 |
|
|
|||||
A bartender makes a Brandy Alexander, pouring equal parts of a Courvoisier V.S.O.P brandy, Marie Brizard crme de cacao, and fresh cream. He shakes it with ice, strains through a fine mesh strainer, and finishes it off with a neat pile of freshly-grated nutmeg. This imagery may seem to be out of a bartending documentary, but it’s actually a scene from an anime series, Bartender: Glass of God. Its this unavoidable, radical attention to detail in the animation itself that tells the story of a Japanese way of lifeputting extreme care into ones craft. During scenes inside the bar, the liquor wall features an elaborate selection of spirits, the labels of which are meticulously drawn. They include Makers Mark bourbon, Roku gin, and Laphroaig scotch, all of which fall under the portfolio of Suntory Global Spirits, which provided production support for the show. The show’s ability to combine real-life liquor brands with attention to detail helps it pull off a focus on craft that isn’t often seen outside of live-action documentary. The series portrays bartending as an empirical trade through the experience of each viewer watching on a screen. Not everyone watching will be a bartender nor will they each absorb every single nuance incorporated into the anime. But the care in the crafts of animation and bartending that Nakazawa meshed together with Suntory and other partners reveal a comprehensive and respectful illustration of the power of a cocktail. A reboot with emphasis on detailsand brands Bartender originated as a Japanese manga, or graphic novel, in 2004 to then be turned into an anime series in 2006. Last year, anime studio Liber released a 12-episode revival, with streamer Crunchyroll releasing episodes dubbed in English from July through October. Creatives behind the reboot said the goal was to be as accurate as possible with cocktails and vibes. We focused on creating an authentic bar ambiance that viewers could experience through anime, ensuring the movements and atmosphere retained a sense of realism, says Takaaki Nakazawa, the series lead producer. [Image: Araki Joh, Kenji Nagatomo/Shueisha, Bar hoppers] Nakazawa and his team pulled this off by consulting renowned Japanese bartenders Akihiro Sakoh of Sakoh Bar in Tokyos Shibuya district and Noriyuki Iguchi of Bar Gaslight in Tokyos Ginza district. Before production, we interviewed them and filmed their actionscocktail-making techniques and handling bottleswhich the animation team studied closely to replicate the movements, Nakazawa says. They also prepared all the cocktails featured in the entire anime series. [Image: Araki Joh, Kenji Nagatomo/Shueisha, Bar hoppers] Suntory’s involvement is integrated throughout the seriesmostly contained to brands behind the barbut the anime also takes its protagonist, Ryu, to the Suntory Whisky Yamazaki Distillery in Osaka, Japan. It looks precisely in the anime the way it looks on Google Maps street view, down to the shrubbery. Every glass of whisky is a coalescence of memorieslike history, distilled, Ryu says to his friends outside the distillery. And even if our guests know nothing about that history, isnt it better that we know the meaning contained within each glass, so we can serve something that transcends flavor alone? [Image: Araki Joh, Kenji Nagatomo/Shueisha, Bar hoppers] This statement sums up the overall message of Bartender, which highlights the longing to feel empowered through human connection. Creating these scenes, with all of the partnerships involved in settings where the Suntory brand is so prominently placed, gives the viewers a sense that they can too feel that sense of empowerment when sipping on its products. Focus on craft Nakazawa has been a huge fan of the original Bartender manga and felt emboldened to reimagine it, borrowing some plot lines but catering it to a new generation. When a customer visits a bar, they dont perceive everything in a straightforward way, he says. Their perception changes depending on their individual circumstances. It’s not what a typical, you know, Western audience would think of immediately, says Crunchyroll CCO Asa Suehira. We want to showcase anime more than just entertainment, but an art form that bridges cultures and tells a universal story. Crunchyroll currently has 15 million subscribers, most of whom are in North America, but the service has been working to expand globally, including into Southeas Asia and India. [Image: Araki Joh, Kenji Nagatomo/Shueisha, Bar hoppers] From an American perspective, the narrative may come across as cliché and over-exaggerated, but hospitality as an art form is taken more seriously in Japanese culture. The anime takes that reverence for craft and applies to a profession most American viewers might not think about much. When you have an excellent bartender, they’re able to connect with a lot of people, says Chris Leavitt, a Las Vegas bartender and cocktail content creator. That aspect was on par with what I experience as a bartender myself. It’s so important for someone who mans a bar to understand that’s the priority over everything. Neither Toho nor Crunchyroll commented on sponsorships other than Suntory. But dozens of other liquor brands, like Beefeater gin, Dolin vermouth and Heering cherry liqueur, are heavily featured in the show too despite not being Suntory brands. Leavitt commends the precise attention given to the animation, from the style in which Ryu holds his bar spoon through his fingers, to the motion of his Japanese hard shake, both in close-ups and wide shots. That’s exactly how these bartenders operate, he says. Nothing was inaccurate. Every drink recipe was on point.
