text:
Hi! I'm a graduate student in Philosophy at UCLA. Thank you for visiting my website, which hosts my personal blog. If you would like professional information or to contact me directly, please visit my about page.
Some thoughts on evangelicalism
I really enjoyed this article called The Evangelical Mind by Adam Kotsko. Parts of it reflect my experience growing up as an evangelical Christian very well, other parts do not. I have a few thoughts on the parts that don't.
One point of difference is music. Kotsko's parents complained that their Christian radio's programming was "dull and conservative". Kotsko says elsewhere that his father saw an important place for rock music in Christianity. My experience couldn't be further from this. Even the most traditional music playing on Christian pop stations would have been regarded as wholly inappropriate for church, and questionable in general.
Kotsko identifies the evangelical movement with the "seeker-sensitive" approach to church growth. Every church I attended as a child was violently opposed to this idea, and many of the pastors would rail against the idea (by name) from the pulpit. There was a constant fear that anything too friendly or enjoyable would water down the tough message of the gospel. The evangelicals I knew liked to point out that "narrow is the way…"
Additionally, Kotsko accuses evangelicalism of "self-satisfied conformism". While I think this is appropriate as a political and social point, Kotsko extends it to also mean that for the quintessential evangelical, "nothing could be stupider than expecting people to live by the teachings of Christ". This would have been big news to my church, where nearly every member knew many verses of Romans 6 by heart. Their willingness to hold themselves to the Bible's standards was certainly selective (never more so than on those political and social points), but the issue was always taken seriously. And apparently "arcane" points of doctrine like predestination were major issues: they were instrumental in a church split, in fact.
I rehearse this because I think Kotsko would not be surprised by any of it. It's not simply that there are more serious and extreme evangelicals, as there are in any movement. It's that this internal dissension is a central part of the evangelical movement itself. Whether you view evangelicalism as primarily a theological response to liberal traditions in the early 20th century, or a political response to the changing fabric of American culture of the 60s (as Kotsko does), it is undeniably characterized by paranoia and reactionary attitudes (as Kotsko says).
These are at the heart of modern evangelicalism's instinct to eat itself. As Kotsko says, "Evangelical Christians nevertheless regard themselves as a persecuted and misunderstood minority, surrounded by a hostile secular culture that is actively seeking to deceive and corrupt their children." Those who aren't familiar with evangelicalism may be surprised to learn that this is no exaggeration. It's a conspiracy theory as expansive as the Reptilian one, but believed by far more people. Beliefs like this are hard to go halfway on; they tend to consume you. You begin to see lizard people, or black helicopters, or "secularists" everywhere. When I came home from college after my first semester, I was excited to let everyone know there had been a mistake - not every non-evangelical had been a tool of Satan out to eat my soul. This did not go over very well.
When you take this kind of conspiratorial view of the world, it's hard to stop with just those not in your group. Arguably this is made even harder by the plain fact that the majority of Americans claim to be Christians. If you're going to maintain your self-understanding as a persecuted minority, while you're the majority, you've got to believe that most of the people who claim to be on your side are actually infiltrators. And so it is: evangelicals are forever splitting into smaller, more specific, and more suspicious groups.
The points of difference, while taken extremely seriously by most evangelicals, are also necessarily created by this process. If you're going to kick someone with almost identical beliefs out of your group, you need an important reason. What could be more important than a central doctrine like predestination, or not diluting your message with "seeker-friendly" music arrangements? Or what could be a more useful tool for purging your group of the infiltrators? The most serious evangelicals are always trying to purify themselves in this way. Controversies that seem unimportant to outsiders, like whose books Lifeway is selling, are great ways of figuring out who's on the narrow path and who's in danger of hellfire. Megachurches, in particular, are widely viewed as suspicious organizations that grift off an evangelical identity without any of its substance.
Once more, I note that I don't think any of this would surprise Kotsko. This kind of continual purging is central to the evangelical experience, but the particular bugbears that apply to each evangelical subgroup are always unique. Mine viewed movies with suspicion, and thought that seeker-friendly worship was a sinister plot, but didn't require women to cover their heads, use the KJV version of the Bible, or believe that drinking was inherently sinful. What I'm hoping this illustrates is how Kotsko's particular experience fits into evangelicalism as a whole - a movement that's a weird continuation of the paranoia of the reactionary conservatism of a prior generation.
How to netboot a Raspberry Pi 3 from a Linux server with TFTP and NFS
You can find plenty of guides to booting a Raspberry Pi from the network, but the one's I've seen make one or two assumptions. One is that the official guide assumes that you're booting off of another Raspberry Pi, which you use to generate the boot folder. Another is that you'll be providing DHCP and TFTP on the same server, e.g. using dnsmasq. This is annoying because you end up running two DHCP servers on the same network, and it has the potential to interfere with the network configuration on the server that's running it.
So here's my plan. I've already got a Tomato router (running Advanced Tomato), and it's got dnsmasq as a DHCP server. So in theory I should be able to direct the Pi to my real server, which I'm going to run tftpd-hpa on. The same server also runs my NFS mounts, so I'll use it to host the root directory for the Pi as well.
I expected this to be simple, but it turned out to be rather hard. There are a lot of moving pieces, and many of them don't give you much help when they break. So I'm documenting the process here.
What you need to do this:
A server to host NFS and TFTP
A router with a configurable DHCP daemon, e.g. dnsmasq (Tomato-based routers are great for this.)
A Raspberry Pi 3 (the first model to support netbooting without an SD card) with a working Raspbian installation on an SD card
A working NFS setup (not hard to do, but not described here)
Possibly a lot of patience.
The first, and apparently most difficult part, is just getting a working TFTP server. I installed tftpd-hpa on Ubuntu 17.10, made sure port 69 was unblocked, did some basic configuration. No luck, even over localhost. After some mucking about, I could tell using -v -v -v with tftpd and journalctl that tftpd was receiving the request, but it never bothered to respond—-and it didn't say why. After hours of trying different suggestions online, I managed to get a working configuration with the following:
TFTP_USERNAME="tftp"
TFTP_DIRECTORY="/path/to/boot/"
TFTP_ADDRESS=":69"
RUN_DAEMON="yes"
TFTP_OPTIONS="--secure -p"
I'm not sure if the -p is needed, but honestly I'm too scared to change anything now. Some of these settings are almost designed to cause frustration. --secure isn't exactly a security setting, it sets the "default" directory to TFTP_DIRECTORY and translates all addresses to subdirectories of that one. Yes, that's right, without --secure, a request for a relative path won't work. My /boot files are owned by root, umask=022, and that seems to work fine.
The main thing you need to do for tftp is set the directory to the path you want to use for the Pi's boot files. Since I have the NFS server and the TFTP server on the same hardware, I can conveniently point the TFTP server at /boot in the Pi's root directory under NFS.
But first things first, we have to get the root directory onto the server first. The official guide is rather useless here. It assumes that we're going to run the server off of another Pi, which we can conveniently copy the root from. I went the opposite direction. I set up the NFS server with the options
(rw,no_root_squash)
and, mounting the folder on the client Pi (with Raspbian installed to an SD card), copied the root with rsync to the NFS folder. Conveniently enough, we can use the exact same folder and settings to point the Pi to later. (Having virtually no security on the root folder of the Pi's filesystem is pretty concerning, however. I haven't figured out how to get around this given the limitations of PXE booting on the Pi.)
Alright, so I now have a working Raspbian filesystem served over NFS, and I can point my TFTP server to /boot as previously described. I do need to edit /boot/cmdline.txt as described in the official guide to point the boot code towards the NFS server. Also best to edit /etc/fstab and remove everything but /proc, otherwise Raspbian thinks the boot didn't succeed.
# cmdline.txt
dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/nfs
nfsroot=10.0.1.102:/path/to/root,vers=3 rw ip=dhcp rootwait elevator=deadline
The bit starting with "root" is the important part. We need to point the boot code to the directory with the Pi's root on the NFS server, as shown.
The remaining task is to get the DHCP server on the network to respond to the PI's PXE discovery request. I fought dnsmasq on Advanced Tomato for a long time, and finally settled on setting the appropriate DHCP fields by hand, as established in RFC 2132.
dhcp-option=43,Raspberry Pi Boot
dhcp-option=66,10.0.1.102
Where the IP address belongs to the TFTP server. There are three spaces after "Boot" as suggested in the official guide, but I don't know if they're actually necessary. Surprisingly enough, these two options alone were enough to get it working—-I just set them on the DHCP page of Advanced Tomato.
The last step is just to make sure booting over ethernet is enabled on the Pi, as the official guide says. After that, removing the microSD card and rebooting, everything should just work!
Fake News: Why Mainstream Journalism Is Often Part of the Problem
The term "fake news" has entered the modern parlance so quickly that it is worth beginning a discussion about fake news by trying to determine what, if anything, the term means. One way of investigating it is to try to identify a particularly clear case, rather than to propose a definition. Let me give what I take to be such a case.
Suppose there's a website where the writers invent their stories, with no effort or intention of basing those stories on actual events. The articles are purely fictional, much like those found on satire sites like The Onion, but we find two critical differences when we look more closely. First, the articles on fake news sites are not intended to be satirical, nor do they contain typical markers of writing not intended to be taken seriously. Instead, they are written with the positive intent to deceive their audience. Second, these articles support and reinforce a particular (often extreme) political viewpoint, and tap into the zeitgeist in order to manipulate the public.
Now, one good reason to accept this as a paradigmatic case of fake news is that there actually are such sites. One receiving some attention in the mainstream press recently is the so-called "Denver Guardian," run by a man successful enough to hire at least 20 writers. We read, even more worryingly, that children are incapable of reading a fake news article and a real news article and reliably distinguishing between them. We imagine a bleak future in which no one is able to tell true claims from false.
Another reason to take this view of fake news seriously is that everyone seems to accept it. The traditional news media has decried this apparent rejection of facts and has gone so far as to blame the election outcome (at least partially) on these sources of fake news. Facebook, under intense scrutiny and pressure, has shown interest in algorithms that either weed out or reduce the visibility of fake news sources.
The problem with fake news on this popular account is that unlike the occasional false story in the New York Times, it's designed with the intent to mislead its audience. While, to be sure, even highly trained reporters will sometimes make mistakes, fake news is a kind of propaganda (though, in typical American fashion, it's privatized).
Here is where I must say I'm rather skeptical of the intent-oriented account of fake news.
One reason to be worried is how easily talk of fake news morphs into blame-passing and mockery of conservatives. In this spirit, we see NPR note gleefully that some fake news writers "have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait." Note also that insofar as the legitimate news media are able to pass blame for the election result, they direct attention away from their own culpability. Put aside for the moment how much (if any) blame the media deserves for putting Trump in the spotlight; realize first that this strategy has been wholly successful. Liberals everywhere are singing the praises of traditional news media, renewing (more likely, beginning!) subscriptions to the New York Times and Washington Post, and emphasizing the importance of a free press for democracy. (See this previous article on The Vim about how to criticize the media effectively.)
Of course, I'm not here to say that all these changes are unfortunate. Rather, in addition to emphasizing the crucial role of a free press in the face of an openly hostile administration, I think it's crucial that we take a look at the role of the press in spreading misinformation, and diagnose more carefully the distinction between real and fake news.
Let's take a look, first, at intent. A well credentialed reporter who tries to give a truthful account but is tripped up by unreliable sources or a subtle bias doesn't seem to blame for the mistake. On the other hand, someone who writes deliberately false or misleading articles in order to reinforce a reader's hatred for Hillary Clinton is deeply culpable for their act of lying. That said, in discussing fake news we usually are not trying to determine who's to blame for various types of false statements, but rather to analyze the effect of the fake news phenomenon on the public. We're trying to solve a practical problem, not a moral one.
One of the seeming benefits of the intent-based account of fake news is that it draws a bright line between fake news and real news. It also provides a very clear set of conditions for applying the term "fake news": news is fake if it uses a made-up story to support a particular ideology. My core argument, however, is that these benefits evaporate when we're trying to solve the practical problem I have stated. The reason for this is simple: the whole point of fake news (in the previous sense) is that it by definition is difficult to tell apart from real news. In fact I take a stronger view: it's not possible for well-crafted fake news to be distinguished from real news except in terms of the apparent implausibility of its claims.
Implausibility is a tricky thing. We could insist on using it in an objective sense, but here it will be more natural and helpful to think about how what is plausible varies from person to person. Here, therefore, our practical problem becomes much more terrifying; the only hope for distinguishing fake news from real news relies on apparently subjective considerations.
Because of this, I suggest that our fixation on fake news can embolden the very sources of propaganda we attack. Think for a moment about what we're telling the public on this account of fake news. We're saying that their news sources are peppered with claims that are deliberately designed to deceive them. We're telling them that they are unable to distinguish these false claims from true ones. Now, one might argue the situation isn't as bad as all that. After all, the crucial difference is that these sources intend to mislead you, right? Surely mainstream news organizations have no reason to do that, right?
The problem, as I see it, is that Pandora's box is open, and the trustworthiness of all of these organizations is up for grabs. Our appeals to plausibility carry no weight when our beliefs about what is plausible are so poorly aligned. Because of all this, Trump is free to throw all this talk back in our faces and say to a CNN reporter, "you're fake news!"
It's tempting, of course, to accuse Trump of simply misusing the term. Fake news, we might say, implies an intent to deceive, and CNN clearly has no such intent. What Trump ought to have said, we argue, is that CNN is false news, or that it sometimes says false things. I think this is deeply mistaken diagnosis of Trump's purpose. Trump's media agenda is precisely to cast doubt on the sincerity of the press. An ideal Trump supporter literally believes that the mainstream media is "fake news" — that they systematically lie about Trump in order to advance their own (liberal) agenda. That this seems so beyond the pale to us is precisely why it has so great a chance of success. We're so blinded by the apparent implausibility of CNN's being fake news that we don't realize that many people take this claim quite seriously.
Before considering alternatives, let's take a crucial step back. The fake news / real news dichotomy implied by the "intent" view is supported by a rather traditional take on what real news is. The latter, I suggest, hasn't been plausible for decades now. Let me introduce this argument with a question: is Huffington Post "real news"? Thinking about the press from a certain traditionalist viewpoint, one would have to say certainly not. Their articles are informed by a center-left liberal viewpoint. At one point, they had an editor's note at the bottom of articles about Donald Trump noting that he was a serial liar and misogynist. It's equally clear, however, that Huffington Post is not fake news as typically construed. They are quite sincere about their liberal viewpoint. We could, of course, have a similar discussion about Fox News, MSNBC, and online-only news sites and blogs.
