Is there a better way to celebrate Norwegian music than a festival with 50 Norwegian bands from all different corners of the metal world? The third edition of Blastfest looks significantly different to previous years but it's still very diverse in terms of the line-up. It is incredible to witness how the festival evolves and how everything is being put together to unite metalheads from all over the world to come to Bergen and revel in the infinite pleasure of Norwegian music. Let's all have a look at what the festival offers – The Blastfest Preview includes 15 tracks from the bands which we will have an honour to witness next month. Let this edition of Blastfest be very special!
The plague is here! The music of 1349 might be rooted in some classic black metal principles but it's their 2014 album – Massive Cauldron of Chaos, which brought a lot of novelty. The omnipresent blasts will overwhelm the Røkeriet scene on Friday night. The unstoppable machine of 1349 was always falling nicely into my taste but I never had a chance to see the band live. So, as always, I am very intrigued what that horde can do on stage. The slaves shall serve!
Peace and tranquillity! Kraków's third full-length album – Amaran, has been one of the most interesting albums released by Dark Essence Records in 2015. The band's music can't be so easily categorized as it penetrates different regions of metal. The balance between chaos and order, actually relevant to all Kraków's album, is a characteristic feature of this outfit and I am really curious how this translates into the live performances as I never had a chance to see Kraków on stage before. I fell in love with Ten Silent Circles because of how it gains on drama – from order to chaos, and how it beautifully returns to its original atmosphere at the end of the song. I really hope to hear this track live at Blastfest.
It was in 2014 when I've seen Blodhemn live when they supported Mayhem in Bergen and I really liked this Taake-inspired atmosphere which they put on in their music and on stage. It includes the quintessence of the Bergen scene and I am sure that everyone will have the same feeling when Blodhemn is on stage in Garage. Both Holmengraa and H7 are fantastic albums but it is the first one that seriously got me infected with the spirit of Blodhemn. It is a real Djevelen i Menneskeform, that is a devil in a human form!
In the shades of fire!!! Over the last year, Kampfar became one of my favourite live acts. Gloria Ablaze, I think, was written as a live song – its intensity and dynamics are purely staggering when Kampfar is on stage. Profan, their last year's release, managed to come into my liking almost after the first listen. I had a chance to see Kampfar live twice recently during their tour with Gehenna and Gorgoroth and trust me, new material is seriously vicious live. It will also be great to hear the immortal Ravenheart again!
Prepare for booze, broads and Beelzebub! Chrome Division will surely serve some entertainment on Wednesday night and it will be a great ending of the first day of the festival. It will also be fantastic to see Shagrath and Shady Blue in action on such a small stage in Garage. Also, I think that it might be a good way to pay some tribute to the mighty Motörhead – get yourself a 'Lemmy' from the bar and enjoy the Chrome Division performance!
This is certainly a band that adds some variety to Blastfest. The melancholic character of Green Carnation is irrefutable and I think it may interest some of the orthodox metalheads as well. They might have been focusing on death metal in the early days, but their music is now based on progressive metal/rock with the beautiful vocals of Kjetil Nordhus being a definite trademark of the band. The acoustic elements of Green Carnation are grandiose and I can't wait to see Røkeriet scene filled with this unforgettable experience.
Yes, it will be the third time I see Taake in Bergen. And I must admit it is one of the most important points for me in Blastfest's line-up this year. It's a another band that needs no introduction. However, it needs to be seen live to fully comprehend its quality. Under all those riffs lies an omnipotent energy which allows me to sail somewhere far away every time I see Taake live. Hoest's charisma and behaviour on stage are just inimitable. Nattestid Ser Porten Vid I is an unquestionable proof of the band's excellence and Hoest's pride of his offspring. Even if you are not entirely convinced with Taake music, you need to see it live. Trust me, it will change your mind.
Lively heavy metal tone with black metal vocals? Why not… Slegest is another band taking part in the Dark Essence Records label night which is definitely worth attention. It is an interesting musical combination which will help you catch some breath and have a break from the powerful blasts. Their only full-length album so far – Løyndom, reveals a secret of a very uniform and compact package of great metal vibes. Ho Som Haustar Aleine is undeniably my favourite opus of the group and I can't wait to jump a little bit to this when Slegest is on stage!
As the band once said: 'Something is not meant to be forgotten'. And indeed, it's good to see In the Woods… working again. The ambience of their music is really calming and I know that their avant-garde will be an important point at the festival. One hour on stage may not be a lot but I hope that the band will find time to present one of their masterpieces, Karmakosmik, to the broader audience. I'm also quite curious how their new vocalist, Tommy Sebastian Halseth, will cope with In the Woods… difficult compositions.
The Thursday headliner needs no introduction whatsoever! It will actually be the third time I see Gorgoroth in the last two months but I am still hungry for more. Again, it's one of those outfits that put you in such an extraordinary mood that you forget you are on the festival among hundreds of other people. Also, whatever I say about Hoest being in charge of vocals in Gorgoroth will be an understatement so for those of you that did not have a chance to witness it, I'll let you judge for yourself. Just wait for Profetens Åpenbaring to come along in the setlist… Let me assure you, this performance will absolutely be Under the Sign of Hell!
Being one of the most successful last year's debuts from Dark Essence Records, The 3rd Attempt already managed to prove what they are all about. Having played their first ever show at Blastfest last year, the band immediately poisoned me with the Carpathian Forest atmosphere and I was really waiting for the full album with anticipation. So much energy on stage, both in music and appearance. Sons of the Winter as well as Nekrogrammaton might be the live hits, but it's the entire Born in Thorns album that is just ace live material. This performance will be a perfect apex of the Dark Essence Records label night!
I made myself familiar with Voluspaa only last year but I immediately fell in love with what Freddy Skogstad had done. The whole Åsa album is a brilliant piece of work perfectly blending various aesthetics but focusing on the viking atmosphere. It has quickly become a necessary album to listen to during my frequent travels to Norway. The combination of clean vocals, chants and harsh growls is reviving and I can't really imagine this atmosphere in Garage! Hellig er vårt norske land!
It's at Blastfest 2014 when I first saw Sahg and it was a good change to that extreme line-up of the festival. The Black Sabbath atmosphere of Sahg's music is incredible and with their 4 full-length albums, the band is not trying to conceal the inspiration. A good dose of energy will flow from the stage! Olav is doing a brilliant job with the vocals and the whole creation of Sahg always puts me into good mood. I hope their show will be at least as good as it was 2 years ago!
The intensity of Svarttjern will take over the Garage scene on Wednesday. No compromises, only The Misanthropic Path of Madness! It is one of the few bands at Blastfest that will bring the spirit of true Norwegian black metal to the masses. It's worth mentioning that the band is currently working on Ultimatum Necrophilia successor, Dødsskrik to be released in spring. Some live premiere of a new track maybe?
Simplicity of Khold's music has always been staggering for me! Forming an obvious trio with Sarke and Tulus, Khold does not give a chance to be seen on stage very often. This is one of the reasons why that show should not be missed. Khold's 6 full-length albums form a splendid discography with a lot to choose from. The spirit of the band will speak its mind on the main stage Saturday afternoon and it be an impeccable inauguration of the final day at Blastfest 2016.
Obviously, we cannot take for granted all the other allures that Blastfest is offering next month. It's not only the fact that we will also have a rare opportunity to see such avant-garde groups as Arcturus, Manes or Solefald, but also many of us will have a chance to verify if the new Abbath creation is worth all that hype and excitement. Abbath closing the festival will surely be a nice ending to Blastfest, just like last year's Satyricon, beautifully ending the show with Mother North and K.I.N.G. You just couldn't imagine a better finish to a Norwegian festival, could you? I am sure that Blastfest 2016 will bring similar vibes soon… Let this time be the best way to celebrate the finest pieces of Norwegian music!
ALSO, CHECK OUT OUR PHOTOS FROM PREVIOUS BLASTFEST EDITIONS!


