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Honestly? It is all the things. It is hard, and scary, and exhilarating and weird and joyful and taxing in all manner of ways. I honestly — having not come from much of a tech background (unless you count writing for games), and certainly not having worked in a start-up — had no idea what I was signing up for when I started at Slack.True story: The first holiday season I was there, I was going to invite everyone in the SF office to my British Christmas pre-Christmas open house with mince pies and mulled wine and […goes into a 97-item long list of traditional British things]. And I was about to send an invite to the 40+ people and had an attack of social anxiety and thought “no, no, I’ll invite everyone next year instead.” By the next year, there were more than 200 people. I had no idea that was going to happen. I had missed my chance.Slack now has 1,000 employees across 7 offices globally. We’re able to work together easily — and I still feel like I know a lot of people, whether they’re in SF or in Melbourne or Dublin or remote, because I talk to them all the time in various channels like they’re right next to me, so when I do get a chance to visit the offices, or when they come to HQ, we fall into conversation as if we sit next to each other every day. I can’t imagine that’s what it’s like working for all start-ups, but it’s certainly made the hyper-growth of this one easier to deal with for me.I think that’s baked into us as a company though. Even though I knew nothing from start-up life, I knew the team who created Slack, I knew them well, having worked as lead writer on Glitch, the game Tiny Speck made before folding that and pivoting to become this, and knew that whatever happened, we were going to stay grounded and humble and enjoyable to spend time with, and that I was going to be able to concentrate on the work, which is all I ever want to do. And that has remained constant.You have to learn quickly what “concentrate on the work” means in a fast-growth environment though. When I first came in to the company it was more all hands on deck, writing all the things (even the things I’m not good at like good, concise, clear product copy) and applying myself to whatever needed doing. As we’ve grown, and hired really sharp, smart specialists for all the things I once tried to do, it’s been an incredible (and incredibly hard) process of letting go, giving things up to other people and letting them run with it. And stepping back, writing the guidelines, being there to answer questions, and trust others to execute.What I’ve discovered is that when you bring in all these people, all these focused, sharp specialist people, there’s still the need for the generalists and the polymaths in there — the people who understand how the whole thing works, and can make connections between the strands. It’s like weaving — we’re the warp to everyone else’s weft. And sometimes that means you get pulled too tight or stretched too thin — and no one can work when there’s no movability and things are too fixed. But it’s possible to adjust that, to unpick things and allow for a little more slack, which means people can find a better way of working together.Ok there was a bit of a tortured metaphor and an unintentional pun on the word Slack there, but I feel like it worked out.

One day, I had a woman come into my checkout line and wanted to buy ALL the $1.00 Bic cigarette lighters at the checkout stand.Between the two sets of lighters, she was purchasing about 35–40 lighters.I was then ringing up all the rest of the completely full shopping cart of stuff she got in line with. At the end, she then handed me a bunch of coupons.I was already on guard because buying so many lighters was very unusual. I looked at the coupons and there was a whole stack of them that were for $4.00 off of a $6.00 Lady’s Bic shaver.She never purchased any shavers, and I told her these cou...