I think a better understanding of news media emphasizes the role that opinion plays in all of them. At a minimum, any news source will be affected by opinion in its reporting with regard to the news it emphasizes and ignores, the language it uses, and what it deems to be legitimate sources. One might argue that there's still a core of news that remains purely objective: the direct reporting of recorded events. A newspaper might report, "Donald Trump told us so-and-so," and if necessary, produce a recording of him saying it. I don't wish to deny that there is some objective core to news, but note that Trump has disputed even basic facts like these. He's denied saying things he was recorded saying; the faithful believe, and those on the edge are smoothed over with "Mr. Trump means he was taken out of context," and we all move on to the next scandal.
With that in mind, let's take another look at our predicament. The practical problem is that the standard view of fake news proclaims that most people aren't capable of telling real news from fake news. What's worse, reliably distinguishing real news from fake news requires interpreting the intent of one's source, which ultimately necessitates a grasp of what is *plausible. I argue that this view fails to give us ways to solve this problem. While it's certainly true that certain news is fake news in the proposed sense, i.e. that it consists (at worst) in completely fabricated stories, the distinction does not cut across the information people accept in any actionable way.
Here I insert a joke: the reason the fake news writers couldn't get liberal readers to bite on their stories is that those readers were already subscribed to the New York Times.
Consider again the culpability of the mainstream media in their hyping of Trump (scandals and all) throughout the campaign, which gave him countless millions of dollars in free screen time. It would be wrong to suggest, of course, that the mainstream media was a deliberate propaganda machine on behalf of Trump, but these facts also belie the idea that the media is truly interested in accurately representing the facts to us. Systematically focusing on one candidate or type of story to the detriment of all others is as serious a bias as any. As I argued earlier, it's a crucial symptom of opinion in journalism when certain decisions are made about which stories to cover and which to drop.
In its never-ending focus on Clinton's email "scandal", the mainstream press created the mistaken notion that she was a hopelessly flawed and corrupt candidate. Of course this doesn't qualify as fake news under the original definition at all; the media did not say anything intended to be false (or anything strictly false at all), only continually engaging in never-ending false controversy. One might think that the "coverage is always good" dictum applies to Clinton equally as well as Trump, but this is not quite true. Coverage is only good if you encourage the belief that the mainstream media perpetually lies about you, and you have supporters willing to believe it. Every negative thing that the media published about Trump was either "lies" or just further proof that the press wanted to destroy his candidacy.
Many in the public ended up believing that Clinton and Trump were comparable in terms of their flaws as candidates. This doesn't have to be a reasonable belief or survive very much serious inquiry (indeed it does not). It only has to exist in the space of things one can say without being laughed at by nearly everyone. I call this space the *discourse horizon. It's of fundamental importance in public thought, and it's partially created by the media. Of course, it also has a corresponding effect on what the media can and cannot say. Journalism can locate something within the discourse horizon simply by presenting it as up for debate. So, as a result, the public feels that "GMOs cause cancer" is a legitimate belief, while "NASA faked the moon landing" is not.
I suggested previously that opinion plays a role in all journalism. I think recent years have seen a vast increase in the amount of opinion pieces available to, and read by, the public. These too can have an effect on the space of acceptable beliefs. Even more traditional media often blurs the line between its traditional journalism and opinion pieces. I frequently find it hard to tell on some sites when a piece is original reporting and when it is an opinion piece (on Slate for example). This means, from the public's point of view, it's often enough to find one or two people who are willing to state publicly the thing you'd like to believe.
There are, of course, many varying degrees of opinion in journalism. Fake news, in the received sense, hardly counts as opinion at all, since it is written without regard to the truth of the claims it makes. Editorials, and opinion-friendly sources like Huffington Post, explicitly endorse a particular political viewpoint. The mainstream news is written from an apparently objective perspective, but in fact is affected by opinion in a variety of hidden ways. I think a crucial point about "fake news" is that it's a very tiny portion of the giant media buffet. It's certainly true that there are a small number of sites that make up absurd stories for advertizing revenue, but they have a relatively small impact on the media diet of the vast majority. Most articles are quite sincere. What really counts is just how much opinion is available, and crucially, the fact that you can find an opinion piece that validates nearly any of your opinions.
The accepted solution to this problem is fact-checking, of course. If you read something from an opinion piece or unknown source, you should look it up on FactCheck or try to find a corroborating source. If this is the solution, then what we need to do is teach the public media literacy.
I think what I have said already should cast doubt on this solution. First, there are valid questions about whether the mainstream media itself is trustworthy. They not only misrepresented the nature of the election, thereby making them partially responsible for the Trump phenomenon, they are also limited by, and responsible for their part in creating, the discourse horizon. Furthermore, their financial interest in presenting controversy and attracting viewers regularly compromises them, as we saw when the Washington Post recently reported that Russia had hacked a power station in Vermont. Second, I question the efficacy of the fact-checking solution when the portion of the public we are concerned about is forced to choose between competing sources of information and the legitimacy of traditional journalism is up for grabs.
I have a much darker suggestion to make about the people who believe fake news. Much of it, the "Pizzagate" story for example, is so outlandish and unbelievable that it's almost inconceivable that anyone could seriously believe it. So I suggest that most of them don't believe it. The immediate question that arises for them is not whether the statement is true, but rather whether it contains the correct value judgment about its subject. To the Trump voter, Clinton is nasty, despicable, and morally rotten. That's exactly the sort of thing she would do! Sharing the article is an invitation to one's friends to wink together at it, to join with others in pretending to believe the lie.
Trump voters aren't unique in this regard. We saw much the same thing very recently in Trump's "golden shower" controversy. The whole story came from a single unsubstantiated report published by Buzzfeed. It sounds incredibly unlikely. Do some people really believe it? Maybe. The point, however, for most people who shared the story was not whether it was true but rather it said the right kinds of things about (and provided an opportunity to mock) Trump. Liberals take solace in the fact that Trump is not merely evil and ignorant but a pervert.
Even conspiracy theories are present among liberals. A survey found that half of Clinton voters believe that Russia hacked the election vote counts. It's absurd and obviously false, and (crucially) as far from reality as anything on a fake news site.
I think that there is little hope of solving this problem through media literacy. Not only is "fake news" only part of what I take to be a much larger problem, there is little practical hope for convincing Trump supporters to take traditional media seriously. Not only do they frequently not care whether the story is true, they also have serious doubts (encouraged by Trump himself) about the good intentions of mainstream reporters. It does no good to tell them to verify facts with trustworthy sources when what counts as a trustworthy source is itself up for grabs.
What I would like to do, therefore, is to offer an alternative account of fake news and some steps towards a real solution to the problem it poses.
The received view of fake news is correct to portray it as fundamentally opposed to fact-based journalism, but is wrong about why. Traditional journalism is a journalism that is keyed to the truth; it has as its one supreme goal representing reality accurately to the general public. Fake news is news that is not so keyed; it has some other goal which can, and often does, interfere with the accurate presentation of facts. On this account, there are elements other than the intentions of journalists at play. Fake news can exist at The Guardian just as well as the Denver Guardian. Whenever there is a systematic force that causes certain facts to be misrepresented (or over-or-under-represented), we are dealing with fake news. Now we begin to see that fake news is all around us. The mainstream media's obsession with Clinton's email server was not, on the previous view, "fake news" because (a) it reported on actual facts, and (b) the intention of the reporters was not to mislead. I offer the following rebuttal: that this reporting led many to believe that Clinton was hopelessly corrupt was no accident. Instead, we have a clear cut case of what happens when systemic concerns other than accurately representing the truth to the public take priority. The Clinton story was fake news on my account precisely because these systemic forces led the mainstream media to mislead the public with a constant barrage of (largely accurate) stories about what was ultimately a minor issue with Clinton's qualifications. Media today is driven by controversy and outrage (and the financial interests of corporations), not truthful reporting.
When we use the term "fake news" in my suggested sense, we refer to anything that pretends to be news, where news is understood normatively as a truth-informing enterprise. The key problem with the received view of fake news is that it focuses on only a single way in which journalism can be warped away from the truth (ill intent), and misses a variety of other systemic interests which pervert even traditional journalism. Worse still, its single-minded focus on intent provides room for critics of journalism like Trump to claim that mainstream news is "fake". We must therefore avoid scaremongering made-up news (a relatively small phenomenon), and instead focus on the many other ways in which news can be fake.
This account provides the beginnings of another conversation about fake news. What are these systemic forces? How can we fight them? What the original account of fake news surely got right was that sometimes propaganda is at work and the author deliberately tries to mislead us. My account suggests that there are other forces just as crucial: the profit motive, the constant need for advertizing revenue and "clicks"; these can all bend reporting away from the truth. I think that to fight one of these we must fight them all.
One benefit of this approach is that it provides us with some common ground with the Trump supporter who is skeptical of the mainstream media. If I'm right, we should be skeptical. The solution can only be openness on both sides to reforming our institutions.
We must also be aware that people who "believe" fake news are not always deceived. They share articles they know (or strongly suspect) to be false not because they are deluded but because these articles are the only ones that support their value system. Their alternatives — believing absurd claims or facing up to a cruel reality — are both terrifying. Our approach to their condition must begin with empathy, and remembering that we too are susceptible to this problem. If I'm right, we're all trapped by the discourse horizon. What we need to find, together, is an alternative.
This post was co-published on The Vim
Safe Spaces and Intellectual Rigor on College Campuses
In today's New York Times, Judith Shulevitz wrote an article criticizing "safe spaces" in universities, arguing that they're too often an excuse to insulate students from ideas they don't like. If you're reading this post, you should read Shulevitz's article first.
I have two main criticisms of the article, and one general point of agreement. Let's think through the criticisms first.
First, Shulevitz conflates "safe spaces" with "insulation" against potentially upsetting speech. We don't put trigger warnings on articles because we're afraid of hurting oversensitive college students, we put trigger warnings on articles when there is a possibility that someone who has experienced sexual assault or other trauma will unexpectedly have to face painful memories.
It's important to keep these distinct. Students at large may not deserve to be protected from speech they disagree with, but people who have diagnosable psychological trauma in response to certain subjects (often even when those subjects are broached positively) should be warned and given the opportunity to avoid being present. Throughout the article, Shulevitz routinely ignores this distinction. She says that "Safe spaces are an expression of the conviction, increasingly prevalent among college students, that their schools should keep them from being 'bombarded' by discomfiting or distressing viewpoints." I think this is very shortsighted.
In fairness to Shulevitz, she's not the only person making this mistake. In the article, she quotes Emma Hall (a rape survivor who helped run the safe space at Brown University) as saying "I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs." One could argue that Emma Hall is insulating herself from "distressing viewpoints"; even as a survivor, she's capable of bad motives. Shulevitz's mistake is to frame all advocates for safe spaces as insulating themselves intellectually, but what they are actually attempting is to protect people psychologically from material to which they are sensitive because of the emotional damage of traumatic events.
My second concern with the article is its mistaking advocacy for safe spaces with complaints about the non-representation of women in debates. It incorrectly characterizes them both as examples of students avoiding intellectual criticism for emotional reasons. In fact, there are very good reasons for worrying about an all-male debate of abortion, distinct from both this tendency and the need to provide safe spaces.
Suppose that a university held a debate on "climate change," hosting both an expert on climate change from the IPCC and a well-known blogger who doesn't believe in climate change. Now, it's likely that many students who care about the environment would disapprove of this debate, and they might even frame it in terms of "mental safety". But what they're worried about is not hearing views that oppose their own, it's a different problem altogether.
The problem with hosting a blogger who doesn't accept climate change is that the blogger has no relevant scientific credentials. In hosting a debate, the university implicitly indicates that both speakers are relevant experts and should be heard and judged merely on the merits of what they say. Of course this is completely untrue: we have no reason to believe that the blogger is an expert on climate change. We shouldn't weigh what an expert and non-expert have to say equally.
Furthermore, as non-experts, we're not fully capable of accurately comparing the two speakers purely on the merits of their words. In practice, coming to accept (or reject) climate change occurs when one learns about climate change. Unless one is capable of weighing the relevant facts, one can only trust experts in the field. This means that the whole idea of a debate is a bit silly, and distracts us from what ultimately determines our beliefs. If the debate is a farce between the uninformed, and the audience is unable to distinguish between the two, there's good reason to worry that the result is mentally unhealthy.
Now, with abortion, emotions are a key aspect of the problem. It's not possible to say, externally, exactly what a woman faces when carrying an unwanted potential child. Moreover, it's impossible to say in general what it's like to walk around with two X chromosomes when one doesn't have them. But this makes a debate about abortion between men (however intellectually honest they may be) inherently problematic. They are (in the language of the climate change example) not experts in a central aspect of the "debate" on abortion. However empathetic they may be, some emotions are sui generis and male debaters are not qualified to speak about them.
There is a legitimate worry, therefore, that a debate about abortion between two men is a farce. We have reason to fear that an audience will be swayed by non-factual elements of the debate, rather than by certain relevant facts that the speakers don't themselves know.
I could take the time to complain about several similar examples in the article (the dismissal of Muslim concerns about Charlie Hebdo comes to mind), but I will leave that out of this post. Also, I should preface the succeeding thoughts with the note that I'm white with a Y chromosome, and have never experienced prejudice against either. Thus, it's possible that I am currently blind to areas in which some people legitimately need to be protected from certain words or modes of discourse.
I think that Shulevitz is right to worry about over-sensitivity, and she accurately pegs college as a time when we should especially be challenged by ideas that upset us. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a debate between Jessica Valenti and Wendy McElroy (and it's rather funny to suggest that Valenti — a feminist herself — would be part of something problematic). Likewise, it seems nonsensical to suggest that we censor Huckleberry Finn. Students don't deserve protection from words or ideas, and in fact "protecting them" actually hurts their development.
Universities have long been the places where young people can develop in an open, intelligent, and rigorous environment. I agree with Shulevitz that it's very important to protect this environment from political correctness and "self-infantilization". However, in doing so, it's crucial that we actually be rigorous; when talking about contentious issues, we need to ensure that the speakers are relevant experts. Likewise, to keep debate open, we need to make sure that everyone, especially those with direct experience, are welcome. If that means speaking more kindly — or even creating explicitly "unsafe" spaces when necessary — so be it.
©2017 Adam Fontenot. Licensed under CC BY-SA. About Me Projects RSS Feed


