Diors spring 2021 haute couture collection debuted last January with a lush short film created by Matteo Garrone that opens with a tarot reading that transports its querent to a mysterious chateau populated by sumptuously dressed figures from the card deck the Fool, the Empress, an anthropomorphized Sun and Moon who act as signposts as she travels down one corridor and then another. The short, and the looks it showcased, which were designed by the brands artistic director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, was partly inspired by Italo Calvinos 1973 novel, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, in which the characters lose the power of speech and can communicate only through tarot cards, and it nodded to Christian Diors well-documented interest in the divinatory arts, on which he particularly relied during the precarious days of the Second World War.

By the 1940s, tarot was already a centuries-old practice it is thought to have originated in Central Europe in the 1400s, and the oldest surviving cards hail from decks commissioned in the mid-15th century by Filippo Maria Visconti, the Duke of Milan, and his successor, Francesco Sforza, and feature detailed illustrations of nobility and gilded backgrounds. These and other decks became status symbols for upper-class Italians, who used them to play an early version of bridge. The practice spread to France in the 18th century, and the cards were assigned mystical meanings when occultists, among them the cleric Antoine Court, attempted to create an association between tarot and ancient Egyptian spiritual thought. The connection proved spurious, but still, tarot took on a life of its own, with more and more mystics the influential British occultists Aleister Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite among them using its decks to predict the future: the Death card, for instance, might symbolize a coming period of radical change and rebirth, while the Temperance card might suggest a need for balance. The deck Waite devised, which was first printed in 1909, has long been considered a good place to start for those just familiarizing themselves with the major and minor arcana, terms used to describe the trump and suit cards, respectively.

Its no surprise that tarot carried over into the 20th century, too along with the advances afforded by modernity came plenty of conflict and confusion or that its popularity has surged in the last couple of years, during which the pandemic has scrambled nearly everyones notions of the normal order of things. The search for meaning and direction, it seems, has never gone out of style and feels especially urgent at present. And even if we dont actually believe in the cards, they do seem to possess an imaginative power that, amid so much uncertainty, can be hard to access in ourselves. Who wouldnt welcome any kind of indication as to where we may be headed right about now?

One group consistently and particularly taken with tarot is artists. The decks are a sort of art object, after all, and artists are themselves in the business of making meaning. In the early 1970s, Salvador Dal began work on a deck featuring himself as the magician and his wife, Gala, as the Empress. In 1979, Niki de Saint Phalle began constructing her Tarot Garden, a grouping, in Italys Tuscan hills, of 22 large-scale concrete sculptures inspired by tarot imagery and adorned with mosaic and mirrored tiles. A standout is The Empress, an opulent large-breasted sphinx adorned with a crown, which served for a time as the artists living quarters.

Now, a new generation of artists and designers are channeling their creativity by making decks of their own, ones that reflect the current era. The New York-based artist Tattfoo Tan created his New Earth Resiliency Oracle Cards as a part of his New Earth project, an immersive, teaching-based work that instructs users in both practical skills and spiritual modalities intended to help them contend with climate change. While we might associate tarot with the celestial, to Tan it can be a tool for staying connected to nature and the seasons here on earth. Accordingly, his deck features minimalist black-and-white sketches of fog, winter and drought. For her part, the Indiana-based artist Courtney Alexander is linking tarot to the politics of representation. Disturbed by how many so-called Black tarot decks, or those depicting Black characters, were created by white artists, she set out to make one that felt more authentically inclusive. The result was her Dust II Onyx deck, the cards of which are printed with Alexanders ornate multimedia collage paintings, works rooted in Black diasporic histories and popular culture. She gave the King of Swords, traditionally a symbol of intellect, the name Papa Blade and the eyes of Kanye West, and the Queen of Cups, the ruler of the emotional realm, the name Mama Gourd and the eyes of the poet and activist Nikki Giovanni. The story of Blackness deserves reverence, Alexander says, and to be seen as powerful.