Category:
E-Commerce
It’s popular right now to talk about meritocracy and how we want the most talented people to be able to rise to the top. Yet that’s not the reality for many. Lots of people experience a workplace reality where they see a few charmed people become the darlings of leadership. These darlings get recognized for their contributions and fast-tracked for honor, opportunity, and promotions. Sometimes, that’s for good reason. If you’re feeling jealous of the office favorite, it’s worth trying to be objective. Perhaps you wanted the recognition and reward and didnt get it, and so you’re projecting your frustration on someone who really deserves the recognition. But, there really can be favorites at work. There is a phenomenon in psychology called the “halo effect,” in which an initial positive impression of someone can lead you to interpret all of their subsequent actions more charitably than you might if you didnt have that initial positive impression. So, what do you do if youre not the favorite, and you keep watching others get rewarded for their merit, while you get passed over? Play the long game Halo effects are a result of first impressions. While you dont get a second chance to make a first impression on someone, the merry-go-round of organizations means that youre likely to have many chances to make first impressions on influential people. Your supervisor may move on to another role. You may move to a different part of the organization. That means you need to continue doing good workeven when you arent being recognized for it. Stifle the urge to complain about the success of others. Be a good colleague and develop a reputation of being trustworthy. Over the long-term, that will help. You also have to hone your skills at making a good first impression. If you find that you have trouble communicating in public or in small groups, then consider getting some training. Join a public speaking group like Toastmasters to get more practice. Pay attention to how your habits affect impressions. Show up to meetings and work on time. If you tend to dress in a way that differs from the norm at work, think about whether that is affecting other peoples initial sense of who you are. Individuality and free expression through your appearance are important values, but you should decide whether they are the hill to die on at work. Create new opportunities Even if you dont experience any leadership changes, you can still bring yourself to the attention of new people. Large organizations typically require a lot of projects that cross silos to bring people together in a significant effort. If you get involved in those projects, you’ll invariably meet lots of new people. Seek out ways to be part of these other projectsprovided you have bandwidth to do so. There are two benefits to these engagements. First, you have an opportunity to make a good impression on a new group of people. Second, people you help from other groups may then pass their positive impressions back to your supervisor and others in your area of the organization. These positive comments that come from others can often lead people who know you to reevaluate their impressions. Make your case It’s hard to toot your own horn, and you certainly dont want to do it all the time. But when the right opportunities come about, you need to help guide peoples impressions of you. Your annual performance evaluations with your supervisor are a place where you can try to reset the way you are seen. There’s a tendency to use those evaluations as a way to list all of the things you have done during the year. Rather than just listing the things you have done, focus on specific ways you would like to change how you are perceived by your supervisor. Organize your discussion of your accomplishments for the year in a way that highlights those aspects of your work that you want to emphasize. Help your supervisor to see aspects of your contribution that may not ordinarily be obvious. You wont completely overcome a lackluster first impression with one meeting. But, you may help your supervisor to start seeing aspects of your performance that they have missed in the past. That work can slowly help your supervisor (and others) to see the contribution youre making.