text:
movie review Dec. 13, 2019
Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell Is Full of Rage and Spin
By David Edelstein
Paul Walter Hauser (center) as Richard Jewell. Photo: Claire Folger/Warner Bros.
On July 7, 1996, while Atlanta was hosting the Summer Olympic Games, a security guard named Richard Jewell spotted an unattended backpack beneath a bench during a concert at the city's Centennial Park. Jewell quickly notified authorities and was in the process of pushing the crowd back when a pipe bomb filled with nails (intended to cause maximum casualties) went off. One woman died of her injuries, a man suffered a fatal heart attack, and scores of people were severely wounded. Despite the casualties, there's little doubt that Jewell's vigilance saved many lives. The story might have ended there for Jewell — with honors, TV interviews, and the good kind of celebrity — had FBI agents, with few suspects, not gotten hung up on the idea that the socially awkward, overweight male who lived with his mother and had botched several attempts to become a full-fledged police officer had planted the bomb himself so that he could discover it and become a hero. A version of that scenario had in fact gone down two years earlier in Los Angeles, and Jewell fit the FBI bomber "profile" (something to remember while watching the heroes of the TV series Mindhunter develop their so-called science). After the FBI leaked their suspicions to an Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter, Jewell (along with his mother) spent three months under siege by the media, his guilt widely presumed despite the FBI's lack of evidence to charge him. The FBI didn't make too big a deal when he was cleared. Most people would remember the accusations, not the outcome.
This enraging episode is the basis for the new Clint Eastwood drama, Richard Jewell, which puts a distinctive spin on the story. The actual bomber, Eric Rudolph, a right-wing, anti-abortion homophobe whose killing spree would continue, is named only once, in passing, and his likely ties to Christian militias and white supremacists go unmentioned. (Rudolph, in prison for life, remains a hero in those circles.) That omission could be justified on the grounds that Rudolph's story is largely unrelated to Jewell's — although most filmmakers would assume their audience's desire to know who had committed the act of terrorism they'd just witnessed, not to mention the reasons. Not Eastwood. He has been drawn to narratives in which ordinary people make heroic, split-second decisions, and even more to stories in which ordinary people make heroic, split-second decisions and come under threat from zealous government agencies and the press. In Sully, Eastwood turned the world's least controversial outfit — the National Transit Safety Board, tasked with determining the cause of terrible accidents in hopes of preventing further ones — into parasites intent on ruining the pilot who had saved every "soul" on his plane. Eastwood's mind is marinated in the paranoia and grandiosity of Ayn Rand, for whom extraordinary individuals were reliably under fire by unimaginative government regulators in collusion with the press. He takes this stuff real seriously. During a successful run for mayor of Carmel, California, in the '80s, Eastwood compared enforcement of zoning laws to Hitler pounding on innocent peoples' doors. He got the zoning laws changed before the pogroms could commence.
To tell Jewell's story his way, Eastwood needs a new enemy of the people, and this turns out to be a Journal Constitution reporter named Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde. By all accounts, Scruggs (who can no longer sue for libel, being deceased) was a flamboyant, sharp-elbowed investigative journalist who loved the job and the lifestyle. The script by Bill Ray shows her going the extra mile, pressing herself in a bar against Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm), one of the lead FBI agents, and putting her hand on his crotch. Give me a name, she says, and you can have me. It would be easy to attack the actress, who plays Scruggs as borderline insane, sashaying around with her tongue half out of her mouth, but that's not my inclination: Wilde landed a juicy role under a director whose actors win Oscars and she went for it — perhaps trusting Eastwood would pull her back if the portrait of Scruggs became too degrading. Vain hope. In reality, the FBI had no problem leaking Jewell's name and confirming it to the media, likely out of desperation and sheer incompetence. It wasn't the result of an unscrupulous woman reporter stroking a drunken agent's cock, both people fancying themselves destined for greater things and eager to advance by any means necessary. In the media scrum, Scruggs takes the persecution to the next level, asking, "If he's innocent then why is the FBI here?"
To those who object to my dwelling on the movie's politics, I can only say that it's Eastwood who has twisted the story to suit his ends. The sad thing is that he didn't need to — he has plenty of good material, and his direction is fluid and unfussy. He and his screenwriter wisely suggest that the idea of Jewell (played by Paul Walter Hauser) planting the bomb was not entirely absurd. Jewell has a touch of authoritarianism, a tendency to be extra attentive to the smallest infractions: He doesn't pick his battles to prevent unnecessary scenes. (I don't mean to impugn Jewell — a hero — but there is a connection between his mindset as portrayed here and people like Michael Drejka, who drove around parking lots checking cars in handicapped spots and wound up convicted for manslaughter after provoking an altercation.) Hauser gives an extraordinary, non-actorish performance, underscoring that Jewell wasn't an actor — that his affect was flat and a bit know-it-all and didn't play well on TV. Kathy Bates, who can chew scenery with the best of 'em, expertly tunes her performance to Hauser's: low-key, bitter, resentful that the world has not recognized their worth.
Ray has crafted wonderful scenes between Hauser and Sam Rockwell as his scrappy attorney, Watson Bryant, who blows his top whenever Jewell insists on showing off his knowledge of criminals and their motives to FBI agents — strengthening their belief that they have the right guy. Rockwell's edginess is a great comic foil for Hauser's mulishness — and vice versa — and Nina Arianda as Bryant's Russian secretary adds a touch of giddiness that keeps the film from being bogged down.
Say this about Eastwood: He evidently feels no obligation to reconcile disparate points of view — a weakness in some of his movies, a source of true drama in others. In Richard Jewell, Confederate flags show up in FBI headquarters, and, depending on the viewer, they could be a reminder of either an unjust system of laws or a national government's willingness to trample states' and individual's rights. Jewell's arsenal of weapons (pistols to assault rifles) can be taken as a sign of his nuttiness or his loyalty to the Second Amendment, seen as aberrant only by liberal elites who also regard him as a "Bubba."
I'm inclined, though, to think that Eastwood's intended audience will respond enthusiastically to the jabs at the government and the elites, who are seen casually lumping the NRA in with "fringe" groups. It can't be an accident that Richard Jewell shows the enemies of truth and justice to be the FBI and the press, both of which have been targeted by the current administration, its Republican lackeys, and the sorts of people who rail at empty chairs. It can't be an accident that the true villain of this story — the man who planted bombs to kill his political enemies and whose type is now ascendant — is deemed irrelevant, a distraction. It can't be an accident that a postscript notes Jewell's death in his early 40s, with the implication that he never fully recovered from this trauma, but doesn't mention Kathy Scruggs, who left her job, fell into a depression, and died of a drug overdose long before Jewell's diabetes helped do him in. You could argue that she was as much a victim of the FBI's disgraceful behavior as he was, but I wouldn't — at least not in certain parts of this country. I think Eastwood's audience is going to eat this movie up, and maybe even turn it into a rallying cry. The legacy of the bombing of Olympic Centennial Park might end up suiting the bomber just fine.
vulture homepage lede
paul walter hauser