There are a number of small behaviours that, when observed together, can help us identify the most dangerous people in our midst. The following is a list of red flags that point toward people with personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and psychopathy.People with Personality Disorders (PDs) are more common than you think - you probably know at least few without realizing it - and they are important to be able to identify because of the destruction and damage they leave behind.Not all flags are seen in all people with PDs, but if you know someone with several of these flags, be very careful around them… in fact… avoid them if you possibly can.Remorseless - does not show remorse in the way ‘normal’ people do when they make a mistake or hurt youEmpathy - don’t feel or show empathy as you might expect. Watch their reactions to other people (or animals) sufferingCan’t apologize - almost a complete inability to apologize. Or if they do apologize they will point a finger back at someone else as part of the ‘cause’.Overvalue-Devalue-Discard - this is the pattern of abuse they follow in relationships. They put someone on a pedestal and show them off, ‘love-bomb’, and worship; then they start to devalue that person - which can be a subtle series of behaviours, such as small put-downs, corrections, annoyance; then they discard the person completely, walking away with no remorse, enjoying the pain they inflict on the individual they have discardedGrandiosity - the overvalue themselves, think they are ‘special’, ‘unique’, smarter or better than others. They are often very hypocritical. They have a need to feel better than others and for this ‘superiority’ to be seen by others. Watch out for people who put down others.Few if any Deep Relationships - relationships are superficial; people with good radar often take a distinct dislike to them; they have very few deep and true relationships.Odd Bad Behaviour - hurtful, rude, strange, obnoxious, surprising behaviour that you find it difficult to explain away; that seems at odds with the personality that they usually wear around you. The feeling of ‘cognitive dissonance’ (when you see/hear one thing that seems completely contradictory to what you would expect) is a feeling people often get around these people.Materialism - people whose self-esteems depends a great deal (perhaps fully) on how they are perceived by others. This results in materialism sometimes - needing to have the better car, better clothes, better house, better whatever, so they can appear in a certain way to others.Parasitic behaviour - will take as much from others (money, things, a place to live, a car to drive, etc etc) as they can. Often have no money or assets of their own.Relationships with the Opposite Sex - as soon as one ends they are on to the next (or continue to cause pain to the one they are discarding until they find a new source of supply.There are many many more specific behaviours that are very characteristic of these dangerous people. I recommend searching for ‘Red Flags of Narcissistic Personality Disorder’ (or ‘Psychopaths’, or another personality disorder term). Educate yourself so that you can identify and avoid these people. Once you know what to look for they are not difficult to spot….namaste!

You arrive at the airport, so what do you see? OK, no leather trousers (unless you arrive in Munich), that you already heard. But maybe you see…#1: People drinking beer in public. That's normal in Germany, inside pubs, or in the street, in a Park, even with kids playing around. So this stereotype seems to be true, hum?! Germans are among the top ten beer drinking nations (Number one are the Czechs), but the absolute beer consumption rate is dropping rapidly.#2: Europeans follow a certain dress code in public. People will stare at you if you wear yoga pants and sneakers.Schrebergarten, "Sitzpinkeln", Ampelmännchen (Google)OK, now you want to go to the hotel. The next thing you see:#3: Cabs have the same color. "Vanilla ice". The driver may be from some other country, maybe from Iraq. You arrived during the Rush hour and of course there is a traffic jam. But:#4: No littering in the streets. Everything looks neat and clean, fresh painted and: Yes, kids know how to tag or make Graffiti.#5: "Innenstadt" means "Downtown", that's where your hotel is. You're lucky. The center, is really the heart of a German city. It's like an open air shopping mall with historic buildings ("Altstadt" = "Old town). You can go shopping, have a coffee or tea or lunch. You can signNow it all by foot. If you leave the Innenstadt, you enter housing areas, areas with industry ("Industriegebiet"), Warehouses with huge parking lots. But no real Ghettos. But what is this? Small cabins surrounded by flowers, small trees, a fence….