Other decks nod to various art movements. For the Michigan-based artists Linnea Gits and Peter Dunhams Pagan Otherworlds Tarot deck, Gits studied the work of Renaissance artists like Albrecht Drer and then did an original oil painting for each card. (Dunham did the lettering.) The overall effect, though, is rather surreal her grim reaper is a skeleton with wings made of arrows whos in the process of stepping on the head of a half-buried woman holding up a flower and recall the early 20th-century Surrealists habit of combining seemingly disparate objects in the hope of arriving at hidden psychological truths. (Gits and Dunham are among the artists included in Tarot. The Library of Esoterica [2020], Jessica Hundley, Johannes Fiebig and Marcella Krolls visual art history of the practice.) And the artist Isa Beniston began creating her Gentle Thrills Tarot deck while quarantining in her Los Angeles apartment in 2020. Unable to access her studio, and in need of a project, she picked up new supplies at a nearby store and made hyper-colorful, Fauvist-feeling versions of the cards using gouache. She also relates to the tradition of the salon, and hopes her project will inspire not just self-knowledge but togetherness. I think people are most joyful when they use the deck with friends, she says. And I love the idea that my work might be used to help build community. Thats all an artist can really hope for.

More here:
The Artists and Designers Making Tarot Decks for Today - The New York Times

SOUTHERN INDIANA Kyle Lanoue has served for the past year as the career and technical education director at Prosser Career Education Center, but recently, he filled in for several days at S. Ellen Jones Elementary in New Albany, where he previously worked as principal.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, he assisted in a number of ways, including performing administrative roles at the school, helping out with lunch duty, covering classes, answering phones and stepping in when an extra set of hands were needed.

Lanoue is one of many staff members in New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp. to take on extra duties as the high level of COVID-19 spread in the community leads to staffing shortages. These duties include ones employees may not normally do but are needed right now, he said.

I think across the district right now, everyone is willing to do whatever we can to help out to ensure that in-person learning continues the best it possibly can, he said.

NAFCS Superintendent Brad Snyder said the school district is facing an all hands on deck situation in terms of staffing.

We are doing everything we can to keep school open, he said. Some employees are performing duties out of their normally assigned position as situations change on a day-to-day basis.

Schools across Southern Indiana are struggling with staffing shortages related to COVID-19. With the exception of eLearning days due to inclement weather, NAFCS has remained in-person so far this school year. However, districts across the area have been forced to go to remote learning.

Greater Clark County Schools and Clarksville Community Schools transitioned to periods of eLearning last week, as well as individual schools such as Silver Creek Middle School, Silver Creek High School, Henryville Elementary and Henryville Jr./Sr. High School.

Lanoue said teachers, administration and support staff in schools are really answering the call right now and working difficult, long hours to keep school operations going during the pandemic.

Last week, he called upon his experience of working for more than a decade as a building-level administrator in NAFCS as he covered for staff at S. Ellen Jones. He has since returned to his usual duties as a Prosser administrator.

We have long been a professional learning community, and we believe deeply in collaboration, Lanoue said. I think any good leader looks to know the job and the role next to you the best as possible. These are my colleagues and friends.

NAFCS teachers are helping cover for other classrooms, and administrators in the transportation department are taking on bus routes when drivers are out, he said.

Lanoue said in-person learning is important for addressing students learning gaps and helping the most vulnerable elementary school students, including those at Title I schools like S. Ellen Jones. He wants to make sure learning continues at a high level while also remaining vigilant with safety.

For students who possibly already had learning gaps, to be away from the building is incredibly difficult, he said.

Read the rest here:
Staffing situation 'all hands on deck' for Southern Indiana schools - Evening News and Tribune

Billionaire wealth is soaring in both dollar amounts and the number of people in their ranks.

"None of that is an accident it was engineered," Peter Goodman, the global economics correspondent for The New York Times and the author of "Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World," told Insider.

Goodman's new book is the latest entry into the canon of how the world's wealth became so concentrated and the measures they've taken to maintain that. It examines the "Davos Man," a moniker created by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, that, Goodman writes, describes those who are "so enriched by globalization and so native to its workings that they were effectively stateless, their interests and wealth flowing across borders, their estates and yachts sprinkled across continents, their arsenal of lobbyists and accountants straddling jurisdictions, eliminating loyalty to any particular nation."

According to Oxfam, the ten richest people in the world all men have more than doubled their wealth during the pandemic. Goodman says the story of billionaires over the last half century is the "story of rigging the game." It's happened through the tax code as well as hacking away at antitrust regulations that seek to prevent monopolies and encourage competition. Billionaires have undermined labor organizing, with collective bargaining a "shadow of its former self" and everything workers get at the discretion of the boss, according to Goodman.

