Hasta La Gadget!

I’m not a people person. You will never see me surrounded by big groups of friends, I have never been part of the populars, I have only a hundred Instagram followers, and my relatives usually forget my birthday.

And this has always felt like an issue: somehow, some divine voice was always telling me that I should be partying on Friday nights instead of watching 21 Jump Street at 3 AM, that my loneliness was conflicting my life, that I needed a text message from someone or my day would be meaningless. It’s at times like these that you have two choices: you can let that sense of sadness take over, or ask yourself “is that really how things work?”

Our society, always great at creating artificial norms, has somehow established that being alone is bad, that you must be surrounded by people all the time, groups of big friends to guide you through life, a significant other to make you breakfast in the morning; huge, crowded families who meet up every Sunday.

And while that could be true, today I’m here to show you the opposite: Being alone is a blessing. It’s an opportunity, a way to get to know yourself and to be at peace with every little bit of imperfection you have, to open your own path into the world.

Of course I’m not saying that you should reject the relationships in your life, become a cranky old person who only yells at people. But if you find yourself alone, you need to know how good it is, how it’s an opening, an opportunity. After all, when you have nothing left to lose, you also have everything to win.

I used to envy my friends with boyfriends, feeling sad because they had a special someone to share their lives with, and I didn’t. Then I realized, as selfish as it may sound: why should I share my life with anyone? My experiences are mine and only mine, and so are my choices. Sometimes, we let others’ opinions influence our decisions, so much so that they aren’t ours anymore.

And sure, sometimes it gets depressing: there are times during Saturday nights when I find myself crying to the Snapchat stories of those who have actually left the house during the weekend, in my pajamas and eating cheese. But there are also days where I see everything that I have done, and how I have done it myself, and I love knowing that those were my adventures, that I was strong enough to deal with that.

So my message is: Be a loner. Open your own path to the world, go to new places, even meet new people, but specially, enjoy the time you get with yourself, enjoy your own effort. If it goes right or wrong, it’s all yours

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Talent is vital to scaling and maintaining a business, but how do you retain it on a low budget?

Startups face a number of challenges during their early growth phases, and most of those challenges are made more complicated by the fact that startups have limited access to capital. If you’re going to build a solid company, develop a knockout product, cultivate good relationships with your clientele, and come up with the ideas needed to grow your business organically, you’ll need a good team behind you.

The problem is, the top talent in the industry usually demands a top salary to match. You can’t afford to hire the best of the best at their usual rate, but the near-gimmicky appeal of working for a startup might lure some people in during your fledgling period of growth.

So assuming you’ve been able to attract some initial talent, how can you work on retaining that talent without putting too much strain on your budget?

Offer Stock Options

Your first option is a monetary alternative to a straightforward increase in salary. Instead of this budget-crushing option, you can offer stock options or small stakes in your company. This will not only give your workers a tangible form of compensation, it will also incentivize them to work harder.

Provide Flexibility

Flexibility is priceless. If you can, give your workers more freedom in their jobs; let them set their own hours, work on their terms, and call their own shots (within reason). This form of empowerment isn’t something they’ll get at higher-paid institutions, and they’ll be grateful for it.

Emphasize the Culture

Try to emphasize the importance of your company’s culture, as the fit here will be more valuable than any salary raise you can offer. Bring your team together for regular events, stay true to your ideals, and remind your workers this experience is more than just a job.

Reward and Praise

Take the time to reward and praise your workers when they do their jobs well. Sometimes, a quick lunch gathering or a pat on the back can go a long way in reminding an employee why they love working for you in the first place.

These strategies will help you retain some of your best talent for the long haul. Remember to prioritize your team–after all, they’re the ones who will help you turn your vision into a reality.

Bio:
Jose Vasquez is a serial entrepreneur and tech enthusiast dedicated to helping startup technology companies get the direction and momentum they need to succeed. As the founder of Build. Brand. Blast., Jose has established a collective resource for tech entrepreneurs to consult when brainstorming, creating, launching, or expanding a new business. Jose is also the founder and CEO of Quez Media Marketing, a marketing firm that combines technology and creativity to help new and growing companies get the results they need.

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My husband and I left Los Angeles and arrived back in Sydney in March of this year. With us was our English bulldog Poppy who we rescued from a shelter in Santa Ana and nearly three years of memories of living away from Sydney.

We were married in Carmel California in November last year because, quite frankly, we couldn’t be bothered waiting in Australia for a bunch of ignorant old white men to tell us we could marry.