#6: "Schreber-Garten". There is an old story about a delegation from South America, visiting Germany for the first time. "Oh, Fawelas!" They pointed, but their German guide corrected them: "No no, these are vegetable gardens, rented from people living in a small flat. They're allowed to have a cabin, but need to grow vegetables!" And he tells them about Dr. Schreber, who demanded small vegetable gardens for everyone, because working in a garden would be good for the health. Anyway, the Schrebergarten is typical for small people in Germany. It's a playground for the kids, a place for your BBQ, and once you retire, you spend the whole summer out there.#7: We're not finished with our tour! There's is one thing left, that may irritate people from other countries: Nudity in public! Let's say it's a wonderful sunny day and there is a park around the corner. Why not go for a walk? You'll discover hundreds of people sitting on green grass, sometimes barbecuing in a huge cloud of smoke. OK. Nice. But then you discover men and women of all ages totally naked! Lying there in the sun! Same goes for public beaches, although there is some restriction: There are areas for the naked, watch out for the sign "FKK" (Eff -Kah-Kah", "Frei-Körper-Kultur").#8: OK, this has made you really hungry, but where do you go? Well, I guess you already discovered the fast food restaurants you already know, and I know the comforting effect of food from home in a strange country. But maybe you're curious and brave enough to dine in a restaurant. There is a level between Fast Food Restaurants and expensive High class Restaurants, divided in bars offering some food (they normally have no cloth on the tables) and "real" restaurants, named Pizzeria (Italian) or Taverna (Greek) etc. If you're looking for German food, watch out for restaurants with a sign "Deutsche Küche".#9: German Fastfood: Watch out for "Bratwurst" - Sellers, either a Grill Walker or a "Schnell Imbiss" (Fast Food trailer). You eat them in a half cut roll with mustard - yeees, like a Hotdog (Guess where they came from?), but that's a different Wurst. "Bockwurst". Bratwurst is grilled and more spicy. More popular these days is the Currywurst: A chopped Bratwurst with sweet and spicy Ketchup sauce. You eat it with roll or "Pommes" (French Fries), either with Ketchup or - remember Pulp Fiction? - Mayonnaise! "Connoisseurs" order "einmal Pommes Rot weiß, bitte", meaning Fries with Ketchup and Mayonnaise. Meanwhile the number one Fast Food is …. Any guesses? The Kebab Sandwich: "Döner Kebab". There are a lot of Turkish Fast Food Restaurants, offering several oriental dishes. I really love it.#10: Now it's late in the evening. You enter a bar and expect a good beer and maybe a conversation. The beer you get, but I hear from tourists, that Germans don't like conversations. They're there with their buddies and talk to no one else. Tip: Look out for a half empty bar. An idle Bartender will be glad if you talk to him.#11: German language: Not every German speaks English well enough to talk to you, be prepared with some basic German phrases or … use the google translator (Check it first!)#12: OK, while I am at it: Once in a while I hear some guys with American accent yell in the streets at night: "Prostitution is legal in Germany!" Yes, it is, although restricted to certain areas. Period.So now you know what to expect in a German city, but how about the Germans? How are they?#12: German mentality. Tourists from America complain, Germans are not friendly to strangers. Not rude, but merely cold. From my perception its not true, but you better make your own judgement. They or We may be a little cautious because, well, we are not liked by everybody around, to say the least. Try and google Germans and jokes, and imagine this was about your country, and this and this… not nice. But: Once you start talking, everything is fine.#13: Everything else typical German can be traced back to one characteristic: the want for perfection in every aspect of their lives, especially when it is inconvenient: Go by foot or ride a bicycle, e.g. to get to your office or go shopping. Organic food is rated high, everybody is ready to pay lots of money for it.#14: As a pedestrian you have to stop and wait at the redlight for the green "Ampelmann", especially when there are kids around.#15: When you're invited to a private home, your host expects men to pee sitting! Watch out for a sign on the wall. This is very unlikely when you visit Europe for the first time. You're part of a tourist crowd then, mainly from Japan and you meet them every morning.At last, I'd like to mention something you may have expected to be a problem but is not: I remember an American tourist, passing by and mumbling : "Where are the red flags with huge swastikas?" Oops, he said a bad word! This is forbidden in Germany, will he be arrested now? Of course not! As long as you do not walk around with a bullhorn, shouting the Third Reich should be reesteablished or the Nazi Party, everything is fine. Even then a gentlemen would tip your shoulder and ask what this is all about. I never heard of any tourist getting into trouble because of something like this.