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Twitter 007Macmac007 (ask for private tg channle) This is the intorduction to the Youtube series "Vechain, Is The World Ready?! Never Financial Advise.


text:
Q: Is there a better way to rewrite this ugly switch and if statement combination? Essentially I have a system of gamma detectors that are segmented into 4 crystals each, in the case when only 2 of the of crystals register a hit we can determine if the pair was perpendicular or parallel to the plane of the reaction generating the gamma-ray. In the process of writing up the logic for this I wound up writing a huge and ugly combination of switch statements which in each detector checks for the combinations of crystal numbers (which are unique across the whole array of detectors and their crystals).
Here is the code, including the function in question.
//The Parallel and Perpendicular designations are used in addition to the Double
//designation for the 90 degree detectors if we get a diagonal scatter in those detectors
//then we use the Double designation
enum ScatterType{Single, Double, Triple, Quadruple, Parallel, Perpendicular};

ScatterType EventBuffer::checkDoubleGamma(int det)
{
    int num1=evList[crysList[0]].crystalNum;
    int num2=evList[crysList[1]].crystalNum;

    switch(det)
    {
    case 10: //first of the 90 degree detectors
        if( (num1==40 && num2==41) || //combo 1
            (num1==41 && num2==40) || //combo 1 reverse
            (num1==42 && num2==43) || //combo 2
            (num1==43 && num2==42)   )//combo 2 reverse
        { return Parallel; }
        else if( (num1==40 && num2==42) || //combo 1
                 (num1==42 && num2==40) || //combo 1 reverse
                 (num1==41 && num2==43) || //combo 2
                 (num1==43 && num2==41)   )//combo 2 reverse
        { return Perpendicular; }
        else
        { return Double;}
        break;
    case 11: //second of the 90 degree detectors
        if( (num1==44 && num2==45) || //combo 1
            (num1==45 && num2==44) || //combo 1 reverse
            (num1==46 && num2==47) || //combo 2
            (num1==47 && num2==46)   )//combo 2 reverse
        { return Parallel; }
        else if( (num1==44 && num2==47) || //combo 1
                 (num1==47 && num2==44) || //combo 1 reverse
                 (num1==45 && num2==46) || //combo 2
                 (num1==46 && num2==45)   )//combo 2 reverse
        { return Perpendicular; }
        else
        { return Double;}
        break;
    case 13: //third of the 90 degree detectors
        if( (num1==52 && num2==53) || //combo 1
            (num1==53 && num2==52) || //combo 1 reverse
            (num1==54 && num2==55) || //combo 2
            (num1==55 && num2==54)   )//combo 2 reverse
        { return Parallel; }
        else if( (num1==52 && num2==55) || //combo 1
                 (num1==55 && num2==52) || //combo 1 reverse
                 (num1==53 && num2==54) || //combo 2
                 (num1==54 && num2==53)   )//combo 2 reverse
        { return Perpendicular; }
        else
        { return Double;}
        break;
    case 14: //fourth of the 90 degree detectors
        if( (num1==56 && num2==57) || //combo 1
            (num1==57 && num2==56) || //combo 1 reverse
            (num1==58 && num2==59) || //combo 2
            (num1==59 && num2==58)   )//combo 2 reverse
        { return Parallel; }
        else if( (num1==56 && num2==59) || //combo 1
                 (num1==59 && num2==56) || //combo 1 reverse
                 (num1==57 && num2==58) || //combo 2
                 (num1==58 && num2==57)   )//combo 2 reverse
        { return Perpendicular; }
        else
        { return Double;}
        break;
    default:
        throw string("made it to default case in checkDoubleGamma switch statement, something is wrong");
        break;
    }
}

I am aware that, because the crystal numbers are global rather than per detector, I could do away with the switch statement and have an enormous set of conditionals linked by or statements, essentially reducing things to 3 control paths, one returning Parallel, one returning Perpendicular, and one returning Double, instead of the 12 control paths with 4 of each that I have. I initially wrote it as it is not thinking and in all honesty, thinking about it, this method reduces the average case number of boolean statements to grind through.
I just worked out how to make it more efficient by switching on the evList[crysList[0]].crystalNum I can reduce the evaluations quite a bit, yielding this:
ScatterType EventBuffer::checkDoubleGamma()
{
    int crysNum = crysList[1].crystalNum;
    switch(evList[crysList[0]].crystalNum)
    {
    case 40:
        if (crysNum == 41) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 42) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 41:
        if (crysNum == 40) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 43) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 42:
        if (crysNum == 43) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 40) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 43:
        if (crysNum == 42) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 41) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 44:
        if (crysNum == 45) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 47) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 45:
        if (crysNum == 44) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 46) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 46:
        if (crysNum == 47) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 45) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 47:
        if (crysNum == 46) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 44) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 52:
        if (crysNum == 53) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 55) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 53:
        if (crysNum == 52) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 54) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 54:
        if (crysNum == 55) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 53) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 55:
        if (crysNum == 54) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 52) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 56:
        if (crysNum == 57) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 59) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 57:
        if (crysNum == 56) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 58) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 58:
        if (crysNum == 59) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 57) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    case 59:
        if (crysNum == 58) {return Parallel;}
        else if (crysNum == 56) {return Perpendicular;}
        else {return Double;}
        break;
    default:
        throw string("made it to default case in checkDoubleGamma switch statement, something is wrong");
        break;
    }
}

The question still remains though, is there any trick to make this shorter? more efficient? more readable?
Thanks in advance!