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Tending to be a more visual type of person, I'm always trying to imagine what the characters in a book look like… with their scenes unfolding like a movie in my mind. It helps to visualize; helps me connect to the story and the characters. So of course, when I'm reading, I know roughly what these imaginary people look like. But do you ever wonder what the author intended them to look like? Does it ever surprise you when your imaginings are way off base compared to what the author's thinking? Does ever it change how you view the character?
So who does author J.A. Redmerski imagine being cast as her characters in The Mayfair Moon?
I admit that while writing THE MAYFAIR MOON, I never had anyone in particular in mind for any of the characters, but later I did start to think about who might resemble the characters the best. It was difficult to place them, but I think those that I chose come really close!
Michelle Trachtenberg comes closest to casting Adria Dawson, hands down. She's beautiful and plain at the same time, complete with Adria's dark hair, freckles (though her tons of freckles are covered by make-up in this picture) and pale skin.
Harry I think can best be compared to Landon Liboiron. Grow out his hair a tad and give him a skateboard and he's pretty spot-on! Landon actually played a werewolf in a movie called The Howling: Reborn (and he did a great job!), so hey, he's already in the werewolf club!
I thought Zia would be the most difficult to place, but I found Jessica Stam to fit her character really well. Just give her a short, spiky hairdo and dress her sort of like a rocker chick and Jessica could easily pull Zia's character off (appearance-wise, anyway).
Lastly, Isaac Mayfair was the one character I had the toughest time figuring out. Ultimately, I chose Kevin Zegers, but with Ben Barnes' hair. Also, Ben Barnes (in this photo) has that 'primal' look, which fits Isaac more. But wow those eyes of Kevin Zegers!
J.A. Redmerski is the author of the YA Paranormal Romance THE MAYFAIR MOON. It is her debut novel and the first in the DARKWOODS TRILOGY. Jessica is currently working on the second book in the trilogy, titled KINDRED. She is also author of an adult novel titled DIRTY EDEN, recently published.
After a nightmarish encounter with a werewolf, seventeen-year-old Adria Dawson loses her sister, but gains the love of a mysterious young man and his legendary family.
Strange and tragic things begin to happen in the small town of Hallowell, Maine: residents come down with an unexplainable 'illness' and some disappear. In the midst of everything, Isaac Mayfair is adamant about keeping Adria safe, even from her sister whom he has warned her to stay away from.
As unspeakable secrets unfold all around Adria, impossible choices become hers to bear. Ultimately, no matter what path she takes, her life and the lives of those she loves will be in peril. As she learns about the werewolf world she also learns why her place in it will change the destinies of many.
Love dream casts! They also scare me, because sometimes a choice is sooo far off from my own vision and, after seeing the "official" face, I can no longer go back to my imainging *laughs* But I still love them, and while I haven't read the book, I liked the set.
DUDE!!! This books sounds SUPER freaking awesome! Why have I not heard of it until now??
What a great cast of characters! As interesting as these characters look, I'd love to read about them.