In 1995, my boss and I had flown to Kansas City, KS. to visit a client for the day and were waiting for our return flight back to Chicago to board when they announced that there was a very good chance that the flight would be cancelled due to severe weather that was occurring throughout northern Illinois. They said that if they did get the go ahead to board, we would have to board very quickly as we would only have a very small window of opportunity for take off. Why this was, I have no idea. So  as we were waiting to find out if we were going home or spending the night in Kansas City, I begin having some serious repercussions from our lunch at KC Masterpiece. Apparently, something in my digestive system did not agree AT ALL with the BBQ sauce that KC Masterpiece uses and it had decided that right then and there was a perfect time to expel the offending poisonous substance along with everything else from my colon. I told my boss that I had to use the restroom and he pointed out that the restroom was a good distance from the gate and if they called for us to board and  I wasn't right there, I might miss the flight. So, despite the increasing amount of pain I was in, I sat back down. My stomach was making clearly audible noises; a fact that my boss who was sitting across from me, was also aware of.  Time seemed to stand still as I watched the clock count down each minute as our boarding time approached.  I began clenching the muscles in my jaw and the muscles in my legs. I started flexing my toes and ab muscles and shifting my weight from one side to the other as the seconds slowly crept by. Anything that I could squeeze,  flex or clench was now getting a vigorous squeezing, clenching and flexing with the hope that somehow all those tightly flexed muscles would keep the contents of my colon IN my colon until I could find a bathroom. I could feel the sweat rolling down my back and torso underneath my dress shirt. I was literally beginning to feel as though I might lose this battle when, like a voice from heaven, the attendant announced that  we would be boarding immediately and that we must hurry. I think I was probably the third person to the gate having actually jumped over two sections of seating to get there. The flight was only about half full and it was a large plane. I don't recall which type but I know that it wasn't a 727 with those two rear engines because I had been sitting there in the  waiting area staring at the plane while I was busy clenching. I showed my boarding pass, hurried onto the plane, threw my coat and briefcase into my seat and then started making my way back up to the front of the plane towards the restrooms when a very attractive young, female flight attendant stopped me and directed me back to my seat. We would be taking off "imminently" and it was imperative that I get back to me seat and fasten my seatbelt. I tried to move sideways past her while explaining that I would only be a minute. She literally blocked me with her body and with a look of what could only be regarded as real fear or panic in her eyes, she said, "no, Sir, you MUST  return to your seat. We will be taking off imminently". It was at this point, MY own fear and panic started to set in. I could feel my muscles weakening, my resolve evaporating under the weight of an angry colon filled with evil and bent on world destruction.  "Look, I am going to literally shit in my pants. Its either going to happen in the bathroom or in my pants somewhere on this plane". I was sweating profusely and breathing like I had just run a marathon. For 2 to 3 seconds our eyes just locked, her mouth frozen as if a word was coming out but somehow got lost and never made it to her lips. Then finally after what seemed like an eternity, she said, "O.K,  but HURRY!". I bolted down the aisle literally moving people out of my way physically while the words  "Excuse me, I am so sorry, just gotta squeeeeeeeze by you" separated by nervous, borderline maniacal laughter made their way from my lips. I finally made it to the rest room and opened the door as I heard the engines beginning to power up. I thought to myself, we are not even on the runway, why is the pilot powering up the engines? I stepped in, already trying to undo my belt and pants as quickly as possible with one hand while locking the door with the other when I heard the engines power up another level. I was about halfway between a standing position and a "seated" position when the plane suddenly lurched back sending me sideways into the wall and then began accelerating backwards. The pilot was using his reverse thrusters to push away from the gate! I was still in the process of regaining my footing and trying to get my 6'2" frame seated "appropriately" with my suit pants and underwear still only halfway down my thighs as the pilot began to power up again, moving the plane forward now. I was still trying to get my suit pants down past my thighs, keep myself from falling sideways as the plane taxied towards takeoff position and all the while still clenching when the plane lurched again, this time making a hard left hand turn sending me face first into the door, causing my nose to bleed. This rather startling turn of events was just enough of a jolt to my already weakened constitution. The pain spreading across my face was enough to cause the short but irreversible and ultimately devastating