"The result of that is just that there's fewer opportunities for everybody else to get a piece of the action," Goodman said. "Capitalism is still a great bountiful system. It's the best thing we got in terms of how to organize an economy, but it needs regulation, progressive taxation, antitrust enforcement, and the billionaires have very effectively defenestrated all of that."

Goodman's book traces how the rise of the Davos Man fueled the rise of right-wing populists and turned working-class workers against the world. Rampant inequality is an issue that's become especially prescient during the pandemic, as millions of Americans found themselves suddenly jobless as billionaires notched huge gains and vaccine inequality contributing to the rise of the omicron variant.

"It's totally fixable. The problem is that to fix it means we have to take on the people who run the system," Goodman said. He said it's not complicated, and it's been done before.

For instance, the 19th-century robber barons, who crafted monopolies of their industries often at the expense of workers, got hit with antitrust enforcement, he said. That resulted in major firms being broken up.

And, from the end of World War Two until the mid-1970's, there was much more progressive taxation, with the top marginal tax rate climbing above 90%. In 2018, it was 37%. Recent efforts to raise taxes including instituting a tax on billionaires' unrealized gains have been shot down by lawmakers. America's wealthiest have propped up a whole industry devoted to defending and hiding away wealth.

Union membership has also been on the decline for decades, which the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute notes tracks alongside an increasingly larger share of income going to the top 10%. The latest data release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed union membership numbers sliding yet again.

"We have a template there, which is antitrust enforcement, labor power, and progressive taxation," Goodman said. "If we take care of those things, we can have an economy that actually functions pretty well for an awful lot of people. The polls say this is what Americans actually want. This is not some kind of radical agenda."

But what happens if the situation goes unaddressed?

"It's very difficult to imagine that we're going to marshal an effective response to really serious issues like climate change," or the continued persistence of institutional racism and the "huge numbers" of people who don't have healthcare, Goodman said.

"These are huge problems that need to be solved, and it's very hard to see how we can solve them if huge numbers of people understand in their gut that the wealthiest people aren't willing to make any sacrifice at all."

Follow this link:
Davos Man author: Billionaires stacked the deck but solution is simple - Business Insider

Below Deck: Mediterranean was a beautifully dramatic successor to the already popular flagship show when it premiered in 2016. It even found the mirror image to Kate Chastain's infamous persona with chief stew Hannah Ferrier. In the subsequent second season, Captain Sandy Yawn joined the crew (after the late Captain Mark Howard decided to bow out). Ferrier and Yawn would go on to share many seasons together on Bravo that is until the former fired Ferrier in 2020 for having undeclared drugs aboard the yacht. Apparently, the franchise alum is now claiming that she and the captain weren't friendly at all whilst working on the show.

As far as fans saw, the two co-stars would sometimes butt heads, but they also seemed to have a general respect for the others position. Hannah Ferriers eventual firing obviously ended their rapport. Yet whilst on the Kyle & Jackie O Show podcast, Ferrier indicated that the Bravo editors left out the fact that she struggled with Captain Sandy from Day 1 on Below Deck: Mediterranean. She said:

So the way things can be edited. It was probably edited in a way where it looks like we were better than we were for the years before that we filmed together. We werent friendly at all. It was every season sitting down with production going, How can we get these two working together, where its an environment where they can work together?'

The former series star makes it sound like she and Captain Sandy were bitter enemies on the reality series. Which is surprising, because it truly didn't come across that way on the show, and Bravo isn't one to leave out major drama from viewers. The Mediterranean alum went on to say that the captain was evidently on her case due to preconceived notions from Season 1, saying:

Shes a micromanager. But what had happened is shed watched the show before she came on, and shed made her decision about me on a few things had happened. I think it was like about 45 seconds from our first introduction they had to stop production and be like, Sandy, you cant talk to her like that, like straight off the bat. It was something where Id literally pronounced a dish wrong or something when the chef hadnt told me and given me enough notice to remember. And also, its that competitiveness, wanting to kind of be the fan favorite.

