because there will be jobs; no sector has more job potential than agriculture.

  Dangote’s Lagos plant is expected to generate 30,000 jobs for Nigerians “ 
Though the project is an ambitious one but when completed it will give Nigeria a new economic direction in its quest for economic diversification.’’
“That is when diversification starts.”

“We aim to complete the projects within the time frame to assist in easing the foreign problem.
“We appeal to the Federal Government to support these private initiatives by providing funding for the projects.
“However, government through the Bank of Industry schemes has given us a credit facility of N50 billion to develop the fertilizer plant.
“We have also gotten another N75 billion approval for the refinery, which we have not yet accessed.”
Dangote is the highest employer of Labour after the federal government and is Africans richest man.