release of my "clench". Enough said. I hurriedly sat down, praying that all clothing items were out of harms way on the one end while I frantically tried to keep it out of harms way on the now profusely bleeding top end and that the lid had been up and the seat down as I hadn't had time to check. The plane was now moving at what seemed like a fairly high rate of speed and was bouncing up and down and swaying from right to left making it nearly impossible to know if I had been successful in my attempt at sparing my clothing, plus I couldn't actually look down since I had to keep my head back to stop the flow of blood. As I sat there, I had visions of myself trying to make it back to my seat covered in shit and blood. Fellow passengers shunning me and those seated nearby, requesting to be reseated. Since I really couldn't assess any damage until I got out of that tiny restroom, I resigned myself to not dwell on it at that moment and instead put all my remaining faculties into getting out of that place and back to my seat. I was busy stuffing  little wads of toilet paper into my nostrils in preparation for having to stand up again to clean up and pull my pants back up when I heard the words,  "flight attendants prepare for takeoff".   HUH? I thought to myself, they can't be serious. They were not going to take off with me in the john, I thought. I was still trying to wrap my head around what this actually meant for me,  when I heard the plane's engines power up to full throttle. The plane went into a sweeping right turn and even before straightening out, began accelerating HARD down that runway.  To this day, I don't think I have ever been on a plane that accelerated that hard, let alone coming out of a turn and in hindsight, had I been  seated safely in my seat facing the right direction, it might have actually been kind of cool. When you are sitting in a airline seat with your back where it is supposed to be, the force of acceleration down a runway is the feeling of being pinned into your seat. When you are sitting sideways on a toilet, your trousers tangled around your ankles, a wad of tissue stuffed into each nostril, no seat belt or arm rests or anything except the wall with its stainless steel sink and mirror on one side and fold up baby changing table on the other,  its a very different experience. But even as I felt the nose of the plane lift off, nothing could have prepared me for the actual ascent to however high they go. I was lifted off the seat and pushed towards the corner of the ceiling as the plane climbed causing me great anguish for fear of what I had just deposited into the metal bowl might somehow get poured back on me as we climbed steeper. I remember there was a point during the ascent that I turned to my left to find a place to brace myself with my hands and caught a look at myself in the mirror. There was blood all over my lower face and neck and I had two blood soaked wads of toilet paper hanging out of my nose. My once perfect, lightly starched white dress shirt looked as though I had cut my throat as the collar on the right side was soaked with blood. The white part of my left eye was now turning red, my right eye developing a nasty shiner and my nose was visibly swollen on the bridge. I looked like I had been in a run in with an angry mob. When the plane leveled off, I hurriedly started trying to pull myself together the best I could before somebody found me in there. I was sure that they had no idea I was in the can when the flight took off and was thinking to myself that it is probably illegal when I heard the urgent knocking on the door. It was the flight attendant who had tried to stop me from using the bathroom and apparently she was well aware of where I was when the plane took off.  "Sir are you alright?. Please unlock the door". First her voice and then two male voices. Seems that she couldn't wait to tell her friends about the idiot in the bathroom. And now they were all knocking and talking and all I could think of was that they were making so much of a scene that pretty much everybody on the plane now knew that there was some asshole in the john during takeoff. I told them I was ok  and without thinking asked  for a wash cloth with some soap to clean up the blood. This was a big mistake and only caused them to become more vocal and demanding that I open the door immediately. I pulled my pants up and pulled the wads of toilet paper out of my nose and opened the door. The female flight attendant was standing there with a male flight attendant standing directly behind her. Both of their faces went from stern, furrowed brow, grimaces, I guess in anticipation of seeing some horrible injury, to that look that you see other people give to people that they encounter who are truly pathetic. You know that look. She cocked her head to one side and said "oh god. You look like you were run over by a truck"At this point the male flight attendant made a "yucky" face and placed his hand over his nose and mouth apparently in response to the unpleasant odor which, along with blood, sweat and toxic waste, had come out of me. He ran off to get a can of air fresher and I was taken into the Galley to be cleaned up the best they could. We thought we had pretty much gone over everything and although the suit, shirt and tie were ruined, there didn't seem to be any shit on my pants. When I got back to my