Following her dramatic exit from the fifth season of Below Deck: Mediterranean, Hannah Ferrier would later announce that she was quitting yachting for good. But her early retirement didn't end the apparent feud with Captain Sandy, which clearly lives on. The two have gone back-and-forth about the other in the press and online, culminating, with Ferrier accusing her old boss at one point of being a hypocrite toward women. Captain Sandy maintains that she was in the right with her decision to fire the notorious chief stew, although bosun Malia White has some slight regrets for her part in the drama.

The show goes on, though. Captain Sandy is expected to return in her capacity as leader in Mediterraneans future seventh season. Meanwhile, her former co-star has since gotten engaged and had her first child with her fianc. The Bravo vet also has a pretty successful podcast show now, where she talks with reality stars, including some of her fellow franchise alums.

Hannah Ferrier has said in the past that she would only consider returning to the show if Captain Lee requested her. The slightly shady remark suggests that the old riff between the two castmates likely wont see improvement anytime soon especially if it was indeed years in the making.

Link:
Below Deck Med Alum Hannah Ferrier Explains Why She And Captain Sandy 'Weren't Friendly At All' While Working On The Show - CinemaBlend

Card-based battles can take on a new and interesting life in a video game. Each of the following games features deep strategy, imaginative art, and a clever use of, well, cards!

Even if youve never heard of the term deck-building before, the following selection may serve as a good entry point to a world of strategy and little rectangles. We hope you find something you like!

(At the very least, you wont need to lug around a binder full of cards with these games. Or, you know, trade with someone who said they had a rare holographic version of a card, but it ended up being a piece of cardboard wrapped in foil with a bad drawing taped on it. Not like that has ever happened before)

Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars

Experience an RPG set in a world of swords and sorcery, told entirely through the medium of cards. The story follows a self-proclaimed hero as they set off to slay a recently awakened dragon, presented in the manner of a tabletop RPG.

Monster Train First Class

Monster Train brings a strategic layer to roguelike deckbuilding, with a tactical twist: Defend not one, but three vertical battlegrounds simultaneously as you fight to protect the final pyre against the forces of heaven. No playthrough is ever the sameits a fresh challenge every time!

Slay the Spire

Craft a unique deck, encounter bizarre creatures, discover relics of immense power, and Slay the Spire! You will discover hundreds of cards to add to your deck with each attempt at climbing the Spire. Select cards that work together to efficiently dispatch foes and reach the top.

Wingspan

Ok, you got usthis one is not a battle game. Instead, you take the role of bird enthusiastsresearchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectorsseeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. Each bird extends a chain of powerful combinations in one of your habitats.

Faeria

With its living board, Faeria will challenge you with truly strategic card battles. Build exciting decks and shape the battlefield as you fight epic battles. Raise mountains, build forests, fill lakes, or harness the sands of the deserts. You choose your own path to victoryliterally!

Dicey Dungeons

Become a giant walking dice and battle to the end of an ever-changing dungeon! Can you escape the cruel whims of Lady Luck? Youll play as six different characters, each with their own play styles and abilities. Master each class and figure out which one best fits your style.

Signs of the Sojourner

Signs of the Sojourner is a narrative card game about connecting with people. Your deck is your character, reflecting your experiences and shaping your relationships. Youll encounter optimistic stories, compassionate characters, and delightful surprises in a world where climate change has made life hard.

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

Thronebreaker is a single player role-playing game set in the world of The Witcher that combines narrative-driven exploration with unique puzzles and card battle mechanics. Facing an imminent Nilfgaardian invasion, Meve is forced to enter the warpath and set out on a dark journey.

SteamWorld Quest Hand of Gilgamech

Lead a party of aspiring heroes through a hand-drawn world and intense battles using only your wits and a handful of cards. Take on whatever threat comes your way by crafting your own deck choosing from over 100 unique punch-cards!

Griftlands

Fight and negotiate your way through a broken-down sci-fi world. Every decision is important, be it the jobs you take, the friends you make, or the cards you collect. Death comes quickly, but each play offers new situations and strategies to explore.

Shadowverse: Champion's Battle

Team up with characters from the Shadowverse anime in this card battle game. With new summoning animations and exclusive cards, take on your rivals in story mode or head online* to challenge your friends!

Read this article:
Put your deck-building skills to the test with these card battle games - Nintendo

Jessica More from Below Deck Mediterranean said shes left yachting and likely wouldnt return to the series if asked.