A: I think you can move nearly everything into a simple table and get away with a single table lookup. I haven't studied your conditions in detail, but it looks like something like this will do the job just fine:
// fill the following table in advance using your existing function, or hard-code the
// values if you know they will never change:
ScatterType hitTable[60][60];

ScatterType EventBuffer::checkDoubleHit(int det)
{
    // read the crystal Nums once:
    unsigned a = evList[cryList[0]].crystalNum;
    unsigned b = evList[cryList[1]].crystalNum;

    switch(det)
    {
    case 10:
    case 11:
    case 13:
    case 14:
      // better safe than sorry:
      assert (a < 60);
      assert (b < 60);
      return hitTable[a][b];
    break;

    default:
        throw string("made it to default case in checkDoubleHit switch statement, something is wrong");
        break;
    }
}

A: One solution to make it shorter is to sort the crystal values before comparing/switching
int nummin=evList[crysList[0]].crystalNum;
int nummax=evList[crysList[1]].crystalNum;

if (nummin > nummax)
{
    tmp = nummin;
    nummin = nummax;
    nummax = tmp;
}
// or like Jarod42 said: std::minmax(numin, numax);

if ((nummin == 40 && nummax == 41) ||  // no need to compare the reverse
    (nummin == 42 && nummax == 43))    // and reduce haft of the comparison
{ ... }

A: A solution combining a 4x4 lookup table and bitwise operations.
Explanation:
This is identical for all four cases, so let's look at the case where det=10.
In this case interesting numbers are {40,41,42,43}.
If we look at those numbers in their binary representation, a nice pattern shows up.
The upper number is our mask and is computed by det*4.
So in this case our mask is10*4=40.
 0b101000 (40)  0b101000       0b101000       0b101000
^0b101000 (40) ^0b101001 (41) ^0b101010 (42) ^0b101011 (43)
=0b000000      =0b000001      =0b000010      =0b000011

After doing the xor (^) between the mask and our allowed numbers, we see that they all have a value in the set {0,1,2,3}.
So if e.g. num1 ^ mask < 4, this means, that only the two rightmost bits  differ from mask, or num1 is at most 3 larger than mask.
If num1 < mask at least some bit(s) left of the two rightmost would flip, and num1 ^ mask would be at least 4.
So if num1 ^ mask < 4 is true, num1 lies in {40,41,42,43}.
Furthermore as this lies in {0,1,2,3}, we can also use it as an index in our lookup table.
Now if the previous calculation is true for both num1 and num2, we have a combined index for the lookup table.
int checkDoubleGamma(int det){
    static const int hitTable[4][4] = {
        {Double, Parallel, Perpendicular, Double},
        {Parallel, Double, Double, Perpendicular},
        {Perpendicular, Double, Double, Parallel},
        {Double, Perpendicular, Parallel, Double}
    };

    const int num1 = evList[crysList[0]].crystalNum;
    const int num2 = evList[crysList[1]].crystalNum;

    switch(det) {
    case 10: //0b101000
    case 11: //0b101100
    case 13: //0b110100
    case 14: //0b111000
    {
        const unsigned int mask = 4 * det;
        const unsigned int a = num1 ^ mask;
        if(a < 4){
            const unsigned int b = num2 ^ mask;
            if(b < 4)
                return hitTable[a][b];
        }
        return Double;
    }
    default:
        throw string("made it to default case in checkDoubleGamma switch statement, something is wrong");
        break;
    }
    //Never reaches here
}

Edit: this can be reduced to a 1x4 lookup table
If we look at at the xor-table for a^b, we see that it looks quite similar to our 4x4 lookup table.
 ^ 00 01 10 11
00 00 01 10 11
01 01 00 11 10
10 10 11 00 01
11 11 10 01 00

This gives us
00,11 = Double
01    = Parallel
10    = Perpendicular

So we can reduce the old lookup table to a 1x4 lookup table and use a^b as the index.
By looking closer to a^b, we see that it's num1^mask^num2^mask which is equal to num1^num2, which we then will use as the index and save an xor instruction.
This still checks that num2 is within {40,41,42,43}. If num1 only differs from mask in the two rightmost bits, and num2 only differs from num1 in the two rightmost bits, then num2 only differs from mask in the two rightmost bits. So leaving out num2^mask doesn't change behaviour of the program.
int checkDoubleGamma(int det){
    static const int hitTable[4] = {Double, Parallel, Perpendicular, Double};

    const int num1 = evList[crysList[0]].crystalNum;
    const int num2 = evList[crysList[1]].crystalNum;

    switch(det) {
    case 10: //0b101000
    case 11: //0b101100
    case 13: //0b110100
    case 14: //0b111000
    {
        const unsigned int mask = 4 * det;
        const unsigned int a = num1 ^ mask;
        if(a < 4){
            const unsigned int b = num1 ^ num2;
            if(b < 4)
                return hitTable[b];
        }
        return Double;
    }
    default:
        throw string("made it to default case in checkDoubleGamma switch statement, something is wrong");
        break;
    }
    //Never reaches here
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


My blood pressure readings do not show in my report for the doctor. I entered this last week when I needed it for my cardiologist. Tomorrow is the INR clinic and they still don't appear and I haven't heard anything from you.


text:
Q: Opening Chrome from NodeJS while preventing duplicate tabs In NodeJS, I am using the package Open to open a new tab on Chrome after the ExpressJS server is ready.
app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Express server is listening on port ${port}!`));
open(`http://localhost:${port}`);

However, when using Nodemon to reload the Express server on changes, I end up having multiple tabs with the same address:
http://localhost:3000 as each time Open, well, opens a new tab.
Is there a way for NodeJS to open a new tab on Chrome while preventing duplications? As this is for development purposes I have full access to Chrome if any flags are needed. I can use Sockets to see if any clients are still connected but it feels there must be an easier way. Is there?

A: Does this have to be solved with Node JS code? If not, have you considered using a browser plug-in to prevent duplicate tabs? It really seems like the browser's concern. Even placing the open() command in your Node JS code seems iffy. Why not using something like this to combine them from the command line instead? That why you don't clutter your code with development-only environment concerns unless absolutely necessary.
node my-app.js && chrome

As for extensions, here are a couple from a quick search:

*

*https://github.com/Litee/prevent-duplicate-tabs-chrome-extension

*https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clutter-free-prevent-dupl/iipjdmnoigaobkamfhnojmglcdbnfaaf?hl=en
Let me know if that change in approach helps you out.


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text:
The Tigers in the Tower
Julia Golding
304pp, FICTION, 978-1782643173
10-14 Middle/Secondary
In her Authorgraph interview for Books for Keeps, Julia Golding names The Little Princess as one of her favourite books as a child. There are definite echoes of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel in her latest excellent historical adventure which features an orphaned girl, newly arrived from India, and soon left penniless and exposed to tyrannical treatment from adults. Sahira Clive sets sail for England with her parents – English father and Indian mother - escorting two tigers to the menagerie in the Tower of London. When her parents die of fever, the tigers become her only friends, and she quickly realises that London is just as much of a jungle as their original home. Despite the prejudice and cruelty she encounters, Sahira faces down the bullies, 'they didn't realize she was a tiger, not some stray dog they could intimidate', confident always in the knowledge that 'they haven't met anyone like me before.' It's true too: with a head full of poetry, an acute understanding of how people operate, and a fierce determination, Sahira finds ways to protect her tigers and herself. As with the best adventures, it's touch and go though, and for a while it seems that she might be defeated, until she is finally saved by the grandfather she thought had abandoned her. Nineteenth century London is sharply described, both diverse and narrow, and characters making cameo appearances in the story include the Duke of Wellington, the then Prime Minister, and Robert Peel; but it's Sahira herself who really makes this special and readers will gasp and thrill at her adventures, and burn too at the injustice meted out to her and other vulnerable young people.
Lucy Staines

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The CVTC Shuttle Program has started with a pilot supper shuttle that takes riders to the rotating community suppers in Antrim, Bennington, Francestown and Hancock. We'll soon be adding a Shopping Shuttle to the program, and expanding to other towns in the region.
We're looking for more drivers for the supper shuttle. If you'd like to volunteer, or if you'd like more information on this program, give us a call toll-free at 1-877-428-2882.