assigned seat, there was no one in the middle seat and a heavy middle aged black woman named Cleo was sitting at the window. She said hello and from what I could tell, had no idea that I had been in the john during the take off. She also apparently didnt think it odd that I had blood on my collar and a blackening eye. We chatted about her new car and her daughter who was pregnant and how much she hated the father of the baby. She was very funny and had actually gotten me laughing enough to temporarily forget how awful the flight had been up until that point. During out chat, however, I kept smelling shit and it was making me very paranoid. The flight attendant had checked me thoroughly, front and back and she said there wasn't any shit on me so I figured I must be imagining it. It was just me borrowing trouble, I thought to myself and tried to put it out of my mind but I kept smelling it and it was pretty strong. About a half hour after I got back to my seat, the captain turned on the fasten seat belt sign and came on the PA to say that we were to keep our seatbelts fastened now for the duration of the flight. He went onto say that as we get nearer to Chicago, we are gonna "get tossed around a bit" due to the very severe weather. He also said that we may have to land at Midway rather than O'hare but that right now he was going to try for O'hare. Literally, the minute he signed off of the PA, the plane began to experience some bumps. A bump here a bump there. Then a stronger JOLT and everyone would look at each other and smile. Some nervous laughter, then another jolt and a thud. More glancing at each other, nervous laughter then..............BAM, BAM, and the plane dropped a good 100 feet. Plastic cups and hand bags and papers and briefcases all slam into the ceiling and then rain down on everyone's head. I looked around the cabin and there were no longer any smiles or nervous laughter including my seat mate. "Well now, I believe I have had quite enough of that" she said. "Quite EEENough.....YAS....no need for this at the moment, thank you". She just kept reiterating her disapproval of the situation all the while fumbling with the crucifix around her neck. As the turbulence grew stronger, I could see the fear in her face as well as the other passengers and now I was getting scared. I shifted my weight and crossed my leg, ankle over knee, since there was no one in the middle seat. This obviously brought my right leg out of the foot well and up where I could actually see my lower right leg for the first time. I noticed that I also could smell shit again and it seemed much stronger now. My heart sank as I realized that the shit was on the INSIDE of my pant leg. I put my leg back down, hoping that my seat mate or anyone else around me for that matter couldn't smell it. To make an already long story a bit shorter, I will cut to the chase. I have never been on a flight that was thrown around like this one was while trying to land. The only thing I can liken it to was that scene in the Twilight Zone movie with John Lithgow on the plane during the storm. It was worse than that. The sound of the engines whining and the lightning flashing almost constantly and the way the plane was being literally thrashed up and down and sideways by the wind currents was terrifying. There were people praying and crying and strangers holding each other. Why in the world they  even let us attempt to land in weather that violent is beyond me. It took two approaches to land. On both attempts, we were told to assume crash landing position and they even went over the location of the emergency exits again before the first attempt.  On the first attempt, we were literally sideways over the runway, when the pilot aborted the landing, powered back up and circled around again. On the second attempt the plane touched down, then went back up, touched down and bounced up and then down and then down HARD. So hard that some of the overhead luggage compartments opened up. I can honestly say that I was scared to death. There have only been two times in my entire life that I felt I was close to a state of panic. One was during the Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco in 1989 as I  lay under my desk in the Crystal and china stockroom at Neiman Marcus as 250k in crystal stemware came showering down around me. The other time was on that plane. As we filed off the plane, the pilot and his crew were all standing at the exit doing the b-byes and I think just about everyone gave them a heartfelt "thank you". As you can imagine, at this point, I was lost in the fog. The shear absurdity of what had just transpired over the course of 12 hours was mind boggling. What had just happened to me? My feet were on autopilot as I wandered through the endless terminal that is Ohare international so I was a bit surprised when I looked up to find myself walking a short distance directly behind my seatmate, Cleo who was now walking with what I assume was her pregnant daughter. I heard the daughter say something to the effect of "mom, you are so full of crap. You cannot tell me that you weren't shitting your pants during that flight". Cleo's response however, I will never forget. She looked at her daughter laughing and shaking her head, "Well, not as scared as that white boy sitting next to me. You know, he actually shit his pants??? Yes, he did. I could smell it."