More said yachting fulfilled its purpose for her and even though the show gave her a platform, shes not interested in doing more Below Deck. And while most cast members have said theyd love to do another season of the show, More isnt the only crew member who isnt interested in returning.

A fan asked if shed return to the show. I dont know if I would, More said in a video in her Instagram stories. I am working to try to transition out of yachting. Below Deck, probably not. Could I see myself doing some other kind of show or movie? Yes.

So yachting served its purpose, she continued. I got out of debt, I met amazing people. [And] I got on an amazing reality show. It gave me a platform. But at this point and phase in my life, its pretty toxic for me. So yeah, I found myself getting stuck and partying. And drinking a lot and just dating the wrong men in the industry. And its just not in a good place where I wanna be now.

So whats next for More? Headed back to Florida this weekend and then to Nicaragua next week for a yoga teacher training for a month, she wrote. Super excited, Ive heard its life-changing. Im ready to make some big changes in my life and feel this will be a beautiful foundation.

I dont have a home technically, she admitted. More added that most of her belongings and vehicles are in a storage unit in Fort Lauderdale, FL. And I havent really found my place yet. Home is where the heart is, I guess.

More has spent the past few weeks in Tulum, Mexico, and met up with chief stew Katie Flood. She also shared how they connected. I slid into her DMs a month or two ago and asked if she wanted to meet up for a drink, More wrote. The rest is history. Love her. She has an epic personality and a beautiful heart.

More isnt alone in not wanting to return to Below Deck. Stew Courtney Skippon recently said its too late for her to go back and in fact, it would be embarrassing. No, I think its embarrassing, Skippon said on the Dear Reality, Youre Effedpodcast. I would have gone back right away. If Kate went back and they wanted me back as like a second stew again, I definitely would have done that right away. Because I feel like thats a more natural progression.

But if youre just like waiting around you do sort of to an extent have to be, she added. Just like readily available for that. And thats not cute for me. Thats like a guy that ghosted you. And then six months hes like You up? And you are like, Im absolutely up. She added, Yeah, no.

RELATED: Below Deck Med: Hannah Ferrier Reveals She Never Had a Good Relationship With Captain Sandy We Werent Friendly at All

Read the original post:
'Below Deck Med': Jessica More Says Yachting Is 'Toxic' for Her and Wouldn't Return to the Show - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

The Spice & Tea Exchange will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 11.

The tea shop and culinary store at 161 Lincolnway in downtown Valparaiso is planning a weekend-long grand opening that includes a 20% discount for veterans with ID on Nov. 11. The first 25 customers each day that weekend get a free one-ounce tea.

A buy five, get the sixth free will be offered on all consumables that weekend, while customers can get buy one, get one free 16-ounce iced or hot teas from the tea bar 3-5 p.m. on Nov. 12 and 13.

Valparaiso native Tina St. Aubin started the business, which sells teas, spices, seasonings and specialty salts and sugars.

Being born and raised here in Valparaiso, it is truly rewarding to give back to my community through the opening of The Spice & Tea Exchange, she said. The majority of my family are business owners so it was only right that I joined the list. Im also thankful that my mom and sons have been a part of the process I find it so special that we have three generations in the store on some days.

The store products are sourced from around the globe and include many exotic varieties. It offers 85 custom blends of spices that are hand-mixed "for beginners and five-star chefs alike." It offers more than 45 loose-leaf teas, more than 150 spices by the jar, kitchen accessories, recipe kits and gift boxes.

The Spice & Tea Exchange also has a tea bar that serves both hot and cold teas. It's the first Northwest Indiana franchise of the national brand that was founded in 2008 and has more than 80 stores across the United States.

Ive worked to not only build a new team, but a family who loves The Spice & Tea Exchange brand as much as I do. We are all so proud to be able to bring something to the community that will not only share our passion for food, but also enhance the lives of our guests, St. Aubin said. One of the first products I tried during my initial visit to The Spice & Tea Exchange was Viks Garlic Fix Spice Blend. But I also like to recommend Honeybee Ginger Elixir Tea, Black Truffle Garlic Seasoning and Backwoods Hickory Rub to members of my community who are looking to try something new.

The Spice & Tea Exchange is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.

For more information, visit http://www.spiceandtea.com/valparaiso or call 219-615-3162.