FRANCE: Mayor Jean-Claude Antonini led a delegation of city officials to Alstom's La Rochelle plant on January 30 to view the first of 17 Citadis 302 trams ordered for Angers.
The €47m contract for the trams was signed on November 15 2006. Deliveries will run from November 2009 to the end of 2010. The trams will run on the 12 km Line A, which will run from Roseraie in the south of the city to Avrillé Nord, with 25 stops. Two sections of the route totalling 1·5 km will be equipped with the APS ground-level power supply pioneered in Bordeaux.
Opening is planned for 2010, with services operated by Keolis.


Works have commenced on a major upgrade of the Haughton River Floodplain in Queensland. This $514.3 million project will upgrade the Bruce Highway at Giru to improve flood immunity on the 13.5 kilometre stretch of road.
Works to upgrade Queensland's Bruce Highway-Maroochydore Road Interchange is one step closer to commencing with the Australian Government committing approximately $241 million towards the project, including a $91.4 million investment from the 2019-20 Federal Budget.
The Western Australian Government will be investing approximately $1.7 billion through the 2019-20 State Budget to deliver projects that will improve road conditions in Perth's eastern region as well as on the Tonkin Highway.
Decmil will continue delivering upgrade works on Victoria's Plenty Road from Mill Park to Mernda, with the company awarded the contract to deliver Stage 2 of the project which covers the stretch between Bush Boulevard and Bridge Inn Road.
More upgrade works on the Pacific Motorway (M1) in Queensland are set to go underway soon with design works commencing on the first sections of the Eight Mile Plains to Daisy Hills and Varsity Lakes to Tugun sections.
Neoen Australia has proposed a $1 billion renewable energy project to be built mainly on a pine plantation near Portland in Victoria. The 900MW wind farm and battery storage project is set to become the first and the largest of its kind to be built in Australia.
Construction is now ramping up on Queensland's $152 million Smithfield Bypass project, a development that will bust congestion and reduce traffic on the Captain Cook Highway (CCH).
Approximately $2.6 billion has been allotted towards the delivery of South Australian road infrastructure projects from the recently announced 2019-20 Budget.
The Australian Government has invested approximately $530 million - through the Roads of Strategic Importance (ROSI) initiative - towards projects that will upgrade and improve key freight corridors in Tasmania's north-west region.
Following the release of Request for Proposals (RFP) to market in September 2018, two METRONET projects in Western Australia move to the next stage of the tender process, bringing the Thornlie-Cockburn Link and Yanchep Rail Extension one step closer to construction.
Approximately $208 million has been invested by the Australian Government for the delivery of the Shepparton Bypass Stage 1 in Victoria's Goulburn Valley - a project that will remove freight and through traffic from the Shepparton CBD.
Construction is now underway on Tilt Renewables' $560 million Dundonnell Wind Farm in Victoria which is expected to create up to 200 construction jobs and 1,500 indirect jobs for the region, and generate enough clean energy to power 245,000 local homes.
Joint venture partners Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) - through its subsidiary FMG Magnetite Pty Ltd - and Formosa Steel have given the green light to the development of the second stage of the Iron Bridge Magnetite Project in Western Australia.
Victoria's largest road development - the North East Link - is one step closer to beginning construction with the announcement of two shortlisted contractors to deliver the first package of works for the $15.8 billion project.
Evolution Mining has recently awarded a three-year contract to SRG Global for works on Evolution's various gold mines across Australia including the Mount Rawdon and Mount Carlton mines in Queensland and the Cowal open pit mine in New South Wales.
NRW Holdings has secured a number of contracts through its subsidiaries Golding Contractors and RCR Mining Technologies for works in Queensland and Western Australia.
The $5.4 billion Cross River Rail Project in Queensland is moving closer to beginning construction with the announcement of three consortia that will deliver the major components of the project.
The Australian Government has released the Budget 2019-20 which focus on delivering infrastructure that will aid in managing the nation's growing population as well as help meet the country's freight challenge and to get Australians home quicker and safer.
Approximately $253.5 million has been invested towards congestion-busting projects for Sydney and the Central Coast roads to get motorists where they need to be, safer and sooner.
CIMIC Group company CPB Contractors has announced that the company has been awarded a $119 million contract to deliver Stage 6 of the $3.6 billion upgrade project on The Northern Road - a key north-south route between Liverpool and Penrith.
The first sod has been turned to signal the beginning of major construction on Albemarle's $1 billion Kemerton lithium plant in Western Australia, a project that is expected to create 500 construction jobs and a further 500 jobs once it is operational.