I remember saying to Liam when we left Australia to move to sunny California that one day when we came back things would be different. We wouldn’t be treated as second class citizens for much longer. That we would have the same rights as our straight peers.

Three years on and we are still nowhere closer to equality.

The Safe Schools program (to US readers, the Safe Schools program was a school initiative to help LGBTQI+ youth come to terms with their sexuality and feel supported) has had it’s funding pulled and will no longer be in production and marriage equality is still hanging in limbo.

The liberal government (our Republicans) have decided to do a plebiscite come February 2017. A national vote on whether the LGBT community of Australia should be treated the same as everyone else when it comes to marriage.

Most people need only ask the parents of their loved one whether they can marry their spouse. The people of Australia will have to ask 24 million strangers.

What makes this an ever more painful blow is the fact that in 2004, Prime Minister John Howard amended the marriage act to be specifically discriminatory by making it “one man and one woman” for no other reason than bigotry. This law was signed in all in the space of an afternoon. No plebiscite, no national campaigning as to why it should or shouldn’t be. Just a quick edit of a piece of paper.

The thing that breaks my heart the most, is the incredibly damaging impact this plebiscite will have on the millions of LGBTQI+ youth of Australia. The government is literally creating a poll for peoples’ rights to be voted on.

For every young LGBTQI+ person who takes their life because they feel unnatural or that they don’t belong, their blood is on your hands Malcolm Turnbull.

To young LGBTQI+ Australians, I’m sorry that our government hasn’t progressed with the rest of the Western World. I’m sorry that Malcolm Turnbull uses LGBTQI+ rights as a political chess piece and I’m sorry that after years of campaigning, this is still an issue.

A free vote is all it would take for parliament to get this through.

Perhaps our elected officials could do the job they were elected to do rather than using a tactic that hasn’t been implemented in 100 years of uninterrupted representative democracy.
It’s not a big ask.

Australia, for once, be on the right side of history.

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WASHINGTON ― Colin Kaepernick took his greatest stand by refusing to get on his feet.

The San Francisco 49ers quarterback did not stand during the national anthem at a preseason game on Friday. He bluntly explained his act of protest to NFL.com’s Steve Wyche the next day, saying he would not “show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”

“To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way,” Kaepernick continued. “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Backlash was swift. A white 49ers fan tweeted a video of himself burning Kaepernick’s jersey as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played in the background. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump urged Kaepernick to leave the U.S. if he couldn’t respect the American flag. Kaepernick was quickly deemed a disgrace by some football spectators, labeled an athlete who has no right to speak out against injustices facing Americans of color because of his wealth. He has also been viewed as “disrespecting” his fellow Americans and being ignorant of the sacrifices of U.S. soldiers.

But veterans get shot by police, too. Here are seven cases in which veterans of color, most suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, were killed by law enforcement.

Mark Salazar

Mark Salazar was killed by police on May 5, 2012, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, after three officers responded to reports that Salazar was standing in his front yard shooting a gun. One of the officers shot Salazar after he allegedly pointed his firearm at them (though a family member said this was never mentioned in police reports). Salazar died a week later.

Nikki Edison, a childhood friend of Salazar’s who wrote to him frequently during his tour in Afghanistan, told The Huffington Post she appreciates Kaepernick’s actions.

“This needs to be taken seriously. There are people who are out here dying for little to no reason and these police officers are not being held accountable,” she said. “They just get to do what they wanna do with a free license. It’s basically like a license to kill and no one can do anything about it.”

“To have someone like Colin Kaepernick saying these things and bringing light to the situation and giving people a voice that otherwise wouldn’t be heard, it’s amazing,” she added.

James Brown

After 26-year-old Sgt. James Brown, an active-duty soldier, turned himself in to serve a two-day DWI sentence at El Paso County Jail in Texas in 2012, he never returned home.

Brown called his mother and said that officials were trying to extend his sentence to seven days. He asked her to wire him the money to pay the court fine ― and she did by morning, but it was too late. Brown had died.

The soldier, who had served two tours in Iraq, noted on his entry papers that he had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

A video obtained by KFOX14 shows that something caused Brown to begin bleeding in his cell. After he refused to speak with a jail guard about what was happening, guards in riot gear rushed into Brown’s cell. At least five guards grabbed Brown, who did not appear to be resisting, and held him on the floor until he collapsed. Throughout the ordeal Brown told officers that he could not breathe at least 20 times, according to KFOX14.

Officers gave Brown a sedative and put him in a face mask after taking him to the infirmary.