If you would like your business to be included in a future column, email joseph.pete@nwi.com.

View original post here:
Society of Innovators to recognize groundbreakers in HVAC, decks and theater education - nwitimes.com

Whether you consider this the age of Aquarius or nah, its hard to deny how powerfully mainstream both cannabis and the esoteric have become.

The normalization of plant medicine, moon rituals, and the iconographic tarot have made New Bohemians out of a diverse segment of the population. We see zodiac placement on dating profiles, Major Arcana art prints in department stores and a global buzz around functional fungi, ancestral herbs, and cannabinoid wellness.

Whether you call it sorcery, enlightenment or revolutionary hippie residue, tarot and cannabis have been used for generations to access and navigate intuition. Frankly, it was only a matter of time before someone married the two concepts. And while The Psychic Mary Tarot Deck may, at first blush, seem an superficial coupling of weed and woowoo, a closer inspection actually reveals an interpretation thoroughly suited to our times.

Who is Psychic Mary?

The Psychic Mary Tarot Deck was created by celebrity psychic Jusstine Kenzer, aka PsychicGirl. Psychic Marys decks are reinterpretations of Rider-Waite cardsthe best-recognized tarot iconographyand, as such, can be navigated with most contemporary tarot guidebooks.

Though Psychic Marys deck utilizes Rider-Waites structure, Kenzer introduced an iconography and terminology with Psychic Mary that, while potentially eliciting double takes from tarot-fluent users, will resonate clearly with varsity stoners.

Kenzers Major Arcana cards lack expressively gendered caricatures and detailed, symbolic tableaus of its more traditional contemporaries. Instead, this deck relies on straightforward, uncluttered single images against plain, white backgrounds. Some cards are comically simplistic in their accuracy (Judgement represented by a DEA badge, The Sun represented by a fluorescent grow light), while others require a more developed comprehension of tarot (The Empress represented by a single, sprouted seed, or Temperance presented as an empty bong).

Although Psychic Marys Minor Arcana rely on the Rider-Waite structure, theyre much more complex in their cannabis user-oriented reimagining. Rather than suits of Staffs, Swords, Coins and Cups, Psychic Marys Minor Arcana are organized by Grinders, Lighters, Pipes and Papers.

The face cards eschew royal terminology in favor of pothead vernacular, swapping Grower for King, Dealer for Knight, Smoker for Queen, and Tender for Page. The Minor Arcana are reliant on numerology rather than tarots established, highly visual folklore.

Test-Driving the Psychic Mary

There are no fewer than five tarot decks in my house, but Im not out here giving free readings on full moons. I just happen to appreciate small-scale works of art and guided introspection, both of which good tarot can provide.

When I broke open the Psychic Mary deck, my first impression was that this particular deck wasnt likely to deliver on either of those fronts. But on closer inspection, I saw a deck that actually felt both intentional and authentic to stoners and spiritualists alike.

My first spread was a simple, three-card arrangement meant to turn my inner eye toward my past, present and future. For the past, I pulled the Eight of Pipes, for the present the Ten of Lighters, and for the future the Eight of Grinders.

I was stoned to the bone as I pulled cards, so I had to consult the reference card several times before Psychic Marys language settled into my memory. I pulled another three cards, this time an Empress card represented by a single, dancerly splash of (bong?) water, Death represented by ashy chunks of black resin, and The Emperor represented by a chic leather couch.

By my third pull, it occurred to me that seeing such elaborate icons reduced to these relatable cannabis associations would be an awesome way to introduce my less mystical-minded homies to the fun, totally subjective contemplativeness of the tarot. This deck may appear superficial, but that lightheartedness could introduce tarot as fun and accessible rather than performatively witchy.

Our household is less concerned with divination than introspection, and to that end, The Psychic Mary Tarot Deck is a fine addition to our collection. But I think the real value in this deck is how easily and entertainingly it can introduce an everyday stoner to the self-reflection of a good-ass tarot reading, which is something everyone, Aquarian stoner or nah, can make good use of.

Get it from: psychicmary.com

Read more here:
The Psychic Mary Tarot Deck Is a Cannabis-Oriented Reimagining of the Rider-Waite Cards - Willamette Week

Thousands of pitch decks and only a handful of winners. Such is the math of the VC industry right now, what with an explosion of startups and dreams of glory launching every year. VCs are overwhelmed with pitches, which means that crafting the perfect deck and connecting with a reader in the few seconds you have their attention is critical.