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Interview with Mindy Rose Schwartz
by Guest | Mar 13, 2011 | Blog
Guest Post by Dan Gunn
Artist Mindy Rose Schwartz has shown her sculpture and installations throughout the United States with exhibitions in Houston, TX; Brooklyn, NY; St. Louis and Kansas City, MO; Miami, FL and Chicago. Her work has been written about in artnet Magazine, Beautiful Decay (online), Time Out Chicago, The Chicago Tribune, Newcity, ArtForum, Frieze Magazine, Art in America and Whitewalls. Schwartz earned her MFA at the University of Illinois, Chicago. I caught up with her after the close of her most recent show of work at Threewalls. The following is our conversation.
"Credenza". Image courtesy of the artist.
DG: How do you think about your materials?
MRS: The materials and processes I use have to make sense in relation to the meaning of the piece. So, for example, in this body of work, one of my reference points are remembered objects from the house I grew up in. So my use of ceramics, macramé, white stones, and gold chain are materials I came in contact with in my past and have resurfaced to add to a palette of materials for sculpture. I am also interested in processes and skills that I learned while growing up, before I made it to art school. Why do I know how to make every type of lanyard key chain, or a macramé belt, or to crochet a yarmulke, or to paper mache? They are a window into specific class, cultural and gender specific moments that shaped my experience.
DG: What else makes up those "reference points"?
MRS: As I was developing my proposal for Threewalls, I wanted to transform the gallery space into an idealized and symbolic domestic space. There is a smaller room as you enter, a large grand space in the center and a smaller more intimate space at the end. As you walk through, I thought of the first room as the foyer, the next as a living room and the last, a sunroom. In a home these are the spaces that you pass through, or only use on occasion or special occasion, not the every day living spaces.
The sculptures in each of the spaces are an amalgamation of the furniture, objects and people that would reside there. They reflect the kind of pictorial or fictive aspect that each of those rooms implies.  Some of the sculptures in the living room space are: Chandelier, Credenza, and Vanity. I mean the credenza, what is it for? Who has room for the credenza? It's a piece of furniture that's purpose is to hold and display decorative objects and fancy dishes. The Chandelier too has a type of aspiration to it, a light that is dressed up in its finest jewels. These objects and what they represent become starting points to imagine their transformation into something else.
DG: Then what about the sunroom?
MRS: I was trying to create a space that was sort of mournful and had a kind of longing to it, but peaceful too. The sunroom has a sun in it, of course. It is created through a technique called, string art, which was a craft process I learned in fifth grade. It was supposed to teach that straight lines create a curve. The piece is called The Tender Light of Hope. In the living room space, it has its counter part in a piece called, The Depths of Bleak Despair. These two pieces provide a kind of emotional bracketing for the show.
Two other pieces in the space are called Friends, and A Peaceful Man.  Friends are two, coil pot, heads sitting on the remnants of my grandmother's mink coat. The coat was handed down through the family, repurposed, refashioned and redistributed as: a sporty jacket, a hat and some earmuffs. A Peaceful Man is also just a head, but his beard and mustache swoops down to form his legs and sprout a flower. I thought of it as my "Giacometti moment".
"The Tender Light of Hope" and "A Peaceful Man"Â Image courtesy of the artist
DG: You mentioned collectibles, how do they factor in? What kind of symbolism lies within them?
MRS: I was trying to find a way to get the figure back into my sculpture, in an effective way. As a sculptor, you're kind of off the hook. You don't really have to use the figure, because the viewer is the figure. The sculpture exists in the same space as your body. There is this uncanny weirdness when you perceive your body in relationship to this representation of one. That begs the question. How does it get in there and not be a statue. Statues are hil-ar-e-ous! They're so heavy. There is funniness to them. How to show the body… I tried to think of them along those lines then, to not be "figurative" but "figurine-ative"
Figurines and decorative objects have a strange life span to them, right? They sit in the home in one spot for a whole lifetime. Then they get handed down, auctioned off or go to a thrift store and go to another house to sit in one spot for another lifetime.
The collectible object is really a way many people experience sculpture in their everyday lives. It is like the three dimensional version of a Picasso poster or, depending on your taste, a Margaret Keen poster. That is how I experienced it mostly, more often through home decorating than a trip to the art museum or a stroll through a sculpture park. So there are these mass-produced objects that one way or another make it into your life and stay. Over time it will look very different and mean something very different to whoever has it. In fact two identical objects become fundamentally very different things. I'm trying to show how my history with specific objects morphs their form and how I perceive them with the their stories still attached.
Of the definite genres of collectible figurines some interest me more then others. I particularly admire ones that address the landscape or nature. I made my versions of this type for Credenza. There are also characters that reoccur across many different brands of collectible objects; the CLASSIC mainstays of every family of Precious Moments, Lladro, or Royal Dalton are the harlequin, mime and ballerina. I made a series of those characters for the "Vanity" piece.
Aside from the emulated realism of collectible objects, I love the sincerity of those that adopt a modernist "look" as their most prominent style.  There is nothing like the grace or elegance of an abstract dancer's elongated neck or the motion of flowing dance attire captured in porcelain or electroplated aluminum.
Detail of "Credenza". Image courtesy of the artist.
DG: So you see the forms of décor as the remnants of Modernism?
Well, I guess this comes back to how and when I experienced Modernism as a trickle down influence in popular culture during the seventies. I saw a lot of Hollywood musicals growing up. Most of these movies started out on Broadway and one of the byproducts of their translation into cinema, seemed to be these inexplicable dance sequence that would interrupt the regular narrative of the story to express some kind of emotional drama or conflict in the story. The Dream Sequence Ballet in Oklahoma and the Rumble scene in West Side Story are real stand- outs. The main characters come onto these angular abstract sets and work it all out through Modern dance. The piece Dream Sequence Ballerina has a little stage set and dancer's graceful head as a fantasy interlude atop a modernist piece of ceramics.
DG: As you think about the decorative object, is there also a kind of spiritualism, mysticism or "pop-religion" that is also reflected in it?
MRS: Objects are very powerful, especially in how they can absorb meaning or deflect it, depending on the context. There are a couple pieces in the show that allude to religious Jewish objects. For instance The Hands of God in the foyer, references a religious object call the "yad". "Yad literally means 'hand' in Hebrew. It is an object that is used to read from the Torah because you are not allowed to touch the scroll. It is an ornate stick about seven inches long with a very realistic hand on the end of it. They really are amazing looking objects. I made two yads. These long skinny arms with big hands swoop down from the ceiling. They are the hands of God giving birth and from their palms emerge people. The figures are these half formed little homunculus men.
"The Hands of God". Image courtesy of the artist.
Other figurative references are more specific to cultural or historical milieu. I'm thinking of the Credenza, actually, it's feet are the "keep on trucking" foot and it's pointing hand is from the "I'm with Stupid" Tee Shirt.
DG: Ha! So how does humor function in your work, is it important?
MRS: I try to combine several different emotions in one object like: Sad and pretty, or funny and strange, so there is more than one way to read the work at the same time. Humor is definitely in the mix. I think through humor and often, unlikely connections result in something amusing. Another aspect to humor in my work is through bad taste. Humor itself often has a double edge to it. It can be really nice and really mean at the same time.
DG: Can you discuss your relationship to process and craftsmanship?
MRS: The finished object shows the history of how it's made. There is a particular look to materials when you first learn a skill that I happen to really like. There is a type of enthusiasm and inventiveness that translates to the work as you try and form it into something. This has a unique type of meaning that is very different then something that has no loose ends. The final look of the work has to support the meaning of it.
DG: How do you know when you've gone too far, or haven't gone far enough with your sculptures?
MRS: If it doesn't have a kind of balance between emotional responses it's not finished. For example I made a piece for the show where I wanted to reference something whimsical but to actually express a totally different feeling. The piece t ended up just being whimsical. There was no tension in it. I'll still work on it, but it definitely didn't make the cut. There is a fine line between trying to make work about something and just making the thing in and of itself.
Dan Gunn is an artist, writer and educator living in Chicago.
Latest posts by Guest (see all)
"What Does It Mean?" - September 29, 2020
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The Kingdom of Kitai at Ulterior Gallery - October 16, 2017


