Things to do before 2020 to get your whole shebang together.

Quote of AWESOMENESS: “New year- a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours.” – Alex Morritt

This year flew by pretty quickly, huh. LIKE it’s almost 2020. Like, 2019 is nearly done. Whhhaaatttt? Okay, this year was definitely something. It was tough, surprising, and interesting. Today’s blog is comprised of a few things to do before 2020 to get it together. You need to understand that in order for 2020 to better and change from how 2019 went, you can’t keep doing the same things. So, let us continue:

1: Removing Negative Talk from Our Vocabulary

What is with all this negative talk anyway? When someone makes a mistake on a test or accidentally does something, we try and cheer them up and tell them positive things. Yet, when it comes to ourselves we can get so angry. We can get so angry at the smallest mistakes that we do. It’s so easy for us to look in the mirror and negatively talk ourselves down. Stop. This isn’t good for you or anyone. At all. Listen here pal, I know it’s a tough world out there and we make mistakes. But, the only thing to do is owning up to our mistakes and moving on. From there, that’s where you learn to grow from your mistakes and improve your actions. Words are important too. Sometimes we talk to ourselves badly too often as a joke we don’t even notice it. You need to catch yourself and stop the cycle.

 

2: Leave the Toxic Relationships 

They exist. Toxic people. Toxic relationships. They zap the life out of you. They drain emotionally and nothing about brings anything good to your life. You might not even notice that you’re in a relationship with a toxic friend or group. So, how do you distinguish a toxic relationship? When you are with the person, they don’t bring out the best in you. Yes, there are friends who make mistakes, miss out on plans sometimes, but if it’s too constant, maybe reevaluating your relationship with that person is needed. There are many signs, although sometimes subtle, when it comes to dealing with someone toxic. It might be a bit difficult but it will be best for you. Distance yourself from your toxic relationships and healing will take place. This also means online! Like, are you following anyone on Instagram (or something) and everything you see a post by a certain someone you don’t feel good. ever. Unfollow them in real life and in person. Follow those who inspire you, pump you up, and make you smile.

3: Clear the Bad Vibeys 

Maybe it was a small petty fight. Maybe it was something bigger than that. Nonetheless, you stopped talking to someone because of some unresolved matter. It sucks. Maybe that person was your best friend or maybe someone you became close with. Now awkwardness takes the air as you guys make eye contact. It’s the bad vibe series. You both feel the tensions, both want it to stop, but both do nothing. This is your sign, by the way, if you were looking for one. It might be a little hard, but take the first step to cease fire on the ongoing silent battle. Say sorry, or talk to the person about how you want to “clear the bad vibes” or tell them that you forgive them. This will help you enter 2020 with a clear mentality and heavyweight lifted from your shoulders.

4: Declutter, declutter, DECLUTTER

Before 2020, declutter the things in your life that no longer serve any use to you. Keep those of value, but learn to let go of that long-time shirt that you no longer use that has about three rips in it and sleeps at the bottom of your cabinet (we all have something like this lying around, right?) Decluttteeeeeerrrr. Take time out of your day, or week, and remove one thing (or more!!) to declutter your house. Your house will then be only filled with the things that bring you happiness and clarity.

5: Envision the Vision

Dudes, vision boards are way awesome. Trust me. Like they are basically magic boards or coolness. And, that’s just barely describing them. I would say that I am a big believer in the power of manifestation and attraction. I’ve made vision boards before and I cannot tell you how amazing it was too look at them a couple years later and realize that I’ve accomplished or got everything I put into them. Start making your vision board: fill it up with things you want, things you want to achieve, powerful quotes, and motivation. Put it up on your wall and watch the manifestation take place.

6: Grab your tools

Tools in life will help you. I mean that’s why they exist. To help you. Trust me, it’ll work. To get your whole shebang together, two tools that will be extremely helpful to you is as simple as this: a notebook and a pen. Write. WRITE. Write down your schedules, notes, and deadlines. Write it down. Look at it and use it. When I started making my bullet journal, my schedule and productivity noticeably improved! You can do that too! Taking a mental note on everything you need to do doesn’t work. I’ve tried it way too many times. So remember: write it down.

7: Mini habits to implement before 2020!

Do small things every day and eventually, the results will become so big. Small things do matter. The mini habits to start implementing:

Make your bed: First thing in the morning make your bed! I know it’s such a small task we sometimes just move past it. But, do it! It gives you a sense of accomplishment in the morning, keeps your room tidy, and encourages you to keep going your day tackling more to-dos. Also, it stops you from jumping straight back to bed when you wake up! 

 

Night to-do lists: We may have planned things throughout the day that we may have forgotten or decided to do another time. Before you sleep, make sure you have a to-do list beside your bed. Any things that you weren’t able to accomplish or things that pop in your head that you want to do —> write it down.

