Helping with the work-life balance.

Richard Lutz continues his early assault on the world of journalism as a cub reporter.

New green heart unveiled as part of ongoing regeneration of Longbridge.

Games organisers moving into new city centre premises.

Live actors enter the stage for the summer.

Chalking event adds a splash of colour to city streets.

Our outer spaced reporter Lord Howard Elston chats with Brit astronaut Tim Peake who has just landed

Birmingham music charity launches a new strand of community vocal activity.

Classic locomotive takes to the rails for the summer.

Campaigners produce video in fight to save playing fields.

Richard Lutz heads for a city break.  

Richard Lutz witnesses a digital war over the information we crave.

 Moseley has been crowned as the best place in Britain for city living, according to the Sunday Times.

New Central Library: Founding a Friends Group, Thursday 4 July

Jessica Harris watches a challenging performance at Birmingham Rep.

£250,000 upgrade gives back community centre to Quinton.

Retail leasing in India's top eight cities dipped slightly in the third quarter of 2024, driven by strong demand on main streets and limited mall supply. While overall leasing edged down 1%, main streets accounted for 68% of activity, pushing rental rates up in several cities.

“With this expansion, we are excited to connect with even more individuals and families, offering them a curated selection of products that inspire creativity and enrich everyday life," said Divyanshu Solanki, founder and CEO of the company.

The non-profit I work for uses Google Workspace, and we could really use somebody with strong Workspace skills to help us optimize some planning spreadsheets. Our particular challenges are around having information cross-populate inside worksheets and across different ones, and ideally finding ways to create templated emails (also in Google Workspace) that pulls info directly from the sheets and sends it to instructors. If this works well we may have other use cases and needs!

I asked a similar question a few months ago, but the "best answer" to that question no longer works because Facebook has changed the interface. I recently put a Facebook post (an article) into an album (using the relatively new feature that lets you do this with all kinds of links, not just photos/videos). But I changed my mind — I don't want it to be in any album. How do I remove it? I could use either a browser or the iPhone app.

Note that Facebook's album interface seems to have changed about a month ago, so older Facebook how-to posts might not be relevant.

I don't want to delete the post because it already has comments, etc.

Fresh off the latest meeting about incorporation, and I want to say: thank you to the moderators and Jessamyn who keep the site going and thank you to the volunteers past and present putting in work to build new possibilities for the site, including making it easier for more people to volunteer and contribute in different ways.

I'm also truly proud of the decision made early on by the volunteers to do things together, even if that meant slowing down. I'm the kind of person who sees a problem and goes into fix-it mode as fast as possible. Practicing on a hugely meaningful project like Metafilter to listen and consider all of our viewpoints and work through to a communal path was hard. It was sometimes frustratingly slow! But by the second half of our timeline, I can see now that we get important things done faster and faster and how strong the foundation we've built is (heh, bad pun) because we've got trust and a collaborative thoughtful process.

I'd also like to recognise the people who took a deep breath before writing a reply in a high-termperature thread, the people who edited down the snark in their comments or thought - I'll change to the thread about kitten videos instead. It is hard to be civil and think about other people when they're text on a screen - and it's harder when so much media encourages profit by provoking yelling.

Metafilter is an internet third space that isn't trying to profit actively from yelling. And sometimes we gotta yell in some threads - but most of the time we talk, and I so so appreciate having a third space where people can talk without an algorithm aimed at our lizard brains.

White people are very invested in treating racism as extreme and exceptional when it is in fact commonplace and pervasive. White people are not credible judges of what non-white people describe as experiences of racism. Racism is the Occam's Razor explanation. These so-called academic framings describe patterns that white people would prefer remain undescribed.

This doesn't take "Will the destination country even accept you as an immigrant" into consideration.