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Get Ready for The Great Recession, Part 2
The Great Recession was declared to be ending by 2009, but the recovery would be a long and troubled one. In a speech to the Economic Club of New York on November 20, 2012, Federal Reserve Bank chair Ben Bernanke attributed the slow recovery to a number of "headwinds" pushing against it. Among those he enumerated were a slow housing market recovery as loan terms had tightened, the damage to lending institutions, and the suggestion that some federal policies hadn't gone far enough in their efforts to help regular citizens.
While "slow recovery" has been the name of the game for the last 10 years, observers like Sarah Jaffe, author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, believe that we have not yet gotten over the Great Recession. "'Jobs' numbers are back up, but the jobs that exist are materially worse than the ones that were lost in the Recession," she says. "Young people who graduated into it will have worse life outcomes than people who graduated and got jobs just a few years before. Older people who lost jobs during the Recession will never get back what they lost. Millions of people lost homes."
Professor Robert Johnson cautions that we may have new problems stemming from the solutions of the old ones. He says, "A cause for concern are efforts by the Trump administration to weaken the financial rules [such as Dodd-Frank] that were put in place in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Substantially reducing the key rules would be a major mistake and would increase the likelihood of another financial crisis."
In fact, many other experts have begun sounding the alarm that we should be prepared for a new recession. Jared Bernstein, former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden, authored a paper with Ben Spielberg, research associate with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, called "Preparing for the Next Recession: Lessons from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" in 2016. They argue that elements of the social safety net, including unemployment insurance and SNAP, should be strengthened and contain built-in triggers to expand coverage at times of crisis. Additionally, they advocate for dedicated funds to back job creation and house payment vouchers for struggling families in the event of another meltdown. Other economists and writers predict recession on the back of tariffs and other policies initiated by the president. The unifying message of these writers seems to be this: It'll be here sooner than you think.
A report from July 2018 shows that Americans are saving at a rate of 6.7 percent, up from the 4.2 percent they had estimated.
On one hand, one hopes that Americans remember these periods of struggle and have learned from them, and perhaps we have: The Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis delivered a report in July 2018 that shows that Americans are saving at a rate of 6.7 percent, up from the 4.2 percent they had estimated. On the other hand, the banks and the U.S. government might still be slow learners. At a gathering at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., in July, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson cautioned that the increasing deficit needs to be dealt with too, saying, "It will slowly strangle us."
Whatever the case, the Great Recession and its effects certainly live within the recent memory of the American people. Perhaps the rise in savings is an indication that we're unwilling to get trapped in such circumstances again. And maybe the reluctance on behalf of millennials to invest in houses instead of apartments is born of a wariness that they learned from the days of the bubble. As usual, the best advice might come from Benjamin Franklin: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
This article is featured in the January/February 2019 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
30 Years Old and Buried in Debt
On Halloween in 2008, about six weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed, my mother called from Michigan to tell me that my father had lost his job in the sales department of Visteon, an auto parts supplier for Ford. Two months later, my mother lost her own job working for the city of Troy, a suburb about half an hour from Detroit. From there, our lives seemed to accelerate, the terrible events compounding fast enough to elude immediate understanding. By June, my parents, unable to find any work in the state where they spent their entire lives, moved to New York, where my sister and I were both in school. A month later, the mortgage on my childhood home went into default for lack of payment.
After several months of unemployment, my mother got a job in New York City fundraising for a children's choir. In the summer of 2010, I completed school at New York University, where I received a B.A. and an M.A. in English literature, with more than $100,000 of debt, for which my father was a cosigner. By this time, my father was still unemployed, and my mother had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She continued working, though her employer was clearly perturbed that she'd have to take off every Friday for chemotherapy. To compensate for the lost time, on Mondays she rode early buses into the city from the Bronx, where, after months of harrowing uncertainty, my parents had settled. She wanted to be in the office first thing.
In January 2011, Chase Bank took full possession of the house in Michigan. Our last ties were severed by an email my father received from the realtor, who had tried and failed to short sell the property, telling him "it's safe to turn off the utilities." In May, I got a freelance contract with a newspaper that within a year would hire me full-time — paying me, after taxes, roughly $900 every two weeks. In September 2011, my parents were approved for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and in October, due to a paperwork snafu, their car was repossessed in the middle of the night by creditors. Meanwhile, the payments for my debt — which had been borrowed from a variety of federal and private lenders, most prominently Citibank — totaled about $1,100 a month.
I would look at the number on my paycheck and obsessively subtract my rent, the cost of a carton of eggs and a can of beans, and the price of a loan payment.
Now 30 years old, I have been incapacitated by debt for a decade. The delicate balancing act my family and I perform in order to make a payment each month has become the organizing principle of our lives. To this end, I am just one of about 44 million borrowers in the United States who owe a total of roughly $1.4 trillion in student loan debt. This number is almost incomprehensibly high, and yet it continues to increase with no sign of stopping. Reform legislation that might help families in financial hardship has failed in Congress. A bill introduced in May 2017, the Discharge Student Loans in Bankruptcy Act, which would undo changes made to the bankruptcy code in the early 2000s, stalled in committee. Despite all evidence that student loan debt is a national crisis, the majority of the U.S. government — the only party with the power to resolve the problem — refuses to acknowledge its severity.
My debt was the result, in equal measure, of a chain of rotten luck and a system that is an abject failure by design. My parents never lived extravagantly. In the first years of their marriage, my father drove a cab. When they had children and my father started a career in the auto industry, we became firmly middle class. Still, there was usually just enough money to cover the bills — car leases, a mortgage, groceries. My sister and I both attended public school. How much things cost was a constant discussion. Freshman year of high school, when I lost my yearbook, which cost $40, my mother very nearly wept. College, which cost roughly $50,000 a year, was the only time that money did not seem to matter. "We'll find a way to pay for it," my parents said repeatedly. And if we couldn't pay for it immediately, there was always a bank somewhere willing to give us a loan. This was true even after my parents had both lost their jobs amidst a global financial meltdown. Like many well-meaning but misguided baby boomers, neither of my parents received an elite education, but they nevertheless believed that an expensive school was the key to a better life than the one they'd had. They continued to put faith in this falsehood, and so we continued spending money that we didn't have — money that banks kept giving to us.
I've spent a great deal of time in the last decade shifting the blame for my debt. Whose fault was it? My devoted parents, for encouraging me to attend a school they couldn't afford? The banks, which should never have lent money to people who clearly couldn't pay it back, continuously exploiting the hope of families like mine, and quick to exploit us further once that hope disappeared? Or was it my fault for not having the foresight to realize it was a mistake to spend roughly $200,000 on a school where, in order to get my degree, I kept a journal about reading Virginia Woolf? The problem, I think, runs deeper than blame. The foundational myth of an entire generation of Americans was the false promise that education was priceless — that its value was above or beyond its cost.
After the dust settled on the collapse of the economy, we found ourselves in an impossible situation: We owed more each month than we could collectively pay. And so we wrote letters to Citibank's mysterious P.O. box address in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, begging for help, letters that I doubt ever met a human being. The letters began to comprise a diary for my father in particular, a way to communicate a private anguish that he mostly bottled up. In one letter, addressed "Dear Citi," he pleaded for a longer-term plan with lower monthly payments. He described how my mother's mounting medical bills, as well as Chase Bank's collection on our foreclosed home, had forced the family into bankruptcy, which provided no protection in the case of private student loans. We were not asking, in the end, for relief or forgiveness, but merely to pay them an amount we could still barely afford. "This is an appeal to Citi asking you to work with us on this loan," he wrote to no one at all.
Finally, at the beginning of 2012, my father started writing to the office of Congressman Joseph Crowley, who represented the district in the Bronx where my parents had relocated. My father described himself and my mother to Crowley as "the poster children for this entire financial event," by which he meant Americans who seemed to have done everything right on paper, but in doing so contributed to their own downfall. By the time he wrote to Crowley, my father was working again, but it had taken him two years to find another job for much less money. After his run of financial calamity, he knew better than to believe anything good would last. "We are in our 60s and I figure when we get to our mid-70s, life will become difficult again," he wrote.
Crowley's office wrote back. It was the first time in about two years that a person had responded to our correspondence with encouragement, or something like it. Kevin Casey, who worked for Crowley in Washington, helped arrange a conference call with government liaisons from Citigroup to discuss a different payment plan. The terms were reasonable enough, but the response was like an automated message brought to life: "We are precluded from a regulatory perspective from being able to do what you are asking," each of the representatives said. What made these exchanges more ridiculous was the fact that Citibank was in the process of retreating from the student loan market by selling off my debt to Discover Financial, who would give us the same response. We were nothing to these companies but a number in a database.