Always set aside time for “me” time: You are important. Yes, you are. YOU ARE. So, make sure that in your day and week you always set aside time to take care of yourself. Meditate, listen to music, or do something that you love for your “me” time. Take care of yourself. You need time to recharge. 

 

Dress for action: When you wake up, make your bed, hydrate, the next thing to do is dress up and prepare yourself for the day. If you stay in your pajamas the whole day, your brain can’t tell the difference between what mode they should be in. Sleeping mode? Or working boss mode? When you prepare for the day and dress up like it, your brain helps you to go into boss mode. 

 

8: Start (like literally) Right Now

There is no “perfect time”. It just doesn’t exist. Whether it’s Monday or the start of the month, the best time to start is now. NOW. You know what’s so awesome about starting now? It’s a head start before 2020. Yup, a head start. Remember that nothing changes overnight and the process for what you want takes time. Starting working out now, start organizing now, start NOW. 

 

Thank you for reading peoples! It means so much to me 🙂 I hope that the rest of 2019 turns out awesome. Remember: 2020 is YOUR YEAR. 

Yours truly,

L.O.A.S.H

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© Elizabeth Anne Villoria

Schools need to change

Here’s my opinion on the whole school system:

The majority of schools follow the same requirements of taking math, english, and all those other subjects. It has been this way for years. The same cycle for every student. But, why? We ask kids what they want to be when they grow up and fuel them with excitement as we put on a facade of “you can be what you want to be”. Why did I say we put a facade? It’s because as they get older our expectations we share them truly reveal themselves and we try to mold their minds to a 9-5 job. We shake their realities of life making them believe that those dreams they once had isn’t the priority and might not even come true.

I’ve asked countless people: “why are you going to college”

And, the answers are usually the same: “to get a good job”

But, why are we programming our generation that after kindergarten to preschool to middle school to high school to college their priority is finding a 9-5 job till retirement. That’s no life to live. And, I’m not trying to say don’t go to school, because I truly believe that somewhere that the intention is to teach. And, those who give their time to teach others are true heroes. What I’m saying is that their implementation for their intention is faulty. What’s the use of trying to force students to take subjects they don’t want to day after day. This just leads to cheating in class and the destruction of motivation.

Every child and every person is different. They learn differently. They take in information differently. Some people have shorter attention spans. Some people learn better when they do hands on activities. Some people learn better by watching. With all our data researchers and statistics we should know that putting everyone in the same process and expecting them to learn and grow the same way is just a big no-no. Wouldn’t it be crazy though if we did that? If we hundreds of different people into a box and teach them all the same way and expect good soaring results? Oh, wait, that is what we do.

It’s kind of like getting a bunch of cactuses and a bunch of daisies, watering them with the same amount of water then expecting both of them to grow equally healthy and to it’s full potential.

Students should be given classes that is directed towards what they want to be in life. Yes, there should be some mandatory classes. But they should ones that would really benefit the student when they go out there in the real world. To name a few classes that students should have to take: Financial, leadership, cooking classes, first aid.

Life skills are what need to be taught. They expect graduated students to suddenly be on their own and know how to do their bills and budgeting when all they taught at school was you had to run at least a mile to have a good grade in PE and that the square root of 64 is 8.

To sum everything I’m saying, learning life skills is way more important than trying to memorize the values of the unit circle. Everything around us is evolving, changing, and improving. It’s time that the educational system do that as well and make school a place of growth, ambitious.

Yours truly,

L.O.A.S.H

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© Elizabeth Anne Villoria

 

Protecting yourself from…. Hackers -_-

Quote of TRUTH: “Security is always excessive until it’s not” – Robbie Sinclair

There was this really cool conference kind of meeting that happened on September 19, 2018, at the University of La Verne. Its main purpose was to teach small business on how to develop themselves. There were plenty of things that they taught like about trade, foreign investment, government contracts, and more. BUT, in this blog, we will be talking about cyber threats. 

Ikr sounds super mind-boggling but its OKAY because I shall explain more.

Also before we continue I just need to point out that the speaker for this part of the conference was an FBI Special Agent. super. duper. cool. I know.

OKAY, let’s actually start this.

So, what is the meaning of cyber you may ask? It is of, relating to, or involving computers or computer networks ( as the internet ).

We use devices all the time nowadays don’t we? And, the problem is that every individual with a smartphone are targets for potential hackers.

We can break down Cyber threats into these five categories: (this will be from least problematic to more problematic, but they are all still a problem)

• Criminal
• Hacktivism
• Espionage
• Terrorism
• State-Sponsored

 

So we have good news and we have bad news…..