TLT's Real Estate team will once again be attending MIPIM, the global conference, exhibition and networking event for international property professionals.
Representatives from TLT's real estate team will be joining the Belfast delegation at MIPIM 2019 in Cannes this March to showcase the best that the region has to over the property market.
Partners Judith Allen, Andy Bell and Kevin Murphy will be available during the event, to share their expertise on conducting real estate transactions in the city.
If you're interested in meeting up with one of the team at the event, please do get in touch.


text:
56, 40 Let Octyabrya Avenue, Pyatigorsk
Phone: (8793) 97-39-27
E-mail: info@pfncfu.ru
Visiting card of the institute
Administration of the branch
International activities of the Institute
Scientific activities of the Institute
Educational divisions
School of Caucasus Hospitality
College of the Institute of Service, Tourism and Design (branch) of NCFU
Center of Additional Vocational Education and Further Training
On August 22, 2012 became the official merger of two universities in Pyatigorsk: the branch of NCSTU (North Caucasus State Technical University) and PSHTU (Pyatigorsk State Humanitarian and Technological University). Thus, the Institute of Service, Tourism and Design (branch) of NCFU (North Caucasus Federal University) in Pyatigorsk was founded. It was headed by Tatyana A. Shebzukhova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor, Honorary Worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation.
Currently, the educational complex of the Institute of Service, Tourism and Design (branch) of NCFU in Pyatigorsk includes 5 faculties:
– Faculty of Economics and Management;
– Faculty of Design;
– Faculty of Law;
– Faculty of Tourism, Service and Food Technology;
– Faculty of Engineering.
and one institution of secondary vocational education:
– College of the Institute of Service, Tourism and Design (branch) of NCFU, as well as Center of Additional Vocational Education and Further Training.
Thus, the Institute successfully operates a system of continuing education: the idea of their future profession and in-demand secondary vocational education a student receives in the College, quality higher education in the areas of Bachelor Degree, specialties and Master Degree programmes – in the University, and an opportunity to complete advanced training courses and professional retraining – in the Center of additional education. It is also possible to receive an academic degree in postgraduate study and doctoral studies of NCFU.
The Institute has at its disposal 10 academic buildings, which makes the training process not only effective but also comfortable.
The Institute has at its disposal 56 laboratory and scientific complexes equipped with modern, often unique equipment. The developed material base of the Institute allows not only to provide students with in-demand practice-oriented education, but also to organize master classes of the leading foreign and Russian experts, as well as to carry out scientific research. Most lecture halls are equipped with advanced multimedia and presentation equipment.
The developed material base of the Institute also includes a computerized library information center, a hostel, a catering complex with students' café-canteens, a modern sports complex with a swimming-pool, fitness and sports halls for team sports, and also its own printing house with modern printing equipment.
At the same time, active development of telecommunication infrastructure, the creation of a modern technical base allows the branch in Pyatigorsk and the university in Stavropol to be in a uniform corporate network. Both the students of the branch, as well as the students who are trained at the head university have equal access to uniform educational space and absolutely identical conditions for acquiring knowledge and mastering educational programs.
To date, the branch enrolls more than 7,500 students, making it the largest structural subdivision of North Caucasus Federal University.
Highly skilled scientific and teaching staff possessing high mental potential has been formed in the branch. The academic staff of the branch consists of more than 369 people, including 33 doctors of sciences, professors and 213 candidates of sciences, associate professors.
The Institute of Service, Tourism and Design provides its students with a number of unique opportunities: the students of the branch become members of a huge team of North Caucasus Federal University, which is the leading innovative educational center of the North Caucasus Federal District, with wide connections, both in Russia and abroad: pupils have an opportunity to combine the learning process and creative activities; the students of the branch live in a resort area, with beautiful nature and world-famous attractions.
Of no small importance is that NCFU branch is located in Pyatigorsk – a city that became the capital of the North Caucasus Federal District in 2010. The geographical and geopolitical position of Pyatigorsk and its resort-climatic conditions increase the status of the branch.
NCFU branch in Pyatigorsk is focused on the training of highly qualified specialists to work in the field of tourism. This is one of the key directions in the Strategy of Development of the North Caucasus Federal District until 2025. In the coming years it is planned to create more than 100 thousand jobs that should be occupied by experts of world level. NCFU provides just such professionals for the labor market. One should not forget that for the development of the region it is important to attract investors, for which purpose it is necessary to create a favorable investment climate and further develop the district infrastructure investment, which is impossible without highly qualified lawyers and economists. The specialists of engineering and technical directions are also in demand in the region and are called upon to provide the developing tourist and recreational cluster with necessary material and technical basis, provide for technical and service support of the resort. That is exactly why the branch of NCFU in Pyatigorsk is conducting training in all the above-mentioned directions.
Scientific and educational potential of the branch of NCFU in Pyatigorsk is presented by:
research laboratories (control systems, nanotechnology, electronics and microprocessor technology, problems of functional and therapeutic nutrition of the population in the North Caucasian Federal District, environmental safety);
scientific and practical centres (innovative technologies, forecasting in construction industry, appraisal and evaluation of real estate, collective use of scientific equipment and software, research and coordination center "New biology of the XXI century").
Students of NCFU branch in Pyatigorsk are participants and prize winners of:
All-Russia contest «Student leader»;
All-Russia youth innovation forum «Seliger»;
Student teams «Construction team» and «Pedagogic team»;
Volunteer movement;
North Caucasus youth forum «Mashuk»;
Programmes «START» and «U.M.N.I.K.».
The Institute of Service, Tourism and Design of NCFU combines the best qualities of a modern multiprofile higher education institution. Graduates of the branch receive the state diploma of a uniform sample, the same as in the head higher education institution. It, undoubtedly, is for young specialists the admission in big life and gives a chance to make an outstanding career not only in Russia, but also abroad.
Main | Branch | International activities of the Institute | Scientific activities of the Institute | Contact information
© 2020 Federal Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education «NORTH CAUCASUS FEDERAL UNIVERSITY» The Institute of Service, Tourism and Design (branch of NCFU) in Pyatigorsk


I'm a busy man, no doubt, yet I wish I could have a garden and more importantly a private space for cultivating fruits and vegetables as I know how rewarding it is. I am reminded of the neglect constantly as all of our windows look out onto the garden. My guilt has made me make sweeping pronouncements, both publicly and privately, but they are weak and fallible (kinda like those "never again" promises made after a late and inebriated night) that I will tame and take control of that unruly outdoor space! One of the advantages of growing vegetables and fruits is that there is an element of time, not everything happens at once. Put simply, the beds are tended (removing of weeds, turning the soil, and fertilising if necessary, etc.) seeds are sown and then there is a fair amount of waiting until more work is required. There are however, windows for when different plants will grow and be plentiful. Because there does not feel like there is a sense of urgency, I am slow to act and more often than not opportunities are missed.
So here's something I've learned about myself. It has taken a lot of time to get over the denial (ok, not that long), I am a procrastinator. So much so that amongst my favourite quotes is "I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after" Oscar Wilde. One of the perks of writing this blog, is accountability, now that I have a manageable goal that is being aired in public, I feel somewhat tied into meeting my promises.
A good friend has an amazing allotment that she and her partner tend to. Although I have yet to visit it, I have been offered some of its produce and have seen numerous enticing images of its bounty on Instagram (I encourage you to visit her Instagram page, Karlanewell). She makes it look so easy. Of course, like any hobby that we enjoy, such as my enjoyment of cooking, it becomes easy. I am not intimidated by the work needed, I am confident enough to grapple with it, but it just feels extremely overwhelming.
The intention of this post is not to divulge my gardening woes, but to share with you some of the steps that I am taking to begin the process of reconnecting with my outdoor space, particularly as spring is approaching. Part of my 'new strategies for the enhancement and enjoyment of life' experiment. Observing Baby Green over the past two years has taught me a lot, amongst the wisdom: Time flies, time is still. Little steps are leaps. Everything is important, nothing is important. Little is done without reason, a lot happens in the unknown. Process is more important than outcome. There are not any absolutes, but little steps that when taken one block at a time can build wonders. And with that final thought I decided to pot and repot some plants, so that I could get back into it. Small steps made it enjoyable and achievable. I do not need to dedicate a full day to work, but can take these small steps to begin to rekindle my relationship with the garden one bed at a time. Other examples of simple steps taken in order to tame the chaos include: filling the washing machine every time I empty it (leaving the door to the washer open, of course) that way when it's time to do laundry all I have to do is add the detergent and softener and turn on the machine, and clearing up the kitchen before bed time, even if painful, so that mornings are off to a good start.
And yes, Baby Green is wearing a Nirvana t-shirt.