“Please take the mask off. I cannot breathe,” Brown says before asking for water and being given less than 3 ounces. The officers eventually begin washing pepper spray out of Brown’s eyes, but he informs officers that the faucet is cutting off his air supply. Brown is then placed in a wheelchair and taken back to his cell. He is left on the floor of the cell nude, as his breathing shallows and he is seen no longer blinking.

Attorneys for Brown’s family told KFOX14 that no medical assistance was requested during the ordeal.

Denis Reynoso

Denis Reynoso, a 29-year-old Dominican Army veteran with PTSD, was shot and killed by police in 2013.

Reports say he had been behaving erratically before grabbing an officer’s gun and firing at police.

Parminder Singh Shergill

Parminder Singh Shergill, a 43-year-old Sikh man who served in the Gulf War, Germany and Iraq, was shot and killed by two police officers in Lodi, California, in January 2014.

Shergill, according to his family, had paranoid schizophrenia, and was also suffering from PTSD and depression. He was shot 14 times for allegedly lunging at officers while holding a knife. (His family has a different account of the events.)

The district attorney’s office found police to be legally justified in their actions.

Stanley Gibson

In 2011, Stanley Gibson, a 43-year-old black man and disabled war veteran, was off his anti-anxiety medication. Gibson, who was reportedly acting paranoid, was trying to drive back home to his new apartment but ended up in the wrong complex. Residents called the Las Vegas police, who shot the unarmed Gibson as he sat in his car.

“To them he’s just another dead soldier or a dead black man,” Rondha Gibson said of her husband’s shooting.

Jose Guerena

Jose Guerena, a 26-year-old Marine, was shot 71 times when a SWAT team from the Pima County, Arizona, sheriff’s department raided his home on a shoddy warrant.

Guerena was asleep at the beginning of the raid and, according to his wife, grabbed his rifle when he heard the sounds of someone breaking into his home. Guerena thought they were burglars. Police saw Guerena with the gun when they broke open the door and began firing. Officers claimed they saw a flash from Guerena’s gun, but ballistics show the weapon was never fired.

Jonathan Montano

Jonathan Montano, a 65-year-old veteran, died of a stroke after police beat him for trying to leave a Loma Linda, California, VA hospital in 2011. Montano had been waiting in the hospital for four hours before deciding to leave and go to a different one. Instead of letting him walk out, hospital nurses allegedly called VA police. 

“The summoned VA Police Department police officers then stopped Jonathan Montano from leaving the VA Hospital in Loma Linda, by tackling him to the floor, slamming his head on the floor, and kneeing and stomping on his neck, and otherwise brutalizing and restraining him,” a lawsuit filed by Norma Montano, the deceased’s wife, says.

”This kneeing and stomping on his neck by the VA Police Department police officers caused the dissection of his carotid artery, that resulted in immediate (or very soon thereafter) blood clotting, which resulted in [his] suffering a stroke,” the lawsuit continues.

Twenty-nine military veterans were killed by police in 2015, according to a tracker by The Guardian ― and at least eight of them had PTSD. 

The deaths of these veterans make the retorts that Kaepernick is disrespecting soldiers even more preposterous.

The quarterback is merely calling attention to the systemic injustices faced by all people of color in America ― including veterans who aren’t white. Veterans of color have also been killed during interactions with police.

If anything, those who are concerned about Kaepernick’s comments should look deeper into issues affecting veterans ― such as the rates at which police kill mentally ill people and how veterans of color have been treated historically. 

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A hickey turned out to be the kiss of death for a 17-year-old boy in Mexico City.

Julio Macias Gonzalez suffered a stroke that doctors reportedly think was caused by a hickey from his 24-year-old girlfriend, according to the Independent. The teen had convulsions during a family dinner and then died.

The woman’s skin-sucking could have created the blood clot that traveled to Julio’s brain and led to the stroke, according to Hoyestado.com.

His girlfriend, who has not been publicly identified, is reportedly in hiding. Sources told Hoyestado.com that Julio’s parents were already upset over the relationship due to the age difference.

Hickeys usually just cause blemishes to the skin and, occasionally, the reputation, but there have been reports of more serious physical damage.

In 2010, the New Zealand Medical Journal wrote up the case of a 44-year-old woman who was rushed to the hospital after losing movement in her arm under mysterious circumstances. At first, doctors couldn’t figure out why the woman was having a stroke.

Eventually, they noticed a bruise on her neck and figured out that the suction on a major artery created a blood clot that went to her heart and caused a minor stroke, according to KUTV.com. The woman survived.

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