I love the GodFather trilogy.Will skip the “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”, and other well-known lines and scenes from this classic .It has all these subtle , downplayed moments that are so ordinary and yet crucial to the central plot and twists. Not too much background score . Not too much hyterics. Few lines. All beautifully shot and played on screen by Al Pacino.Here are my favorites:While in Havana negotiating with Roth, Michael realizes that Fredo is the family traitor he had been looking for. Despite twice telling Michael that he had never met Ola, Fredo drunkenly lets slip that they had met in Havana earlier that year.Movies & TV Stack ExchangeI love how Michael Corleone handles his anger and frustration very well. He could have had a fit and slapped his dimwit of a brother for all I care. Or shot him point blank for more cinematic flare.But he didn’t .He calmly confronts him , gave him the kiss of death and said, "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!"Of course we all know where Fredo ended up after- sleeping with the fishes.******************************************Before Don Vito Corleone passed away, he told Michael that whoever will approach him to set up a meeting with the other families is the traitor. Clever of the Don himself to predict that one of his own close friends, Salvatore Tessio, would betray him.How could he have predicted that? And why on his funeral?And yet it turned out to be true. There sits Michael Corleone, watching all the people paying their respects to his late father.Tessio then approached him for a meeting with Barzini :Look at that. Not a flinch. No surprise whatsoever. Not a hint of disbelief from an utter betrayal being committed by a man who was like a father to him.Again, we all know what happened to the other heads of the other families by the end of the movie as he was attending the baptism as a godfather to his sister Connie’s son.******************************************and lastly this: the final scene of the 3rd movieMichael Corleone , after trying for years to legitimize the business , ends up losing everything in the end- with his daughter taking the bullet for him. Perhaps a retribution for past transgressions. Or plain karma.He then hands the reins to his nephew, Vincent, and retires to his villa is Sicily.The once powerful Don now old, with no friends and family , died under the midday sun, with no one to witness his last breath but the stray dogs.***The End***I first watched all GodFather movies when I was 16. I have watched it so many times after that. Yet my appreciation for the genius of Francis Ford Coppola never wanes. Some people find it overrated. I couldn’t care any less. It still is my favorite movie and trilogy of all time.