Editor's note: NPR will be continuing this conversation about Being Black in America online and on air. As protests continue around the country against systemic racism and police brutality, black Americans describe fear, anger and a weariness about tragic killings that are becoming all too familiar. "I feel helpless. Utterly helpless," said Jason Ellington of Union, N.J. "Black people for generations have been reminding the world that we as a people matter — through protests, sit-ins, boycotts and the like. We tried to be peaceful in our attempts. But as white supremacy reminds us, their importance — their relevance — comes with a healthy dose of violence and utter disrespect for people of color like me." For more than a week, tens of thousands of people have thronged cities nationwide, staging protests. The demonstrations were triggered by the death of 46-year-old George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. Floyd, a black man, died while a white police officer

Over the past two weeks, we've watched the country grapple with questions about race and policing. And while those questions might be new to some, they're ones we've been thinking about since the very beginning of Code Switch. As we said in a recent episode , it can be hard to find something new to say about the cycle of police brutality, black death and the resulting protests. To describe what's happening right now as a "moment" in the country's racial history doesn't feel right; the stories of black people killed by police have dominated news cycles before, as did calls for changes to policing. But it's also clear that what's happening right now— protests in all 50 states and around the world, and widespread calls for defunding police departments —feels different. As my colleague Karen Grigsby Bates wrote , the unique circumstances of a pandemic and historic recession have fomented tensions beyond anything she's seen before. To help explain how the United States got to this point, we

If you're visiting MetaFilter for the first time in a while because whoa, US election, just a friendly reminder that MetaFilter depends on member support in order to keep running. Additionally, MetaFilter is moving to a community-run model, so you might want to check out the latest update about that.

But because this is a weblog, a few additional links about communities below the fold.

Online communities come with real-world consequences for individuals and societies (Communications Psychology; the bibliography is fun)

How to find your community (Vox)

How to find healthy online communities (Mental Health America)

(Nostalgia trip) Online communities (Pew Research, 2001)

And more nostalgia - the classic 1995 Ghosts in the Machine

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Presidential inaugurations are supposed to be about unity. That may be more inspirational than aspirational, rather, than anything else this year. Donald Trump will be sworn in later this morning in the wake of a divisive and ugly campaign that perhaps describes the deeply partisan era we're living in. We're hearing different perspectives on Trump's Inaugural Day this morning and one of them is that of the novelist Attica Locke. She is also a writer on the TV program "Empire," and she spoke to our own Steve Inskeep. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: We called you up on the morning after the election. That sounded like an excruciating morning for you. ATTICA LOCKE: It was, and I can't say that things have gotten necessarily better for me. INSKEEP: What do you mean? LOCKE: I wake up every day and think, this is how much this country can't stand black people that this has happened. Or I think, this is how much this country did not want a

Facebook's concession that it sold $100,000 in ads to Russian-linked accounts last year may be "just the tip of the iceberg" of how social networks were used to interfere in the election, warned the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who is leading the Senate's investigation into Russia's election attack, said Thursday he has long believed that Moscow used overt social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to intervene in the 2016 election, as well as other covert tools such as cyberattacks. "And you know, the first reaction from Facebook, of course, was, "Well, you're crazy, nothing's going on,'" Warner said at a national security conference in Washington, D.C. "Well, we find yesterday there actually was something going on. And I think all we saw yesterday in terms of their brief was the tip of the iceberg." Facebook acknowledged in a blog post on Wednesday that 470 accounts "affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia"

There are number of artists that come up time and time again in briefs for placements in TV, Ads, and Films, such as:
MGMT, The Royal Blood, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Kanye West, Bruno Mars/Mark Ronson, Haim, Florence + the Machine, Black Keys

If you have songs that might be in the vein of any of the above please submit to us now. The songs must be 100% owned by the writer/writers. We look forward to your submissions - many thanks.

- Mark Garfield / Pop-Up Music Uk Limited

Deal Type: Catalog Inclusion
Decision Maker: We are the final decision maker
Deal Structure: Non-Exclusive
Compensation: $500+ / TBD based on placement
Song Quality: Fully mastered, Broadcast ready

We are looking to expand our catalog with hot new Jazz music. We are huge fans of jazz in all its forms, from be-bop to the new, electronica infused tendencies. Please send what you think is the strongest part of your material and if hear something we like, we will ask for more. Please don't submit covers of standards or other people's music. No knock-offs! No demos! No concert recordings! We can only accept professionally recorded, produced and mastered music.