Category:
E-Commerce
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently removed the Future Risk Index tool from its website, it not only took away a critical way to quantify the economic impacts of climate changeit also wiped out years of data from multiple federal agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and the Environmental Protection Agency. But before all that data went offline, two software engineers were able to re-create the toolrebuilding it themselves and sharing it on their GitHub free of charge. The Trump administration has been scrubbing all sorts of information from government websites, from details about U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) work to pages that mention DEI to anything concerning climate change. FEMAs Future Risk Index was another recent casualty of those efforts. The tool, launched in December 2024, mapped the projected economic losses from climate change down to the county level, based on hazards like flooding, drought, heat waves, and wildfires under different emissions scenarios. In February, the map was quietly removed from the government website. But before that happened, Rajan Desai and Jeremy Herzog, who both work at the consulting firm Fulton Ring, were tipped off that it would likely come down. In preparation, they took screenshots and downloaded the available data so that they could rebuild it themselves. Though theyre not climate expertsDesais background is primarily in data science and Herzogs is in software engineeringDesai says they believed this could be one tangible way to actively fight the destruction thats happening at the federal level right now. Theyre not alone; online archivists, amateur or otherwise, have been rushing to save data sets, web pages, and tools from government websites amid the Trump administrations attacks. To Desai and Herzog, it was clear that the tool was important, and the result of months of work across agencies. There was basically about a year’s worth of taxpayer-funded resources that were put into this tool, and it’s ultimately for public consumption, Desai says. (FEMA did not return a request for comment about the tool or its removal.) The Future Risk Index was a supplement to FEMAs National Risk Index, an interactive map that shows which communities are most at risk from various climate hazards. (As of publication, that index is still on FEMAs website). But the Future Risk Index was different in that it included data on the effects of climate change, and how those hazards would become both more frequent and more severe over time. While the National Risk Index could show expected annual losses from climate hazards over the next few years, for example, the Future Risk Index took that further, all the way to mid-century, when the impacts of climate change will be even more extremewhen the sea level could rise more than 8 feet and global temperatures could be 3 degrees Celsius hotter on average. [Image: Fulton Ring] That made the Future Risk Index a crucial tool for people like tribal leaders, local and state elected officials, urban planners, and businesses, because it made the sometimes ambiguous effects of climate change into tangible economic impacts. Looking at Miami-Dade County, for example, the National Risk Index showed that the county could expect annual losses of up to $5.9 million from coastal floodingbut the Future Risk Index showed that by mid-century, even under a lower emissions scenario, those projected annual losses could skyrocket to $29 million. It also showed which hazards (wildfires or floods, for example) would be more or less impactful in a specific area, helping communities prioritize their resources and plan for the future. An internal FEMA worker first reached out to Desai about saving the tool; swift action was crucial. Though they were able to get a version up on their Github and quickly offer an alternative, Desai and Herzog are realistic about the limitations to this ad hoc way of preserving government projects. They took on the task for free, and plan to keep the tool free, but theyre also a small consulting firm with limited resources (Herzog is the cofounder, while Desai is a data scientist there); they cant do much more to advance the toollike allow it to get more granular than county-level datawithout funds. It’s also now, essentially, frozen: It preserves the data the government already gathered, but theres no ability to update it as things change. Thats a reality with any individual or small team of archivists doing this work, and theres a threat, they say, that only big companies with vast resources will keep sharing such data and making these useful tools. In an ideal world, the government would be maintaining data sets, Herzog says. But with those coming offline, the only institutions with the actual capabilities to fill the need and take this work further are giant, private companieswhich have already been acquiescing to the Trump administration (like Googles move to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on its maps). When Desai and Herzog were reading the documents associated with the climate data they downloaded, they saw clearly that FEMA workers interviewed people from every agency with every data set they collected from NOAA, from NASA, etc., Desai says. The amount of work that was poured into this . . . it would take me months to put together. That speaks to the greater loss of these government resources, and the limitation on the private sector to fill the gaps, attempting to replace the work that was being done by thousands of people who have now been fired. More than 200 FEMA workers have been dismissed since January, and NOAA could soon see more than 1,000 firingsin addition to the more than 800 workers who were already let go. The documents the pair downloaded from FEMA also didn’t include all the specifics on methodology; some information was even censored. All that institutional knowledge held by FEMA staffers gets lost tooeven as citizens try to rebuild tools and bring information back online. Even the best efforts that people are doing to archive this data, theres so much information thats lost, Desai says. There’s more information that’s in people’s heads that is just not documented, and we’re never going to know what that information loss looks like.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||