When I say closed captions changed my life, I’m not being hyperbolic or a drama queen. I’m stating a fact.The story of how I learned to read is shrouded in mystery. As a child born totally deaf—which is quite rare, as most people classified as deaf have some sensation of hearing—my reading future didn’t look good. During the 80s, expectations were low for a deaf child’s literacy. The Deaf had a historically low literacy rates (which, ironically, were mostly caused by the suppression of Sign in favor of speech and other inadequacies in one’s linguistic environment). People expected me to struggle to read and write. Low expectations were the rule back then.But I learned to read. On my own at age three.My parents always had the captions turned on. It helped my mother pick up more idiomatic English as an immigrant. So, our diddly little TV always had captions on, although it rarely appeared. In those days, only a few prime time shows and PBS had captions.One day my mother found me watching Smurfs, one of the few children’s shows with captions. “What’s happening?” she asked me in Sign, curious if I was picking up anything. I most certainly couldn’t read cartoons’ lips. I relayed a surprisingly accurate description of the storyline, giving my mother details that couldn’t have been inferred without some knowledge of the dialogue. Somewhere along the way, I had learned how to read from the captions.It is because of captions that I fell in love with words, whether on the television screen or the printed page.Captions were still rare in those days before major telecommunications accessibility acts. This is why I grew up on Charlie Chaplin and Shirley Temple movies instead of the kids’ movies everyone else went to the theaters to watch. This is why I can recite lines from old movies like Singing in the Rain and The Philadelphia Story, having watched them so often. You see, the classics—including musicals—were the first to get captioned. I loved them all. The dancing and singing captivated me even though I could “only” read the lyrics and see the footwork. That was more than enough. It is because of captions that I know more about old-school movies than a 30somethings should.Whenever I was invited to a sleepover, my mother and I would show up with the big black caption-decoder box. I went off to play with my friends as the adults crowded around the TV, trying to figure out what wire went where. (Not always successfully.) It is because of captions that I could go to my hearing friends’ sleepovers and watched movies alongside them without missing a word.Things improved as the years went by as Congress passed multiple accessibility acts. More and more TV shows and movies were being captioned. Televisions began to have decoders built in, obviating the need for unwieldy decoder boxes. I could now watch almost any show or movie almost anywhere, except … the movie theaters, which rarely showed open-captioned movies. I watched everything from Baywatch to Die Hard, resulting in a very age-inappropriate crush on Bruce Willis. Slang such as yippee-ki-kay became part of my lexicon. I learned how to run on the beach all sexy-like. The former being far more useful than the latter. It is because of captions that I was fairly plugged into the popular culture during my teens and early adulthood.My love affair with television (and captions) came to an abrupt halt when my eyesight grew too foggy to read the captions. No matter how close I sat to the screen, how hard I listened with my cochlear implant, I couldn’t follow the story. The images were too blurred, the voices too rapid for me to understand. I became resigned to my television-free existence. Even though I still had my other love—books, via Braille—I still missed my other one. As my sight fades, I’ve found myself missing TV far more than sunsets or flowers. Go figure.Then Apple came out with a software update in late 2017 that changed all that. It introduced Braille capability for closed captions. That meant—wait for it—I could read the captions using a refreshable braille reader! Joys to end all joys, right? Well, I’m still not quite fast enough to catch all—or even most—of the rapid-fire dialogue, but the possibilities are there. One day, I will be able to watch television once again … sort of. Close enough, though. it is because of captions that my fading sight hasn’t spelled the end of my television addiction.So, yeah. Captions do help deaf people enjoy TV, especially this one. They tell us what people are saying, what kind of music is playing, whether it is scary or happy, and when a phone is ringing. Without these details, most TV shows and movies aren’t even worth watching. Quality of the captions continues to be an issue, though.

It takes a special skill to upset Theresa May the way things are in Britain at the moment.When Trump became President, she was first over there to say congratulations and quite literally, hold his hand. She didn’t actually paw him and clutch his tiny hand to her breast, but it was as good as. She knows that as Britain leaves the EU, she will have to make new trade deals fast, and one with the US is vital. She is like an unattractive girl at the school disco, desperate to have a boyfriend, and frankly, even the Mango Mussolini will do.Britain loves to think we have a special relationship with the US, but Trump has frequently said that his policy is “America first”. He couldn’t be clearer that he doesn’t really give a hoot about who he pisses off as long as it appeals to his power base at home. So when it comes to a new trade deal with a post-Brexit UK, he is going to ignore the special relationship and exploit the British desperation for a deal.So this retweet, obnoxious and vile as it is, is a clear sign of how things will be, now that Brexit has hobbled the UK. He’s not dumb enough to not know how his words would go down in Britain. He is quite aware that he has ruffled feathers. He just doesn’t give a toss, because he knows that we will get offended but have to, in the end, laugh it off as nothing really. And he’s right. His invitation to visit us hasn’t even been rescinded.Brexit has put us in a very weak position and now every country’s leader with whom we need to strike a trade deal will be lining up to humiliate the UK to appeal to their domestic audience, because they know we will have to take it.