I’ll tell you both, starting with the good news:

Down for 2018, so far:

• Government Leaks
• Major outages
• Global ransomware attacks

However for the bad news:

Up in 2018:

• Corporate data breaches
• Critical infrastructure failures
• State-sponsored hackers
• Cryptomining
• Internet of Things Attacks
• Business Email Compromise

 

Okay, so the cons may be, slightly, a bit outweighing the pros but I have gathered information on what can be done to level the playing field. If that makes sense.

Some of the big hacks would include the 2014 Sony Hack. Imagine this being a billion dollar company and all their files were hacked and stolen. This was very stressful for them. Another one would be how hackers got into a Hollywood Hospital and took control of their systems and blackmailed them to give them $17,000 in bitcoin if they wanted them back. In case you were wondering, the bad guys got away with their money as they were paid what they wanted. 

These are examples of Ransomware. 

RANSOMWARE? I’ll explain. It is 1) a very big threat and 2) kinda really scary when it happens. In other words, this is a type of malware that would ask you for a ransom if you want your files or computer access back. And, if you don’t give the money then there’s a big chance you won’t be getting your stuff back. How is this a very big deal? Well, okay, imagine this. You are driving in your all new and improved-futuristic-technology-filled tesla car when suddenly the iPad on the computer starts to malfunction. A message then pops up and it reads “If you want to have access to your brakes, pay up $120,000 now”. You freak out and hit the brakes but nothing happens and your speed starts to accelerate. Fortunately, you just had the biggest paycheck ever and you were able to make a wire transfer of $120,000 to the encrypted bank account number they’ve given. And, your car then goes back to normal and you safely drive back home. But what happens when you don’t have the money or you’re just stuck in your car because of someone who hacked your car. Very scary and dangerous thing indeed. 

Another kind of hacking that seems to regularly occur would be the business email compromise (a.k.a B.E.C). This happens when a hacker gets into your email and tricks you into paying your house, bills, or other things and instead the money gets sent to them. This happens all the time because the email received looks very legit. Especially in real estate. So much money gets lost. 

Hackers hijack emails in 4 easy steps:

1. They use an email extractor which you can easily access
2. Hacker sends a fishing email out to thousands of emails
3. They research everything about like how you and the person you are negotiating with speak with each other and the deals made
4. The hacker uses the information they found to send the homebuyer a message telling them to reroute their bank account. 

Imagine this is how simple it is for them. And yet in the process, there are families out there that lose their life savings because of these evil deeds. YOU need to make sure to ALWAYS check for authenticity. Example of this would be to call up the person you’re making a deal with and double check to see if they’re the ones who sent you an email.

Did you know that the average B.E.C loss is $130,000? 

You can actually even buy legit emails for just $11.00 just by looking it up on google. All the hacker needs to do is to buy a piece of software or malware which is just up to $25 dollars to do all this damage. There are tons of people who get victimized as they are unaware of fishing emails sent to them. 91% of cyber attacks and resulting data breaches happen with email.

HACKER: Mistah X

• Victims- mostly women
• Blackmails
• Uses the person’s computer camera to record just whatever they do and uses it to blackmail them
• He uses a software
• He was put in jail but was recently released, that means he is out there 

HACKER: Christopher Chaney

• Targeted: celebrities
• He had no programming experience whatsoever 

Christopher Chaney would use a notepad to list down all the details of a celebrity and open up their emails. Then, he would go to the forget password part and answer the “secret” questions that they give. Since celebrities nearly give all their information to the world it wasn’t that difficult for him to hack into their emails with what he got.

HACKER: Emeka Ndukwu

• Used spoofed domains “typo-squatting”
• Stole about $1 M
• He only had minimal hacking skills

 

See how these people barely required to have extensive hacking skills yet they’ve done all these? It’s so easy to get hacked which is why cybersecurity is very important. Small business is the target of 58% of all malware attacks which is shown in the Verizon insights report statistics of 2018.

Now, what can we do about this?:

• Have a multi-factor authentication (which is requiring two things to access something, like your email):
  • This reduces the chances of having personal information being stolen
  • It is free for most devices
• Beware of SIM swap hack
• Backup data on Hard Drive:
  • This way you would have your files in a potential ransomware attack
• Have a good password 

Remember there is nothing foolproof and it’s so much better to take extra precautions.

Good practices to prevent this from happening to you:

• Multi-factor authentication
• Back your data regularly
• Use strong passwords and change often
• Educate others on this
• Have a network security plan & actually implement it
• Establish a cybersecurity policy
• Conduct tabletop exercise for an incident
• Update your software
• Have a robust process for financial transfers

Even if though these were the tips given to businesses to protect themselves from cyber threats, you should use these too to protect yourself! Spread the word because this is something definitely everyone should be aware of!