Below are a few examples of the type of music that would be a perfect fit for our catalog:

- Goce Stevkovski Septet - Monday
- Drew Paralic - Down In Soho
- Redman Mehldau McBride Blade - Right Back Round Again
- Nubya Garcia - The Message Continues

We are proud to have a unique business model and an artist-friendly agreement. The music released on Filter Label is instantly included in our catalog for sync licensing which is available to our network of contacts in the film, TV and advertising industry.

Songs by our talented artists can be heard in Legacies, Shameless, The OA, Exatlon, The Matrix Revisited, CSI: Las Vegas, Nikita, in commercials for Samsung, McDonald's, Nike, Masterclass, Philip Morris, Nestle, Alkaloid, Bank Millennium, in shows on MTV, CNN, National Geographic, NBC, NBA TV, Al Jazeera, Esquire, Channel 4 and almost every major TV network in the world.

- Emil Hadji Panzov - Founder / CEO - Filter Label

We are seeking Rock/Hip Hop songs with clean lyrics and no uncleared samples. High quality productions please. Think along the lines of Beastie Boys - Sabotage.

This opportunity is for a non-exclusive contract - all submissions must be 100% owned by the writer/writers. We look forward to your submissions.

Pop-Up Music is a PRS registered music library and publisher located in London. We pride ourselves in providing undiscovered music and bespoke music for advertising, film, TV, gaming and corporate.

- Mark Garfield / Pop-Up Music Uk Limited

Deal Type: Catalog Inclusion
Decision Maker: I'm the final decision maker
Deal Structure: Non-Exclusive
Compensation: Negotiable
Song Quality: Fully mastered, Broadcast ready
Similar Sounding Artists: Beastie Boys - Sabotage

Our Clients are independent and multi platinum artist(s) Seeking high quality, energetic trap, pop, & R&B style beats for production placement on upcoming releases. We are looking for industry quality production to shop throughout our network, as well as to consider signing new talent for production management opportunity. We will provide you with feedback & rate your submissions!

: Please submit your best work. Songs will go through the review process and if selected you will receive negotiated compensation. We look forward to hearing what you have to offer. 
- The Administration

Deal Type: Producer / Production Management Decision Maker: We are the final decision makers Deal Structure: Negotiable Compensation: Negotiable Song Quality: Rough Mixes, Fully Mastered, Broadcast Ready Similar Sounding Artist: Future, Migos, The Weeknd, Drake, Ty Dolla Sign, 2Chainz, Gucci Mane, Tory Lanez, Chris Brown, Cardi B, Lil Baby

The post houses and advertising agencies we work with seem to have a never ending demand for covers of popular songs. Therefor, we would like to broaden our catalog with inventive cover versions of compositions that have been big worldwide hits.

We are not looking for interpretations trying to imitate the original. We are seeking just the opposite - new takes on well known songs which transport them to new, unexpected directions. Covers are usually considered for film trailers and big ad campaigns, so it would be great to hear submissions that have space and a “cinematic” sound. However, if you have a dynamic, aggressive cover of a slow song, that could work too.

Below are some brilliant examples of what we would like to hear:
- Skylar Grey - Addicted To Love
- Vega Choir - Creep
- Lo-Fang - You’re The One That I Want
- Hannah Peel - Tainted Love
- Think Up Anger feat. Malia J - Smells Like Teen Spirit
- Lorde - Everybody Wants To Rule The World
- KI Theory - Enjoy The Silence

Please submit only professionally recorded and mastered songs.

As an added bonus, if your cover is Selected, we will offer to release your music on Filter Label. The songs by our talented artists can be heard in The OA, Exatlon, The Matrix Revisited, CSI: Las Vegas, Nikita, on ads for McDonald's, Nike, Philip Morris, Nestle Wagner, Bank Millennium, in shows on MTV, CNN, Nat Geo, NBC, Al Jazeera, Esquire, Channel 4 and almost every major TV network in the world.

- Emil Hadji Panzov Founder / CEO - Filter Label

We are seeking to expand our catalog with hot new Soul, Funk and R'n'B music. We are huge fans of The Heavy, Charles Bradley, Leon Bridges, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Michael Kiwanuka, Lee Fields... If you have anything similar, please send immediately. No knock-offs! No demos! Only professionally recorded, produced and mastered music will be accepted.