We left dreamy Venice and headed to the West Coast of the Liguria Region. Cinque Terre is made up of 5 coastal towns perched high on rocky cliffs; Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. The coastline, the five villages, and the surrounding hillsides are all part of the Cinque Terre National Park. Getting here was our longest train ride and I don't remember much about it except our first peek at the Tyrrhenian Sea. We shot out of a pitch black tunnel and were suddenly blinded by a beautifully shining sea. I could hardly believe that we were really here as we whizzed pass colorful nestled homes to get to our accommodations in Vernazza. Yes, after years of obsessing over this place . . . I. Was. Here.
Travel Tip: We stayed 3 nights and 4 days which was just enough time to slowly enjoy each town. If we had chosen to hike the entire trail, see other nearby towns, or if swimming had been an option then I would suggest 1-2 more days.
My first sound in Vernazza was the loud roar of the trains as they rushed by the tiny platform about every 30-40 minutes. I thought the whole town would crumble each time it passed by. But you get used to it and even now I miss that thunderous racket. My first sight was similar to the first image below and shot from the platform.
Our AirBNB host guided us through the winding incline of alleys and paths until we reached our apartment. The climb was tough but the view was worth it. We could see into the hills of Cinque Terre and onto the tan bell towers as they bong, bong, bonged, hello. And in between the hourly chimes we heard the soothing crash of waves onto the treacherous shoreline below. These are the sounds we would wake up to and fall asleep to for 3 days.
The rhythm of Vernazza reminding you how very alive this ancient town still is.
After a quick climb to the Castello Doria for a superb view we spied an inviting beach below. We made our way back into town and spotted an adorable yellow dog. Right next to his perch was the cave entrance to that beach. Our adventurous spirit urged us to follow the light at the end of the tunnel where we spent the next hour exploring the shore. We liked it so much we came back the next day for several hours. I sketched the scenery and my husband scoured for colorful sea glass. We would giggle at the handful of tourists trying to get selfies in front of the huge crashing waves without getting wet. I even tried it myself.
The next day consisted of town hopping and good eats. Plus a couple of mishaps including getting locked in a restaurant bathroom and missing a train stop both of which challenged my sense of humor and flexibility.
Travel Tip: Cinque Terre cards are great for 1-2 day unlimited train rides between the 5+ towns. They can be obtained at the train stations and I believe must be paid with cash.
Our lunch at Il Pirata was fantastic. We ordered two pasta dishes that came covered in light green pesto which according to the restaurant owner is the best type to eat and seeing that Liguria exports this lovely basil and oil mixture I think they know best.
Before heading to the next town we made friends with some fellow Americans and decided to meet up in Florence for dinner in the coming days. Building relationships and experiencing new things is the best part of travel and honestly some of my strongest memories of the trip.
We explored the sleepy town of Riomaggiore but it didn't have much going on so we opted for fresh fruit gelato in Manarola. I can still taste the pineapple mango flavors as we lapped up our frozen dessert and watched brave fisherman launch their tiny boat into the choppy waves. We then took a short hike for a better vista view which also meant great photos of the colorful stacked buildings.
Travel Tip: traveling in the off season is that most restaurants and ferry boats are closed for the season. The good news is there are less crowds and more room to explore.
We returned to Vernazza in time to partially hike the Cinque Terre trail and get a lovely sunset view. I chatted with a fellow photographer as we waited for the twinkly town lights to turn on and the warm light slowly slipped away. Again, I was reminded that I was really here.
On our last day in Cinque Terre we trained to Monterosso al Mare. It's known for it's beachy vibe but we found it quiet with only a few warm blooded swimmers submerged in the chilly waters or relaxing in the sun. We enjoyed a coffee and watched a group of millennials daringly jump off the iconic rock.
It was a nice way to end our adventure in Liguria.
We took an evening stroll after dinner to say goodbye and goodnight to Vernazza. I noticed the town elders at their nightly gathering around the base of the church. The original Facebook . . . physical social interaction. So simple and so true. What a life.
That night with the windows open I was lulled to sleep by the sounds of Vernazza one last time.
Travel Tip: There are a few other great towns outside of Cinque Terre that the same train line will take you to. Also the option to hike the entire Cinque Terre trail is available and there are some great websites with all the details on how to do so.


