Q: The White House has announced sanctions against 38 Russian individuals and companies, saying the United States is standing up to ongoing "malign activity" by the Russian government against Western democracies and around the world. At Friday's White House briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the U.S. still wants to work with Russia.  "Again, what we would like to see is the totality of the Russian behavior change. We want to continue having conversations and work forward to building a better relationship," Sanders said. The sanctions will be imposed on seven Russian oligarchs — including Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin — and 12 companies they own or control. Seventeen senior Russian government officials, as well as a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank, also will be targeted. The group includes key members of Putin's inner circle. Those sanctioned will have their assets blocked in the U.S. and people in the U.S. are barred from doing business with them. Friday, a number of U.S. lawmakers and foreign policy experts welcomed the measure, saying the sanctions are overdue. Representative Adam Schiff of California, ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the move is the strongest action taken by the Trump administration to date for Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and "its murder of dissidents at home and abroad." "The sanctioning of oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska, who is linked to Paul Manafort, Alexander Torshin and Putin's son-in-law, will send a strong message to the Kremlin," Schiff said in a statement. Florida's Marco Rubio, a Republican senator and former presidential candidate, also welcomed Friday's announcement. "These new sanctions send a clear message to Vladimir Putin that the illegal occupation of Ukraine, support for … war crimes [under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime], efforts to undermine Western democracies, and... The White House briefing probably lasted: - 1 day - 30 minutes - not enough information - several hours
A: 30 minutes


Q: What is creativity? How de we define creativity? Where does creativity come from? How philosophical is the notion of creativity? Is everyone’s ‘creativity’ different? Or is it an ill conceived, simplified term that is used to describe a very specific series of neuronal & bodily reactions to certain stimuli? These are all the questions I’ve been thinking (and googling, and youtubing) since beginning this Capturing Creativity studio* and I have found some answers or maybe I’ve just found more questions: Creativity is generally defined as the ability to make new things, or come up with new ideas, it’s an ability to think outside the box, to see unique solutions and employ them in inventive ways. In this sense creativity is not always utilised when being ‘creative’, as to be creative is simply defined as the ability to make or produce something. However I guess that depends on your definition of creative, how different, unique, special, once off, un-influenced does something have to be, to be classified as creative? This is where creativity get’s tricky. It’s all well and good to be like oh this is what creativity is, so it’s easy to investigate it, but what if you don’t define that as being creative, maybe that was just following a formula, a somewhat inspired formula, but maybe it is just a formula. Creativity to most people seems to be a random mix of once off genius combined with solid skill and hard work and for us humans these percentages are unique to us. Maybe creativity to you is 90% unique idea, 5% skill and 5% hard work. Maybe creativity to you is 40% unique idea, 50% skill and 10% hard work. Maybe for you creativity doesn’t have to involve any hard work at all. For me when it comes to creativity I’m most interested in that unique idea portion; where does that unique idea come from? Is it simply random? Is it a gift from the gods? Is our unique idea just a product of a lot of subconscious effort, only made aware to us in the sense of a ‘random’ idea? Have we been influenced by something, processed it... Why does creativity get tricky? - not enough information - It is an ill conceived, simplified term - It's easy to investigate - It depends on your definition of creative
A: It depends on your definition of creative


Q: Oh, yes, I accidentally insulted a bully. It was awesome. This was about a month ago. It was the last day I worked. Memorial Day at the city rec center is SLOW, especially when it's beautiful outside, but for some reason, we had two front desk attendants: me, and “bully #1”. Bully #1 clearly had a major distaste for me. She hated my tattoos, the way I would get into a heated debate one day with a police officer patron, then have a fantastic conversation with him days later about legalizing marijuana. She hated that I was liked, but still could give fuck-all about what others thought of me. Bully #2 was our financial director, who got stuck as the manager on duty that day. I honestly never had a clue she didn't like me. She was intense and sarcastic with everyone. I liked her style. On this day, I really got the feeling they were trash talking me pretty hard, the way they kept disappearing, talking over me, laughing like mean girls. I blew it off, because I was down an internet rabbit hole, trying to wrap my brain around some concepts. I was looking at a word, and while I like to think I know exact definitions, sometimes I ask people their take on it. Many psychological terms have some subjective meaning. I spun around in my chair, locked eyes with #2, and asked her: “What do you know about Machiavellianism?” I swear to God, all I wanted was her take on it (she's a smart cookie), and all hell broke loose. I now realize that she thought I was passive-aggressively accusing her of said word. They got really nasty (behind my back, of course). They retreated to the back for awhile, and left me by myself. Cue loud, mean girl laughter. When #1 resumed her post next to me at the front desk, I calmly told her, “I'm cashing out, and leaving. I'm uncomfortable.” And I did. It was noon. We were closing at 1. I figured those bitches could handle it on their own. After they insulted the bullies, the author probably: - became close friends with them - avoided them from then on - told a supervisor about their behavior - not enough information