We are proud to have a unique business model and an artist-friendly agreement. The music released on Filter Label is instantly included in our catalog for licensing which is available to our network of contacts in the film, TV and advertising industry.

Songs by our talented artists can be heard in Legacies, Shameless, The OA, Exatlon, The Matrix Revisited, CSI: Las Vegas, Nikita, in commercials for Samsung, McDonald's, Nike, Philip Morris, Nestle Wagner, Alkaloid, Bank Millennium, in shows on MTV, CNN, National Geographic, NBC, NBA TV, Al Jazeera, Esquire, Channel 4 and almost every major TV network in the world.

- Emil Hadji Panzov - Founder / CEO - Filter Label

We need more Singer Songwriter material in our catalog. We are seeking intelligent storytelling backed with masterful instrumentation. Something along the sound of Elbow, Fink, Feist or Bon Iver would be perfect. Please DON'T SUBMIT UNFINISHED DEMOS. We accept only professionally recorded and fully mastered material.

We are proud to have a unique business model and an artist-friendly agreement. The music released on Filter Label is instantly included in our catalog for licensing placements which is sent out to top music supervisors and agents.

We have hundreds of songs placed in ad campaigns (McDonald's, Nike, Bank Millennium, Nestle, Philip Morris), TV series (The OA, Exatlon, CSI: Las Vegas, Nikita, Top Boy), films (Loneliness, Sex and Compassion, The Matrix Revisited, Cherie, Mission: Wolf), and on network television (CNN, MTV, Channel 5, National Geographic, NBA, UFC), etc.

- Emil Hadji Panzov / Filter Label

We have noticed a repeating trend in the music requests we receive from our partners in the advertising world and therefor we would like to enrich our catalog with more songs about human kindness.

The genre is not really important as long as the song has a hopeful, optimistic feel. Possible lyrical directions could be: diversity, inclusion, walking the same ground, love (not romantic), people's kindness, help, togetherness etc.

Below are two great examples of the type of songs we are seeking:

- Birdy - People Help the People
- Brandi Carlile - The Joke

Please submit only professionally recorded and mastered songs. The best submissions will be included in our catalog for licensing which is available to our network of contacts in the film, TV and advertising industry.

As an added bonus, if your song is Selected, we will offer to release your music on Filter Label. The songs by our talented artists can be heard in Legacies, The OA, Exatlon, The Matrix Revisited, CSI: Las Vegas, Nikita, in commercials for Samsung, McDonald's, Nike, Philip Morris, Nestle Wagner, Bank Millennium, in shows on MTV, CNN, Nat Geo, NBC, Al Jazeera, Esquire, Channel 4 and almost every major TV network in the world.

- Emil Hadji Panzov - Founder / CEO - Filter Label

We have noticed a repeating trend in the music requests we receive from our partners in the advertising world and therefor we would like to enrich our catalog with more electronic pop songs.

The songs should be driving, dynamic and memorable. Changes, interesting build-ups and drops which could provide great edit points are most welcome. A mixture of electronic quirkiness and pop accessibility is a big plus.

Here are three examples of the type of songs we are seeking:

- Sofi Tukker - Best Friend
- Jaim - Makeba
- The Knocks - New York Luau

Please submit only professionally recorded and mastered songs. The best submissions will be included in our catalog for licensing which is available to our network of contacts in the film, TV and advertising industry.

As an added bonus, if your song is Selected, we will offer to release your music on Filter Label. The songs by our talented artists can be heard in Shameless, Legacies, The OA, Exatlon, The Matrix Revisited, CSI: Las Vegas, Nikita, in commercials for Samsung, McDonald's, Nike, Mytheresa, Philip Morris, Nestle Wagner, Bank Millennium, in shows on MTV, CNN, Nat Geo, NBC, Al Jazeera, Esquire, Channel 4 and almost every major TV network in the world.

