#Pipeline Acceleration

[abhibaj]

The Revenue Engine Blueprint: Kaya Adams on Marketing Ops, ABM, and Sales Enablement

In today's B2B landscape, the convergence of marketing operations, account-based marketing (ABM), and sales enablement forms the backbone of successful revenue engines. Kaya Adams, a seasoned marketing leader, shares her insights on building and optimizing these engines to drive sustainable growth.

Adams emphasizes the importance of integrating various marketing functions to create a cohesive strategy that aligns with sales objectives. This alignment ensures that marketing efforts directly contribute to revenue generation, making the marketing department a pivotal player in business success.

Get full insights@ https://itechseries.com/interviews/revenue-engines-growth/

Building the Foundation: Marketing Operations

Marketing operations serve as the structural framework for executing effective marketing strategies. Adams highlights the necessity of robust processes and technologies to streamline campaign execution and performance tracking.

By implementing standardized workflows and leveraging automation tools, marketing teams can increase efficiency and scalability. This operational excellence allows for more precise targeting and measurement, essential components of revenue marketing.

Precision Targeting: The Role of ABM

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has emerged as a critical strategy for engaging high-value accounts. Adams discusses how ABM enables personalized marketing efforts that resonate with specific accounts, leading to higher conversion rates.

Through close collaboration with sales teams, marketers can identify key accounts and tailor messaging to address their unique pain points. This targeted approach not only enhances engagement but also accelerates the sales cycle, contributing to overall demand generation.

Empowering Sales: The Importance of Enablement

Sales enablement bridges the gap between marketing and sales by providing sales teams with the resources they need to close deals effectively. Adams underscores the value of equipping sales representatives with relevant content, tools, and insights derived from marketing efforts.

This empowerment ensures that sales teams can deliver consistent messaging and value propositions, fostering trust with prospects. Moreover, continuous feedback loops between sales and marketing facilitate the refinement of strategies, enhancing sales and marketing alignment.

Explore the latest marketing and tech insights@ https://itechseries.com/gtm-library/

Driving Demand: Integrated Campaigns

Integrated marketing campaigns are pivotal in generating demand and nurturing leads through the sales funnel. Adams advocates for cohesive campaigns that leverage multiple channels and touchpoints to engage prospects effectively.

By aligning content and messaging across platforms, marketers can create a unified brand experience that guides prospects toward conversion. This holistic approach to demand generation ensures that marketing efforts are synchronized with sales objectives, maximizing impact.

Aligning Forces: Marketing and Sales Synergy

Achieving synergy between marketing and sales teams is essential for a seamless buyer journey. Adams emphasizes the importance of shared goals, open communication, and collaborative planning to foster this alignment.

Regular interdepartmental meetings and joint performance reviews can identify areas for improvement and ensure that both teams are working toward common objectives. This alignment not only enhances efficiency but also drives revenue growth by ensuring that marketing efforts are directly supporting sales initiatives.

Measuring Success: Analytics and KPIs

Data-driven decision-making is at the heart of effective revenue marketing. Adams highlights the significance of establishing clear key performance indicators (KPIs) and utilizing analytics to monitor campaign performance.

By tracking metrics such as lead conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and return on investment, marketers can assess the effectiveness of their strategies. These insights enable continuous optimization, ensuring that marketing efforts are contributing to the company's bottom line.

Future Outlook: Scaling the Revenue Engine

Looking ahead, Adams envisions a future where marketing operations, ABM, and sales enablement are even more tightly integrated. Advancements in technology and data analytics will further enhance the ability to deliver personalized experiences at scale.

Organizations that invest in building agile, data-informed marketing infrastructures will be well-positioned to adapt to changing market dynamics. By fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement, companies can ensure their revenue engines remain robust and effective.

Need more help@ https://itechseries.com/contact-us/

In conclusion, Kaya Adams' insights provide a comprehensive roadmap for building and optimizing revenue engines through the strategic integration of marketing operations, ABM, and sales enablement. By focusing on alignment, precision, and data-driven strategies, B2B marketers can drive sustainable growth and achieve long-term success.

[ivoryratdoggerythethird]

HIS LIL SMILE EVOLVED LOOK AT THIS SMUG LITTLE BABY I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

it's the same smile 😭😭 don't ever let them dull your glow king the trauma only makes you hotter 🙏

kept finding this iconic and cursed one so, bonus:

[msellindia]

Best Sales Automation Software

mSELL describes Best Sales Automation Software as a comprehensive, growth-oriented business solution designed to empower field sales teams and streamline their operations. It's built to automate repetitive, non-revenue-generating tasks, allowing sales professionals to focus on more productive and strategic activities, ultimately boosting efficiency and sales figures.

[reasonsforhope]

Although dam removals have been happening since 1912, the vast majority have occurred since the mid-2010s, and they have picked up steam since the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided funding for such projects. To date, 806 Northeastern dams have come down, with hundreds more in the pipeline. Across the country, 2023 was a watershed year, with a total of 80 dam removals. Says Andrew Fisk, Northeast regional director of the nonprofit American Rivers, “The increasing intensity and frequency of storm events, and the dramatically reduced sizes of our migratory fish populations, are accelerating our efforts.”

Dam removals in the Northeast don’t generate the same media attention as massive takedowns on West Coast rivers, like the Klamath or the Elwha. That’s because most of these structures are comparatively miniscule, built in the 19th century to form ponds and to power grist, textile, paper, saw, and other types of mills as the region developed into an industrial powerhouse.