 

don’t forget to smile today (:

Yours truly, 

L.O.A.S.H

 

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 © Elizabeth Anne Villoria

 

Future Civilizations with Michio Kaku

Let’s paint an image, imagine a world where everything is super advanced. Where you could actually see flying cars instead of youtube videos of it saying that they exist. And, a world where the sky is truly the limit and people take advantage of it, in a good way. A world where you put on your calendar to meet up with your cousin who recently moved to mars for a few days then return back to earth. Another way to see this would be a world that also has the same technology as seen in Wakanda (to all those whose seen Black Panther “WAKANDA FOREVER!!!”).

Okay, okay back to the topic. Wait, what was it again?

Oh, yeah, having a really really really advanced world which is in no comparison to our world (for now).

Let’s explore more about this with Michio Kaku in his chapter on advanced civilizations. Who is Michio Kaku exactly? First, in my opinion, he is an awesome scientist. He is also an American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science. Okay, now that we’ve covered that back to advanced civilizations. It was actually in 1964 when Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev introduced the classification of advanced civilization. Initially, Kardashev came up with 3 types of civilizations which are the following:

1. Type I civilization:
   • a.k.a the planetary civilization
   • this civilization would be able to employ all the energy that reaches the planet and all the energy it can produce
   • This energy is solar, thermal, hydro, wind, and more
   • Michio Kaku predicts we would have control over things such as earthquakes, the weather, and volcanoes
   • With research, it was found that this type of civilization would harness the power of 7 x 10⁷
   • To get to this state, we would have to boost our current energy production to 100,000 times
   • We are estimated to reach this stage in about 100-200 years
2. Type II civilization:
   • Would also probably be classified as an interplanetary civilization, too
   • We would be able to use the total energy of our sun (a star)
   • Have the ability to move planets and stars
   • To accomplish harnessing the energy of a star, we would be using a megastructure called the Dyson Sphere 
   • We are estimated to reach this stage in about 1000-2000 years 
3. Type III civilization:
   • at this point, everything would be different from today
   • We’d have space travelers zooming everywhere
   • And, the norm would possibly be cyborgs 
   • We would also have the power to use the energy of an entire galaxy
   • This, as Michio Kaku is estimated to happen in about “one hundred thousand years and possibly not for a million years”

Type o to Type I

In case you were wondering, we are a Type o at the moment and for quite some time, too. The first thing that we would have to do is change from Type o to Type I. Now, we have some obstacles that are preventing and slowing down the process of actually advancing forward and helping our world socially and technologically to reach the next stage. As Michio Kaku writes, “the biggest threat facing a Type I civilization may be a self-inflicted one” and some of the challenges include “global warming, bioterrorism, and nuclear proliferation”. 

Problems preventing the transition from Type o to Type I

Expanding on the problems, global warming, which has been a threat to humanity has countless evidence which Kaku notes, the following:

• EVERY major glacier on the Earth is receding
• The Northern polar ice has thinned by an average of 50 PERCENT over the past fifty years
• Large parts of Greenland, which are covered by the world’s second-largest ice sheet, are tawing out
• A section of Antartica the size of Delaware, the Larsen Ice Shelf C, broke off in 2017, and the stability of the ice sheets and ice shelves is now in question
• The last few years have been the hottest ever recorded in human history
• The Earth’s average temperature has increased by the 1.3 degrees Celsius in the past century
• On average, summer is about one week longer than it was in the past 
• We are seeing more and more “one-hundred-year events,” such as forest fires, floods, droughts, and hurricanes

Another great danger which the world and humans face which have been there for quite some time is diseases, plagues, and epidemics. The influenza epidemic killed an estimate of 50 million people whereas the war itself had it’s estimated down to 20 million less than that of influenza. The problem with this? There is such a thing as a weaponized biogerms. Yes, I know, terrible, if there is such a ferocious disease which gets created and released it has the potential to eliminate 98% of the human population! These are some of the things that have made it difficult for our advancement. Breaking from this would be a difficult job and a challenge when we emerge to a new civilization. But, if we work together, stop the competition, the inequality and put our awesome minds together, maybe we could transition to a better and advanced civilization compared to where we are now.

Future civilizations may change and evolve. But, with the decisions that are made today, in this century will help in determining whether that change would be better or for worse. If we take the right steps and choices, it may be possible to be living in a world where we have laser porting (which is a future way of traveling[g to the stars in light speed), space elevators, programmable matter, robotic construction, fusion power, asteroid mining, and a better-civilized world…. 

….and maybe (MAYBE) we might be living in a really cool world like in WAKANDA. Am I right?!?!

Hope you’re having an awesome day, afternoon, or night! Till the next blog, bye!!

Yours truly,

L.O.A.S.H

 

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 © Elizabeth Anne Villoria