Learn how to take on any challenge customers can throw at you.
Online CSM training and certification programs that teach you a proven, best-practice based approach to delivering Customer Success.
Ideal for those who learn best with structure and guidance.
12 Online Courses covering the key practices of Customer Success, delivered to you weekly.
12 Weekly Live Group Discussions with Customer Success experts to help you put what you've learned to work.
Industry Recognized CSM Certification upon completing all 12 courses and passing the certification exam.
Trying to get a Customer Success Manager job?
Want to learn the keys to becoming a better CSM?
Looking for help to take your career to the next level?
CSM Foundations is a 12-week, expert-led Customer Success Manager training and certification program that teaches you the core principles and practices of Customer Success Management.
Click to register for the June course.
Looking to expand your knowledge of Customer Success best-practices? Trying to land your first Customer Success job?
Learn the skills you need to unleash your potential as a CSM!
Professional knowledge of the foundational practices that power and drive Customer Success.
Organizational skills to construct success plans that deliver the customers desired outcomes.
Awareness necessary to understand the major components of the customer lifecycle and how they impact success.
Insights on how to handle challenging customer situations.
Each week you are presented with a new lesson on the fundamentals of Customer Success Management.
Where did Customer Success come from and what is involved in its delivery? You'll get the full story. You'll learn the technological and business drivers behind the evolution that lead to the transformation of the post-sales client services organization into customer success. We'll also cover the various key elements that a scalable Customer Success program is composed of and how they impact you as a CSM.
It's easy to say you're 'customer centric', but much harder to actually walk the walk. You'll learn what customer-first thinking looks like, and get some practical tactics that you can apply right away to increase your customer-centric thinking.
Start off on the right foot. You'll learn about the key principles and practices of onboarding. We'll discuss the key activities and you'll learn how to get your customers started using your product the right way.
Customer Success is a journey. And, the road to Success is always under construction. You'll learn what goes into the creation of a Success Plan. You'll come away with the knowledge and skills to develop and execute a Success Plan that delivers.
Success is about always making sure that you're delivering value with every customer interaction. You'll learn what a Business Review is and how to make your next one a success. You will learn the complete process step-by-step and will come away with the recipe for creating a Business Review that delivers value.
Never wonder again what you should do when a customer goes 'dark'. You'll learn how to recognize a disengaged customer and discuss some common reasons why customers might drop off the radar. We'll then share some practical tips on how to re-establish a line of communications in a way that doesn't compromise or devalue your relationship with them.
Managing your accounts is more than just Success Plans and QBRs. You'll learn advanced strategies and techniques for managing your accounts. You'll be introduced to an expanded set of account planning tools and templates that will enable you to establish the right relationships with the right stakeholders and aid you in becoming a trusted advisor.
Learn to go deeper with your accounts and uncover the opportunities that you've been missing. Taking a consultative approach will help you establish a trusted advisor relationship with your key stakeholders. Learn how to apply the consultative approach to understanding and connecting business needs with your solution so you can deliver the outcomes your customer needs.
Strategy and process are great, but executing and managing expectations is where the 'rubber meets the road'. You'll learn how to get focused and execute like a champ. You'll develop a deeper understanding of the most important aspects of execution, follow-through and expectation management.
How you address issues and handle expectations make a huge difference in how you're perceived by your customers. Learn how you can take ownership of your customers in the right way, and navigate both internal and external escalations.
I want it all, and I want it yesterday! Customers come in a variety of shapes, sizes and styles, you'll learn how to profile your different customer types and the keys to how to work best with even your trickiest customers and the situations they present.
If you want to achieve it, you better put a number on it. Ever wondered how to calculate CLTV (or what it even is)? You're going to learn all about the key metrics that you will hear about regularly. You'll learn what they mean and how to calculate them.
At the end of the Level 1 CCSM course, you will be given the opportunity to earn a Level 1 Customer Success Manager Certification.
Our rigorous CSM certification exam assesses your understanding of the best practices and strategies that are crucial to delivering the outcomes that customers demand and companies count on.
Becoming a great CSM is a lifelong journey. Attaining your Level 1 Certification is a significant first step.
Earn your certification and display it as a digital certificate and badge on your LinkedIn profile to demonstrate your professional development and commitment to delivering the best outcome possible.
CSM Growth is a 12-week, expert-led Customer Success Manager training and certification program that refines your ability to effectively manage internal relationships and portfolio of accounts.
Looking to refine your knowledge of account management best practices? Trying to learn how to manage your time and capacity more effectively?
Learn the skills you need to take your capabilities to the next level!
Professional knowledge of the key practices that an experienced CSM should utilize to deepen customer relationships and drive Customer Success organization wide.
Best practices for identifying risk and assessing customer health.
A systematic way to build customer advocacy.
Crucial strategies and key practices for driving expansion and increased renewals.
Each week you are presented with a new lesson to expand your knowledge of Customer Success Management.
Everyone needs to achieve Objectives (if they want to get paid). You'll learn about SMART Objective setting. We'll discuss how you can use your new found knowledge to develop clearer, more achievable Objectives and OKRs so that you can get paid.
Learn how to effectively visualize your model for engaging with your customer and its impact on your capacity. Most CSMs feel overwhelmed at some point due to an ever expanding portfolio of accounts. Learn how to visualize your current workload and capacity based on your customer contact and engagement model so that you can have more intelligent conversations about your capacity with your leadership.
How healthy are your customers? You'll learn how to recognize circumstances that may lead to churn or put your customers 'at-risk'. We'll show you how to identify what should be monitored, what to track as possible risk indicators, and you'll learn the importance of early intervention and not relying on techniques to save the customer.
Risk is inevitable. Managed well, risk can be turned from a negative experience to one that provides valuable insights as well as a positive outcome for the customer. We'll share how to build a risk management process that holds all company departments accountable and decreases the probability of risk turning into churned revenue.
Working on the front-line, you're a critical interface between your product team and your customers. Customer Success is often challenged by customers to prioritize bug fixes, accelerate feature requests, and create inventive workarounds to compensate for gaps in product functionality. We'll discuss how CSMs can use their unique vantage point to influence product roadmap and help Product Managers to better understand the impact of sometimes seemingly innocuous decisions.
All customer feedback is a gift. Getting great customer feedback is like striking gold, but what about negative feedback? You'll learn how you respond to both and what you need to do with the information to drive improved engagement and higher levels of customer advocacy.
Churn hurts. There's no other way to put it. No-one likes losing a customer. But, rather than just wave farewell to the customer, let's see if there's a way we can take this negative event and extract some positive learnings from it. We'll explore some practical tools for better understanding a customer's reasons for leaving and taking those learnings to prevent future churn. We'll also give some tips on making the churn experience smooth and professional for the customer, to help protect your brand reputation and leave open the door for a potential future return.
Turn your happy customers into raving fans. You'll hold the keys to creating customer advocacy and will come away with an advocacy playbook that you can put into action to help you drive deeper customer relationships and spur expansion.
We need more upsell revenue! A familiar rallying cry from Customer Success leaders across the planet. But upsells and expansions are not a revenue source that you can just turn on like a tap whenever you want it. Instead they need to be carefully orchestrated many months in advance of the event itself. We'll discuss the customer motivations for spending more money with you, how to approach the upsell/expansion conversation and how to set appropriate expectations with your manager.
If you're making your customers successful, they're likely to want to stick around.When it comes to improving retention and handling renewals, the best strategy is to ensure that customers have consistently realized value from their time and financial investment in your solution. In this module we'll talk about how your ability to consistently demonstrate the value you've delivered is critical, and why the best renewals are the ones that happen organically.
Customer Success is a team sport. Learning how to cultivate and nurture your internal relationships is critical if you want to get things done. Do you depend on others in your larger organization to make your successful? You'll learn learn how to establish effective internal relationships and how to align effectively with other parts of your organization so you get the help you need to make your customers successful.
Is blaming things on Sales becoming a contact sport in your organization? All too often, companies fail to realize that the old way of thinking, Sales is responsible for bringing in the customers and CS is responsible for keeping them, is dead. You'll learn how to align your priorities and objectives with your Sales counterparts and turn them into your key partner in delivering Success.
At the end of the Level 2 CCSM course, you will be given the opportunity to earn a Level 2 Customer Success Manager Certification.
CSM Strategic is a 12-week, expert-led Customer Success Manager training and certification program that will aid you in transforming yourself into a strategic Customer Success Manager.
Looking to transform into a more strategic mindset? Tired of hearing that you "aren't strategic enough"?
Learn the skills you need to take your mindset and approach to the next level!
Professional knowledge of the key practices that a strategic CSM should utilize to efficiently and effectively manage their book of business.
Best practices for creating a strategic approach and process for managing accounts.
A systematic way to visualize how you are engaging with your customers.
A proven means for understanding and managing your capacity at a granular level.
It's easier to deliver success for customers when you're also feeling fulfilled in your job. Do you have a plan for your own success? Learn how to self-evaluate your skills and competencies and build a cohesive personal career development strategy.
Effective CSMs don't simply react adhoc to the environment around them, instead they build structure and take back control. Learn how to design your own personal workflow engine that runs smoothly and drives predictable results.
When designed and used intelligently, segmentation can be a powerful ally. Learn how to apply segmentation strategies to different parts of your role and, by doing so, deliver more impact to customers with less work effort.
Regular customer engagement is one of the key tenets of Customer Success, but is often hard to achieve. Learn how to build an engagement strategy that is flexible enough to accommodate varying workloads and the unpredictable needs of customers.
Making customers successful often involves lots of trial-and-error so, as you find the things that work, it's important to capture them. Learn how to construct and share playbooks that will enable you and your colleagues to build on these wins.
There are only so many hours in the day, so CSMs need to work smarter, not harder. Explore advanced capacity modelling and task-tracking techniques that will help identify high-impact improvement areas on which to focus your energy.
Tracking key performance metrics and sharing with customers helps demonstrate the business value being creating. Learn how to employ this same approach internally to quantify and then articulate the value we're personally creating for our company.
How do you turn your professional development plan into tangible career progress? Learn how to have effective conversations with your boss, leverage peer relationships and tap into the experience of mentors to accelerate your career progression.
As a CSM, driving change for customers is key to your role. But what about driving change within your own company? Learn how to become a trusted advisor to your colleagues, using data and well-formed arguments to influence internal decision-making.
The road to success is littered with problems that need solving and decisions that need making. Overcoming these obstacles is key to bringing value to customers. Explore how two powerful techniques, The OODA Loop and SWOT Analysis, can help.
The road to success is littered with problems that need solving and decisions that need making. Overcoming these obstacles is key to bringing value to customers. Explore how two powerful techniques, The IDEAL Framework and 5 Whys Technique can help.
Credibility and authenticity are two key competencies of successful CSMs. Learn how to use social media to build your personal brand and, by doing so, enhance your image and increase your influence with both customers and your industry peers.
At the end of the Level 3 CCSM course, you will be given the opportunity to earn a Level 3 Customer Success Manager Certification.
Learn strategies and methods that top Customer Success Managers use to reduce churn, increase adoption and secure renewals.


❶That is why they don't spend precious hours on performing tasks that they can't cope with.
There are students who have experienced disappointment with the college paper writing service they hired due to incompetent and uncommitted writers. So, before you pay to write essay for you, make sure you have taken necessary steps to ensure that you are hiring the right professionals and service who can write quality papers for you. Browse our writing samples. Browsing our essay writing samples can give you an idea whether the quality of our essays is the quality you are looking for.
Checking the credentials of our writers can give you the peace of mind that you are entrusting your project to qualified people. Reading what other clients say about us can give you an idea how they rate our services and their experience with us.
One, we apply a very careful selection of our writers. We do not just hire whoever who loves to write. We make sure that they are truly qualified. We check their educational background and carefully evaluate them if they are the perfect writers for you. Two, aside from the careful writer selection process, we also conduct tests and training for our writers.
We let them write a test output so we can evaluate its quality and if it will match the standard that our service aims to offer. Our writers also undergo a series of other training that can truly convince us they are perfect for the job. And three, we do not only test, train and select the best writers. We also encourage them to be committed to the job just as how we are committed to helping college students get the quality college papers they need. This is why we offer a cheap essay writing service.
We want our clients to be satisfied without having to invest a hefty budget for it. In addition to our commitment, we also make ourselves accessible to you so that anytime you need quality essays, someone will always be there for you to assist.
It'll take you just 2 minutes. Want to make your first order? Orwell lists "four great motives for writing" which he feels exist in every writer. He explains that all are present, but in different proportions, and also that these proportions vary from time to time.
They are as follows;. In the essay, Orwell charts his own development towards a political writer. He cites the Spanish Civil War as the defining event that shaped the political slant of his writing:. Orwell, who is considered to be a very political writer, says that by nature, he is "a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth", and that he "might have remained almost unaware of [his] political loyalties", - but that he had been "forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer " because his era was not a peaceful one.
In the decade since his desire had been to "make political writing into an art". He concludes the essay explaining that "it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages , sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page.


text:
Q: [A-Z][0-9] how to alter to get OR on the string matching REgex wise, how do i change this to allow not any A-Z. But 3 types (like an OR)
PORT or CW or TW
Then the 0-9 part
i.e. a valid one has to start with 1 of the 3 strings above followed by some numbers?

A: This is the one you are looking for:
(PORT|CW|TW)\d+

https://regex101.com/r/EQnB2g/1
1st Capturing Group (PORT|CW|TW)

*

*1st Alternative PORT

*

*PORT matches the characters PORT literally (case sensitive)

*2nd Alternative CW

*

*CW matches the characters CW literally (case sensitive)

*3rd Alternative TW

*

*TW matches the characters TW literally (case sensitive)

A: If you have definitely some numbers after the text, then the regex is:
(?:PORT|CW|TW)\d+

The ?: will help you to non-capture the matched group.

A: Pretty much the same as previous answers but I include the minimum length of the number.
(PORT|CW|TW)[0-9]{8,}

Definition: {min length, max length}
Demo: https://regex101.com/r/SjuTyZ/1

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Soft-textured 24-hour cream with a feather-light texture providing rich skin care. Highly effective ingredients such as Magnolia Bark and a Vitamin F Complex fortify the skin barrier and reduce sensitivity. Panthenol has a calming effect and Squalane wraps the skin in a protective film. The lightness of the moisturizing complex makes it the perfect summer skin care product.