- Emil Hadji Panzov - Founder / CEO - Filter Label

We are looking to add some cross-genre material to our catalog. We are hoping to find brave compositions combining two or more genres, like in the following examples:

- Jazz meets Hip-Hop
Guru ft. Donald Byrd - Loungin’
- Rock meets Electronica
The Prodigy & Tom Morello - One Man Army
- Classical meets Pop
Woodkid - Run Boy Run
- Electronica meets Classical
The Glitch Mob - Fortune Days

Please note that we are not looking for copies of the referenced tracks, they are listed only as great examples of combinations of two or more genres. Filter Label is notorious for discovering new talent and setting new music trends, so please submit your best material and surprise us with what could be the next big thing. Songs with uncleared samples WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. Please submit only professionally recorded and mastered songs.

We are proud to have a unique business model and an artist-friendly agreement. The music released on Filter Label is instantly included in our catalog for licensing placements which is sent out to top music supervisors and agents.

The songs by our talented artists can be heard in The OA, Exatlon, The Matrix Revisited, CSI, Nikita, on ads for McDonald's, Nike, Philip Morris, Nestle Wagner, Bank Millennium, in shows on MTV, CNN, Nat Geo, NBC, Al Jazeera, Esquire, Channel 4 and almost every major TV network in the world.

We have been working tirelessly over the years to build the best catalog of great independent music from various genres. However, there is one area in which we feel we could do better. Therefor, we are seeking Pop music to represent for licensing in films, TV shows and ad campaigns. By “Pop” we are referring more to the broad appeal of the music than the genre. As long as the song has hit potential, we would like to hear it. Genre wise we are open, but indie pop and indie folk seem to work best for licensing placements.

Here are some great examples of music that we would like to have in our catalog:
- The Lumineers - Ho Hey
- Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Home
- Charli XCX - Break The Rules
- James Bay - Hold Back The River

We accept ONE-STOP submissions only, ie songs that you own or control 100% (writer, master and publisher). Please submit only professionally recorded and mastered songs. NO DEMOS, NO COVERS.

As an added bonus, if your song is Selected, we will offer to release your music on Filter Label. The songs by our talented artists can be heard in The OA, Exatlon, The Matrix Revisited, CSI: Las Vegas, Nikita, on ads for McDonald's, Nestle Wagner, Nike, Philip Morris, Hachette Filipacchi, in shows on MTV, CNN, Bravo, Nat Geo, NBC, Esquire, Channel 4 and almost every major TV network in the world.

- Emil Hadji -Panzov Founder / CEO - Filter Label

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing is downright buzzy, and not always in a good way. Contact tracing is the public health practice of informing people when they've been exposed to a contagious disease. As it has become more widely employed across the U.S., it has also become mired in modern political polarization and conspiracy theories. Misinformation abounds, from tales that people who talk to contact tracers will be sent to nonexistent "FEMA camps" — a rumor so prevalent that health officials in Washington state had to put out a statement in May debunking it — to elaborate theories that the efforts are somehow part of a plot by global elites , such as the Clinton Foundation, Bill Gates or George Soros. At the very least, such misinformation could hinder efforts to contain the coronavirus, and at worst it has sparked threats against tracers, say some observers, including the Institute for Strategic Dialogue , a London-based organization that studies polarization.

Saturday Night Live 's Colin Jost knows there's something about his clean-cut image that rubs some people the wrong way. When he joined SNL as a writer in 2005, he worked off-camera — and didn't have to think about his looks. "When you're not on camera or on television, you don't really consider what you look like," he says. But all that changed when he began working on-air in 2014 as the co-anchor of the show's "Weekend Update." "Some people look at me and have sort of a visceral, angry reaction [to me]," he says. "You see it in our audience. When I get hurt or hit on camera — like when [castmate] Cecily [Strong] throws drinks in my face or throws up red wine on me — the audience really loves it." Jost's new memoir, A Very Punchable Face, describes his experiences growing up in a middle-class household on Staten Island . "Part of writing this book was being excited to talk about parts of my life and weird episodes in my life that I thought that would be entertaining for people," he

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: The United States set a new record yesterday for the most new coronavirus cases reported in a single day - more than 68,000. The previous high mark was set just the day before. The pandemic is stressing medical resources in several states like California, Arizona, Texas and Florida that have seen dramatic surges in recent days. The country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, this week referred to this moment as a perfect storm of viral contagion, all of which has intensified the debate about what the country - each of us, really - can do to slow down the spread of the virus, like wearing a face mask. Today President Trump was seen wearing a mask in public during a visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. But the president has sent mixed messages about this, refusing for months to wear a mask, as health experts recommend. So to begin tonight, we want to focus on a group of