So what do you do to build a deck that cant be ignored? To answer that question, we assembled a group of three exceptional venture capitalists on the Extra Crunch stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 who have probably read more decks collectively than any group of humans should ever be expected to. Mar Hershenson is founding managing partner at Pear VC, Mercedes Bent is a partner at Lightspeedand Saba Karim is the head of global startup pipeline at TechStars.

In our discussion, we covered whats changing with pitches as the world moves toward a hybrid in-person and virtual pitch model, discussed how deep tech startups should think about pitches, and then we wrapped by exploring how each panelist reads decks and what that portends for founders who dont want to be ignored.

We got right into the crux of the matter at the top of the panel: What does reading pitch decks feel like in 2021? For Hershenson, theres just always more under the sun:

I would say the volume of pitches that we receive has increased and continues to increase at some form of exponential rate. For us, we have to become far more efficient at sorting and reading through these decks. The actual reading of the individual deck hasnt changed, but the rate and volume have increased dramatically. (Timestamp: 1:01)

Bent noted that the bar has gone up for the quality of decks that she reads.

The decks are getting better and better in terms of design. I think more and more people have realized that the visual representation of your deck is just as important as the material and the content thats in there. Theres these instinctive milliseconds that an investor looks at your deck and almost makes a snap judgment about whether its even in the realm of something they want to look at it. Unfortunately, it shouldnt be like that, but were human. So Im seeing decks that are super polished, and I dont know where everyone is getting these great graphics from, but theyre amazing. (Timestamp: 1:48)

Most pitch decks are based off templates, and therein lies a key trade-off: How much should you rely on a template versus being original, but different and perhaps harder to read? Karim noted that sometimes originality can pay off:

The best pitch deck that I got in a different format would be from a company that recently got into TechStars it was actually a podcast version of their pitch deck that had my face on it. I went into Apple Podcasts and it said, Hey, Saba, heres my pitch. That was amazing! But the second or third time that happens, it might not be as impressive because Ive seen it before. (Timestamp: 3:41)

Hershenson pushed founders to consider keeping to the standard templates because it can help VCs focus on what makes each business unique.

For us, having the pitch in a format that we are able to consume in an efficient way is super important. There are a lot of templates online, we all know the key points that need to be hit on in a deck. So your job as a founder is to hit those in a deck of 10 to 15 slides and kind of do the hard work of synthesizing your business in a short format. I think you can be original, but sometimes being original is to your detriment.

I can tell you my own story. When we were first fundraising for Pear, we decided we were going to be really original: Were going to use Prezi to send decks to LPs. And that was just totally the wrong call, because its almost like, What did they just send me? (Timestamp: 4:29)

One of the interesting dynamics that has shown up in the last year has been the rise of Notion as a form for fundraising. Responses from our panel were muted. Hershenson said Notion isnt an excuse for not being succinct.

Read more from the original source:
Crafting a pitch deck that can't be ignored - TechCrunch

Lifegain decks in Magic: The Gathering will continue to evolve with the new Innistrad: Crimson Vow card, Voice of the Blessed.

A variety of MTG decks built around gaining life exist in Standard and all of them can benefit from Voice of the Blessed, scheduled to release digitally on Nov. 11 via Innistrad: Crimson Vow (VOW). The spirit cleric is a Mono-White two-drop who gains added bonuses from +1/+1 counters gained from its controller gaining life.

Synergizing with Righteous Valkyrie thanks to its cleric creature type, Voice of the Blessed fits into Orzhov Lifegain decks and can easily slot into GW as well. The spirit cleric doesnt have to drop on turn two but can.

The later Voice of the Blessed comes onto the battlefield, the more value it accrues by gaining a bunch of Lifegain counters via ETB triggers that are already in place. And due to its low mana cost, it allows a player to leave up mana or cast a second spell.

Players can test out Voice of the Blessed in Standard with the digital release of VOW on Nov. 11. All other MTG formats will have to wait for the sets global release on Nov. 19.

See the article here:
MTG Lifegain decks gain Voice of the Blessed from Innistrad: Crimson Vow - Dot Esports