Our blog read 24 000 people. Join us!
Do you feel that process of installing WordPress on AWS is too complicated and you are going to hire someone or ask a friend to do that for you?
The answer is NO. It's quite simple! Everything you need is AWS account to host WordPress on AWS and ServerFactory. ServerFactory is a super server management tool that helps you to focus on your business, but not a server and technical stuff.
I will provide you with steps on how to install fresh WordPress on EC2 instance and secure it with SSL.
To register ServerFactory, go to the registration page and fill in all required fields. After registration completed, you will receive a confirmation email. When registration completed you can access your server management interface here.
I will not cover a section on how to create the AWS account. I assume you have already registered it and know how to access AWS console. But if you miss something you can check the official documentation here.
First of all, you need to get an IAM user and credentials to connect ServerFactory with your AWS account.
Go to IAM page -> Add user.
Select desired User name and set Access type to "Programmatic access" which gives ServerFactory permissions to spin up EC2 instances for your account and install WordPress on AWS EC2 instance.
Select "Attach existing policies directly" and choose "AdministratorAccess" policy.
Now you are ready to move the next step which you can skip as it is optional. Finally, you can press the "Create user" button.
Important: On the final screen, you will see credentials that you should save for future usage. I recommend you to save CSV file with a correspondent button.
Go to providers add and select AWS. Give a name for the new account and paste credentials from the CSV file.
Go to servers and create a new EC2 instance for your WordPress installation.
It will take several minutes to install a web server, database server and all of the packages for WordPress and monitoring.
Important: Before installation of the WordPress to your AWS EC2 instance make sure that your Domain points to your instance's public IP. This is mandatory for the SSL certificate.
To start a fresh installation of WordPress, go to the application menu and select WordPress. Now you should see the "Create Application" menu. Fill in all required fields, toggle SSL switch and press the "Create Application" button. It takes less than a minute to deploy WordPress on your AWS instance.
Important: Do not forget credentials of your WP admin user.
It takes about 10 minutes to install WordPress on AWS even if you are not a technical guy. ServerFactory panel makes your life easier and you should not waste time to find a system admin to deploy your site to Amazon Web Services.


text:
package net.sourceforge.pmd.lang.rule;

/**
 * This is a tag interface to indicate that a Rule implementation class does
 * not support changes to it's Language.  The Language is integral to the
 * proper functioning of the Rule.
 */
public interface ImmutableLanguage {
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


We're shorter than most things in our world, natural or manmade. So while it's pretty common to look up, rarely are we looking down. For this week's Shooting Challenge, you're looking down—straight down.
Take a photo from directly above your subject, approaching it at a perfect 90-degree angle. Give us an almost clinical view of anything from above - it can be from the air or just a few feet off the ground - but the perspective's angle should be fixed.
It's not easy to be directly over your subject. Unless your a tightrope walker, climbing a building alone can't generate a perfect photograph, unless you want the building in the shot.
Your first response will be to cheat, maybe to tilt your camera 80 degrees and get close to the idea. But really push yourself for the god-like floating view. Consider bridges and sticking your camera out a few feet from yourself...maybe affixed to a rod and set on a timer.
Our lead photo is from Kevin on flickr. At first, it's your run-of-the-mill shot down the side of a bridge. But because it's against the water, and because of the nature of the pier...it almost feels like you're standing on the ground viewing a wall, no? The perspective becomes something entirely new.
Send your best photo by Monday, June 27th at 8AM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with "Above" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs, and use a FirstnameLastnameAbove.jpg (970px wide) and FirstnameLastnameAboveWallpaper.jpg (2560px wide) naming conventions. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email along with a story of the shot in a few sentences. And don't skip this story part because it's often the most enjoyable part for us all beyond the shot itself!


Following the warmest, least snowy December on record here in Rochester, it is now January and we finally have snow. There are plenty of folks who were thankful for the late coming of winter to the upstate New York region, but I am not one of them. The snow is here and I am glad!
As I was preparing another blog post last evening (will be coming shortly), the sun began to set and I was redirected from the task at hand to go capture the colors of winter as I saw them. While I can see the point of those who bemoan the winter months, I say buy warmer clothes and get outside. There is so much beauty to be seen.


text:
function reverseGeo(lat, lon, callback, find) {
    //Valid find string: 'city','postcode','country','state'
    var res = {};
    find = find || ['city', 'postcode', 'country', 'state'];
    var ofind = function (y) { //converts find string to array of possible openstreetmap results corrosponding
        switch (y) {
            case 'city':
                return ['city', 'village', 'town'];
            default:
                return [y];
        }
    };
    var gfind = function (x) { //converts find string to array of possible google maps results corrosponding
        switch (x) {
            case 'city':
                return ['locality'];
            case 'postcode':
                return ['postal_code'];
            case 'state':
                return ['administrative_area_level_1'];
            default:
                return [x];
        }
    };
    var gsearch = function (gcall) {
        var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
        req.open('GET', 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=' + lat + ',' + lon, true); //sets type and address of ajax request
        req.onreadystatechange = function () {
            if (req.readyState === 4 && req.status === 200) { //when a response has been received with no http error
                //results structure: response -> Results array - > results[0] object -> address_components
                var data = JSON.parse(req.responseText); //parse response json into an object
                //if (data.status === "OK") { //If status element of google's api response is "OK", attempt to parse for response
                var results = data.results;
                for (var i = 0; i < results.length; i++) { //for each result
                    for (var g = 0; g < results[i].address_components.length; g++) { //for each element in the address_components of each result
                        var cur = results[i].address_components[g]; //caches current element
                        for (var k = 0; k < find.length; k++) { //for each remaining find
                            var look = gfind(find[k]);
                            for (var m = 0; m < look.length; m++) { //for each possible google result that will satifsfy current find term
                                if (cur.types.indexOf(look[m]) !== -1) { //if this term is found in the types array
                                    res[find[k]] = cur.long_name;
                                    find.splice(k, 1);
                                    break;
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
                //} else { //If response json does not have okay feild, define error and do not parse data

                //}
                gcall(); //in all cases, call the callback function, passing the parsed data as the first argument and the error is aplicable as the second
            }
        };
        req.send();
    };
    var osearch = function (ocall) {
        var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
        var server = 'http://open.mapquestapi.com/nominatim/v1/reverse.php'; //A valid nominatim reverse geocoding server
        req.open('GET', server + '/reverse?format=json&lat=' + lat + '&lon=' + lon, true);
        req.send();
        req.onreadystatechange = function () {
            if (req.readyState === 4 && req.status === 200) {
                data = JSON.parse(req.responseText).address;
                for (var i = 0; i < find.length; i++) { //for all reaming find terms
                    var look = ofind(find[i]);
                    for (var g = 0; g < look.length; g++) { //for all possible open street maps value that satisfy this find term
                        if (data[look[g]]) { //if this term is in the data
                            res[find[i]] = data[look[g]];
                            find.splice(i, 1);
                            break;
                        }
                    }
                }
                ocall();
            }
        };
    };
    gsearch(function () {
        if (find.length === 0) callback(res);
        else osearch(function () {
            callback(res);
        });
    });
}


Impact Teachers has a genuine passion for education exampled by its well established Teacher Training Programme which serves to provide educational opportunities to teachers in countries around the world. We do this by using our extensive education based networks to build teams of teachers who travel to countries such as Uganda, India, and Kenya to offer training programmes to local teachers.
This is an initiative that Impact Teachers proudly runs alongside our core business of education recruitment. It is a passion that has developed into a unique programme that sets us apart from all others in our industry.
Ultimately, this initiative is a professional development programme that compliments current practice, motivates participants, is effective, and has a legitimate view to sustainability of practice.
From 2019 Impact Teachers will be partnering with Memusi Foundation to offer our Teacher Training Programme to primary schools in the district of Magadi, south of Nairobi, in Kenya.
Our goal here is to increase the educational opportunities for primary school students in Magadi to assist them in leading a successful and fulfilling life.
We utilise our specific expertise in education to work directly with local teachers and schools in Magadi focusing on student engagement to target improvements in student grades. We know that this focus will improve the quality of education, and have a positive influence on the other 3 key areas.
We create a sustainable method to improve the quality of teaching and learning by using a wide range of proven strategies. These include seminars, modelling, lesson observation, and meaningful feedback designed to develop and inspire teachers. The strategies when adapted significantly improve student interest and engagement in lessons.
During a weeklong trip, volunteers observe lessons, offer lesson feedback, deliver training seminars, and both mentor and collaborate with local teachers in order to provide them with new strategies they can adapt to any lesson to bolster student engagement.
Am I eligible for a trip?
To be eligible for a trip, you must be a fully qualified teacher. The majority of the schools we work with are Primary level, so experience at this age group is beneficial but it is not essential.
When Do The Trips Take Place?
All trips take place during UK school holidays and last one week. The trips are run during February Half Term, May Half Term and during the first week of the summer holidays in July. We also encourage independent travel before and after (if possible) as it's an incredible opportunity to explore a new culture!
All you need to take care of are your flights, visa, travel insurance, and immunisations – Impact pays for your on-the-ground costs (accommodation, travel, food). We do ask you to make a small refundable deposit to begin the process of your application and to do some fundraising to help with some costs we incur.
If you've any queries regarding our programmes, please don't hesitate to get in touch using the form below.


Compare IT Salary is a free community-based portal run by IT recruitment specialists - Genesis. The site was specifically developed for Australian IT Professionals to enable them to easily share IT salary data and help ascertain what people in the Australian Information Technology industry are really earning.
Compare IT Salary works on an honesty-based 'get to give' model whereby all salary data is entered by (and shared by) Australian IT professionals for the benefit of the entire IT community. The site is constantly changing with new salary profiles being added each day by people just like you. We hope you find it useful.