I used to wonder what the people who worked for these lenders would do if their own children had to take out loans to pay for college. After 10 years, I have come to think of my debt as being like an alcoholic relative who shows up to ruin happy occasions. But when I first got out of school and the reality of how much money I owed finally struck me, the debt was more of a constant and explicit preoccupation, a matter of life and death.
I had studied English because I wanted to be a writer. I never had an expectation of becoming rich. My M.A. fed an intellectual curiosity that eventually led me to newspapers. I understand now the extent to which I was among the most overeducated group of young adults in human history. Once I could no longer delay and the payments began, I would look at the number on my paycheck and obsessively subtract my rent, the cost of a carton of eggs and a can of beans (my sustenance during the first lean year of this mess), and the price of a loan payment. The question was: What will you do when the money from the paycheck is gone?
I never arrived at an answer to this question. At my lowest points, I began fantasizing about dying, not because I was suicidal, but because death would have meant relief from having to come up with an answer. The debt was mind-controlling — how I would eat or pay my rent without defaulting was a constant refrain, and I had long since abandoned any hope for a future in which I had a meaningful line of credit or a disposable income or even simply owned something — but also mind-numbingly banal. I spent a great deal of time filling out paperwork over and over again with my personal information and waiting on hold for extended periods in order to speak to a robotic voice rejecting my request.
And so it felt good to think about dying, in the way that it felt good to take a long nap in order to not be conscious for a while. These thoughts culminated in November 2010, when I met with my father one afternoon to retrieve more paperwork. My hope for some forgiving demise had resulted in my being viciously sick with strep throat. I refused to go to the doctor in the hope that my condition might worsen into a more serious infection that, even if it didn't kill me, might force someone to at last lavish me with pity. I coughed up a not insignificant portion of yellowish fluid, and I started the conversation by asking, "Theoretically, if I were to, say, kill myself, what would happen to the debt?"
"I would have to pay it myself," my father said. He paused and then offered me a melancholy smile. "Listen, it's just debt," he said. "No one is dying from this."
My father had suffered in the previous two years. In a matter of months, he had lost everything he had worked most of his adult life to achieve — first his career, then his home, then his dignity. He had become a 60-year-old man who had quite reluctantly shaved his graying 40-year-old mustache in order to look younger, shuffling between failed job interviews where he was often told he had "too much experience." He was ultimately forced out of the life he'd known, dragging with him, like some 21st-century Pa Joad, a U-Haul trailer crammed with family possessions, including, at the insistence of my mother, large plastic tubs of my childhood action figures.
Throughout this misery, my father had reacted with what I suddenly realized was stoicism, but which I had long mistaken for indifference. This misunderstanding was due in part to my mother, who had perhaps suffered most of all. Not that it was a competition, but if it were, I think she would have taken some small amount of satisfaction in winning it. The loss of home and finances felt at least like a worthy opponent for cancer, and yet here was my father telling me that none of this was the end of the world. I was ashamed of my selfishness. The lump in my throat began to feel less infectious than lachrymal. "Okay," I said to him. When I got home I scheduled an appointment with a doctor.
"Theoretically, if I were to, say, kill myself, what would happen to the debt?" I asked.
Much of the dilemma about being in debt came down to numbers that I could only comprehend in the abstract. $38,840 at 2.25 percent interest, and a notice that in May 2016, the interest would increase to 2.5 percent. A $25,000 loan at 7.5 percent interest, to which my family and I had contributed, over the course of three years, $12,531.12 and on which I now owed $25,933.66 — more than what I started out with. I memorized — or, more often, didn't — seemingly crucial details about my debt that turned out to be comically meaningless: a low-interest loan from Perkins was serviced by a company called ACS, which had rebranded to Conduent Education and sent out notices with their new logo and the message "Soon to be Conduent." Citibank, referring to itself as "Citibank, N.A. (Citibank)," transferred the servicing of my loans to Firstmark, and I had to create an account with Firstmark. Sallie Mae's lending arm spun off into an independent company called Navient, which became the country's largest supplier of private student loans, and eventually sold a portion of my debt to a lender called Great Lakes. In 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Navient for deliberately creating problems for borrowers trying to pay off a loan by supplying them with faulty information — for instance, according to the litigation, encouraging borrowers to enter payment plans that temporarily postponed bills instead of enrolling them in repayment plans that promised forgiveness after years of steady payment. This lawsuit seemed bathed in significance, but of course resulted in nothing at all, save for a widely circulated public statement from Navient claiming, "There is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer." When I received a notice from Navient in February 2017 that my monthly payments would be increasing, for reasons I did not comprehend, the email came with a note at the bottom saying, "We're here to help: We're happy to help you navigate your options, provide you with resources, and answer any questions you have as you repay your loans." The company's motto is, hilariously, "Solutions for your success."
These announcements flooded my inbox with the subject line "Important Information," but none of them altered my fate. Sometimes the monthly payments would go up, sometimes my salary would go up, sometimes I made a check out to a different company. The only stable thing was the money I owed, which never seemed to get any lower. My mother's cancer went into remission, and both of my parents found, in their 60s, new careers. I maintained steady employment in journalism since finishing school, and in 2016 I was hired as an editor at The New York Times. Was it possible we had become lucky?
It was in the summer of 2017, after my father, now nearing 70, had lost another job, that I finally removed him as a cosigner and refinanced my loans with one of the few companies that provides such a service, SoFi. My wife would help with the payments when she could. Sharing the burden of my debt with my spouse instead of my parents was a small, depressing victory, a milestone perhaps unique to members of my generation.
SoFi has not made my situation much more tenable, necessarily. The main differences are that I now write one check instead of several, and that I have an end date for when the debt, including the calculated interest — about $182,000 — will be paid off: 2032, when I'll be 44. What I have to pay each month is still, for the most part, more than I am able to afford. I rely on the help of people I love and live by each paycheck. I still harbor anxiety about the bad things that could befall me should the paycheck disappear.
But the so-called Important Information I receive has changed. SoFi, which bills itself as a "modern finance company" (its name is shorthand for Social Finance, Inc.), is a Silicon Valley startup that offers, in addition to loans, membership outreach in the form of financial literacy workshops and free dinners. Their aim is to "empower our members," a mission that was called into question by the resignation, in September 2017, of its CEO, who employees allege had engaged in serial workplace sexual harassment and who ran the office, according to a New York Times headline, like "a frat house." The news came out not long after I refinanced my loans with the company — I became, I suppose, a SoFi'er, in the company's parlance. Around this same time, I started receiving curious emails from them: "Dear NYC SoFi'er," one of these emails read. "Grab a single friend and join us for a fun night at Rare View Rooftop Bar and Lounge in Murray Hill! You'll mingle with some of our most interesting (and available!) members …" The invitation cited a statistic that promised "86 percent of members at other SoFi Singles events said they met someone they want to see again."
I am a 30-year-old married man with more than $100,000 of debt, who makes less each year than what he owes. Buying a pair of pants is a major financial decision for me. I do not think myself "eligible" in any sense of the word. Still, I felt as if in 10 years, the debt hadn't changed, but the world had, or at least the world's view of it. This thing, this 21st-century blight, was now so normal — so basic — that it had been co-opted by the wellness industry of Silicon Valley. My debt was now approachable, a way to meet people. It was, in other words, an investment in my future, which is why I had gone into debt in the first place. Would SoFi be this friendly if I lost my job and missed a monthly payment?
Let's say I was morbidly intrigued. The day after Valentine's Day, I went to a Mexican restaurant for a SoFi community dinner — this was not a single's event, but simply a free meal. SoFi had rented out the back room, where a few dozen people had gathered, all wearing name tags and discussing financial woes. Sid, a software developer who had racked up credit card debt after college, told me that the debt was a unifying force at these gatherings. "When there's a break in the conversation, someone can just say, 'So, debt, huh?' and things will get going again," he said. "If we walked outside of this room," he continued, gesturing to the suits by the bar, "everyone out there would have debt, too. It's just a little more out in the open for us."
Despite the name tags, the dinner turned out to resemble something more like an AA meeting, an earnest session of group therapy. Everyone had their story about the problems caused by their student loans and how they were trying, one day at a time, to improve things, and no story was exceptional, including my own. Ian, an employee for Google who had recently successfully paid off his debt from a Columbia MBA program, said he had a few "bone dry" years, where he lived on instant noodles. I told him I had a long way to go. "At least you're doing something about it," he said, sincerely.
We sat down to dinner. Across from me was Mira, a defense attorney who attended law school at Stanford. Her payments amount to $2,300 a month, more than double my own. When I asked her why she came to this event, she glanced at me as if the answer should have been obvious: She went to law school at Stanford, and her payments are $2,300 a month. After the food was served, a waiter came by with a stack of to-go boxes. The group was reluctant at first, but then Ian said, "The chicken was actually pretty good," as he scooped it into one of the boxes. Mira shrugged, took a fork, and added, "This is a little tacky, but I'd hate to waste free food," and the rest of the table followed her lead. Maybe the next generation will do better, but I felt like we were broke and broken. No number of degrees or professional successes would put us back together again. For now, though, we knew where our next meal was coming from.
M.H. Miller is the arts editor for T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
This article is from the January/February 2019 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.