Updated at 12:45 p.m. ET The dramatic collapse of the U.S. economy from the coronavirus is pummeling America's largest banks, raising new concerns about how much growth is slowing. Wells Fargo lost $2.4 billion in the second quarter — its first quarterly loss since 2008 during the financial crisis — and said it expects to cut its dividend to shareholders by 80%. Citigroup saw its profit drop 73% in the quarter. And JPMorgan Chase, the nation's biggest bank, was forced to set aside billions of dollars more to cover bad loans during the second quarter, although money it made from trading in the frothy financial markets assured it made a profit anyway. The results underscore the toll that the recession is taking on big banks, which serve as a barometer of how the broader U.S. economy is faring. Hopes that the economy will rebound as fast as it declined — a so-called V-shaped recovery — seem increasingly unlikely. "We still face much uncertainty regarding the future path of the economy,"

Each part of the body depends on another to function properly—this is true both physically and spiritually. Different gifts among God’s people mean different roles in the church for each member. Do you ever wonder if your place is important? Find out in this inspiring, heartfelt look at the body of Christ.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: A bipartisan delegation of Congresspeople is just back from Ukraine. It was a trip designed to strengthen the U.S.-Ukraine alliance, and it was planned before news broke of the whistleblower complaint against President Trump involving that same country. Congressman John Garamendi led the delegation as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. And the Democrat from California joins us now. Welcome, Congressman. JOHN GARAMENDI: Good to be with you. SHAPIRO: One central question in the impeachment inquiry is whether President Trump demanded help investigating a political rival in exchange for U.S. aid to Ukraine. And I know that aid was a central topic on your trip, so what did you learn about Ukraine's reliance on American assistance? GARAMENDI: Well, first of all, Ukraine is an extraordinary country. These citizens of that country are determined to be independent. They have been fighting a war against Russia for the last five years. They've lost 13- to 14

For decades, chef Charlie Hallowell was a culinary star around Oakland, Calif., as beloved for his restaurants' hip vibe, as he was for his passion for all the right social causes. Even the national critics raved about his creative modern California cuisine and his "cult following." Bon Appetit fawned, "Hallowell should run for mayor already." But in December 2017, as the #MeToo movement was boiling over, the man celebrated for his cool cocktails and organic, locally-sourced farm-to-table ingredients was suddenly splayed across the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle as a serial sexual harasser. Dozens of women accused him of everything from constant lewd comments to uninvited kissing on the mouth, long, handsy hugs – and more. Catalina del Canto, who worked for Hallowell as a cook and hostess, says he would come up behind her when she was stocking shelves in the walk-in cooler and press against her. And the crass sexual banter, she says, was constant. "He asked if I had a

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: A bipartisan delegation of Congresspeople is just back from Ukraine. It was a trip designed to strengthen the U.S.-Ukraine alliance, and it was planned before news broke of the whistleblower complaint against President Trump involving that same country. Congressman John Garamendi led the delegation as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. And the Democrat from California joins us now. Welcome, Congressman. JOHN GARAMENDI: Good to be with you. SHAPIRO: One central question in the impeachment inquiry is whether President Trump demanded help investigating a political rival in exchange for U.S. aid to Ukraine. And I know that aid was a central topic on your trip, so what did you learn about Ukraine's reliance on American assistance? GARAMENDI: Well, first of all, Ukraine is an extraordinary country. These citizens of that country are determined to be independent. They have been fighting a war against Russia for the last five years. They've lost 13- to 14

Salvation is not a one-time thing but an ongoing, following, surrender to the King. Are we more afraid of what the devil is going to do with our life, or have more faith of what Jesus can do?

The parable of the workers in the vineyard is one of the most important parables. It can also be one of the most difficult and controversial parables that Jesus shared.

There are interesting similarities between the feast at Simon's where Mary anointed Jesus, and his burial where He was anointed again. We need to pay attention to Jesus while we still have time.