text:
Vanzac ist eine südwestfranzösische Gemeinde mit  Einwohnern (Stand: ) im Département Charente-Maritime in der Region Nouvelle-Aquitaine (vor 2016 Poitou-Charentes). Sie gehört zum Arrondissement Jonzac und zum Kanton Les Trois Monts. Die Einwohner werden Vanzacais genannt.

Lage
Vanzac liegt im Süden der Saintonge etwa 70 Kilometer nordnordöstlich von Bordeaux. Umgeben wird Vanzac von den Nachbargemeinden Léoville im Nordwesten und Norden, Baignes-Sainte-Radegonde im Norden und Osten, Bran im Osten, Chantillac im Südosten sowie Messac im Süden und Westen.

Bevölkerungsentwicklung

Sehenswürdigkeiten
 Kirche Sainte-Quitterie aus dem 14. Jahrhundert

Literatur
 Le Patrimoine des Communes de la Charente-Maritime. Flohic Editions, Band 1, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-84234-129-5, S. 511.

Weblinks

Ort in Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Weinbauort in Frankreich

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Scripture Sign - Psalms 119:30 and 1 Peter 3:12
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Front: THE ENTRANCE OF THY WORDS GIVETH LIGHT PSALM 119:130
Back: THE FACE OF THE LORD IS AGAINST THEM THAT DO EVIL 1 PETER 3:12
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Scripture Sign - Psalms 119:165 and Luke 16:23
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Scripture Sign - 2 Timothy 1:10 and Psalms 12:8
Scripture Sign Psalms 119:128 & Ecclesiastes 12:14
Scripture Sign - Psalms 118:8 and Psalms 10:4
Scripture Sign - Psalms 112:1 and Proverbs 18:2
Scripture Sign - Proverbs 15:3 and John 10:9
Scripture Sign - Psalms 145:17 and 1 Samuel 15:1
Scripture Sign - Proverbs 16:16 and Amos 4:12


text:
FILE – People look at flowers placed on the Promenade des Anglais at the scene of a truck attack Monday July 18, 2016 in Nice, southern France. A French…
FILE – People look at flowers placed on the Promenade des Anglais at the scene of a truck attack Monday July 18, 2016 in Nice, southern France. A French court on Tuesday Dec.13, 2022 convicted eight people charged in connection with a truck attack more than six years ago by an Islamic State sympathizer that killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, File)
8 in France convicted of roles in Bastille Day truck attack
by: NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY, Associated Press
PARIS (AP) — A French court on Tuesday convicted eight people charged in connection with a truck attack more than six years ago by an Islamic State sympathizer that killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day in the French Riviera city of Nice.
The judge's verdict followed 3 1/2 months of sometimes heart-wrenching testimony from survivors of the 2016 attack, who during the trial described the horrors and carnage they witnessed that Thursday summer night and the impact on their lives since.
The driver of the truck that plowed into crowds watching fireworks, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was killed by police the night of the attack.
The eight defendants, seven men and one woman, were convicted of helping him orchestrate a terrorist attack. The judge gave them prison sentences ranging from two to 18 years. Prosecutors had acknowledged not all of them had a clear connection to terrorism or knew what Lahouaiej-Bouhlel planned.
The pair most closely associated with Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, Mohamed Ghraeib and Chokri Chafroud, were convicted of terror charges and handed the longest sentences of 18 years.
The prosecution said both had had "an intense relationship" with Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. Ghraieb had known the attacker for 15 years, attended the same gym and haf 1,278 telephone communications with him in one year.
Ghraieb's lawyer, Vincent Brengarth, said his client would appeal.
Attack survivors reacted positively to the judge's verdict.
"I am satisfied to see that the two main defendants have been sentenced to 18 years in prison, even if it is nothing compared to what we have experienced," said survivor Laurence Bray. "This verdict is a relief. Now, there will be a big void."
"It won't bring my family back, my mom, my son, but it's a small victory that feels good," Caroline Villani, another survivor, said.
Others defendants who were convicted on Tuesday were said to know the perpetrator's plans more vaguely, such as Ramzi Arefa. He was convicted of selling the attacker a weapon while allegedly not knowing his terrorist intentions. Arefa received a 12-year prison sentence.
The trial was painful for survivors and victims' families. Some were able to come to Paris for the proceedings, but many watched on a secured online site or at a special viewing center set up near the Nice beachfront.
Among the victims, 33 were foreign citizens and 15 were children. More than 2,400 people are civil parties to the trial.
On July 14, 2016, thousands of people had packed Nice's famed boardwalk on the Mediterranean coast to celebrate France's national holiday. In 4 minutes and 17 seconds, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel rammed his 19-ton truck at full speed into a crowd of families, tourists and others on the picturesque Promenade des Anglais, killing 86 and leaving 450 others injured.
While investigators found Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had vocalized support for the Islamic State group, they found no clear proof of his links to IS operatives. The group was active in Syria and Iraq at the time.
The truck massacre followed deadly attacks in Paris at the Bataclan theater and other sites in France and Belgium orchestrated by the extremist group.
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