But as mills became defunct, their dams remained. They may be small to humans, but to the fish that can’t get past them “they’re just as big as a Klamath River dam,” says Maddie Feaster, habitat restoration project manager for the environmental organization Riverkeeper, based in Ossining, New York. From Maryland and Pennsylvania up to Maine, there are 31,213 inventoried dams, more than 4,000 of which sit within the 13,400-square-mile Hudson River watershed alone. For generations they’ve degraded habitat and altered downstream hydrology and sediment flows, creating warm, stagnant, low-oxygen pools that trigger algal blooms and favor invasive species. The dams inhibit fish passage, too, which is why the biologists at the mouth of the Saw Kill transported their glass eels past the first of three Saw Kill dams after counting them...

Jeremy Dietrich, an aquatic ecologist at the New York State Water Resources Institute, monitors dam sites both pre- and post-removal. Environments upstream of an intact dam, he explains, “are dominated by midges, aquatic worms, small crustaceans, organisms you typically might find in a pond.” In 2017 and 2018 assessments of recent Hudson River dam removals, some of which also included riverbank restorations to further enhance habitat for native species, he found improved water quality and more populous communities of beetles, mayflies, and caddisflies, which are “more sensitive to environmental perturbation, and thus used as bioindicators,” he says. “You have this big polarity of ecological conditions, because the barrier has severed the natural connectivity of the system. [After removal], we generally see streams recover to a point where we didn’t even know there was a dam there.”

Pictured: Quassaick Creek flows freely after the removal of the Strooks Felt Dam, Newburgh, New York.

American Rivers estimates that 85 percent of U.S. dams are unnecessary at best and pose risks to public safety at worst, should they collapse and flood downstream communities. The nonprofit has been involved with roughly 1,000 removals across the country, 38 of them since 2018. This effort was boosted by $800 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But states will likely need to contribute more of their own funding should the Trump administration claw back unspent money, and organizations involved in dam removal are now scrambling to assess the potential impact to their work.

Enthusiasm for such projects is on the upswing among some dam owners — whether states, municipalities, or private landholders. Pennsylvania alone has taken out more than 390 dams since 1912 — 107 of them between 2015 and 2023 — none higher than 16 feet high. “Individual property owners [say] I own a dam, and my insurance company is telling me I have a liability,” says Fisk. Dams in disrepair may release toxic sediments that potentially threaten both human health and wildlife, and low-head dams, over which water flows continuously, churn up recirculating currents that trap and drown 50 people a year in the U.S.

Numerous studies show that dam removals improve aquatic fish passage, water quality, watershed resilience, and habitat for organisms up the food chain, from insects to otters and eagles. But removals aren’t straightforward. Federal grants, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Fish and Wildlife Service, favor projects that benefit federally listed species and many river miles. But even the smallest, simplest projects range in cost from $100,000 to $3 million. To qualify for a grant, be it federal or state, an application “has to score well,” says Scott Cuppett, who leads the watershed team at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson River Estuary Program, which collaborates with nonprofits like Riverkeeper to connect dam owners to technical assistance and money...

All this can be overwhelming for dam owners, which is why stakeholders hope additional research will help loosen up some of the requirements. In 2020, Yellen released a study in which he simulated the removal of the 1,702 dams in the lower Hudson watershed, attempting to determine how much sediment might be released if they came down. He found that “the vast majority of dams don’t really trap much sediment,” he says. That’s good news, since it means sediment released into the Hudson will neither permanently worsen water quality nor build up in places that would smother or otherwise harm underwater vegetation. And it shows that “you would not need to invest a huge amount of time or effort into a [costly] sediment management plan,” Yellen says. It’s “a day’s worth of excavator work to remove some concrete and rock, instead of months of trucking away sand and fill.” ...

On a sunny winter afternoon, Feaster, of Riverkeeper, stands in thick mud beside Quassaick Creek in Newburgh, New York. The Strooks Felt Dam, the first of seven municipally owned dams on the lower reaches of this 18-mile tributary, was demolished with state money in 2020. The second dam, called Holden, is slated to come down in late 2025. Feaster is showing a visitor the third, the Walsh Road Dam, whose removal has yet to be funded. “This was built into a floodplain,” she says, “and when it rains the dam overflows to flood a housing complex just around a bend in the creek.” ...

On the Quassaick, improvements are evident since the Strooks dam came out. American eel and juvenile blue crabs have already moved in. In fact, fish returns can sometimes be observed within minutes of opening a passageway. Says Schmidt, “We’ve had dammed rivers where you’ve been removing the project and when the last piece comes out a fish immediately storms past it.”

There is palpable impatience among environmentalists and dam owners to get even more removals going in the Northeast. To that end, collaborators are working to streamline the process. The Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, has formed an interagency fish passage task force with other federal agencies, including NOAA and FEMA, that have their own interests in dam removals. American Rivers is working with regional partners to develop priority lists of dams whose removals would provide the greatest environmental and safety benefits and open up the most river miles to the most important species. “We’re not going to remove all dams,” [Note: mostly for reasons dealing with invasive species management, etc.] says Schmidt. “But we can be really thoughtful and impactful with the ones that we do choose to remove.”

-via Yale Environment 360, February 4, 2025

[stealingyourbones]

Short DPXDC Prompts #957

Wes is a worker at STAR labs working on maintaining The Pipeline on it’s first start up. Everything goes well… for a minute. Then the particle accelerator explodes. A piece of rubble hits a corner of his temple and everything goes white.

[world-of-wales]

NEWS :

A NEW PARTNERSHIP BETWEN EARTHSHOT AND BUILDERS VISION HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED ✨️

The Earthshot Prize has announced a strategic partnership with Builders Vision - an impact platform focused on scaling innovative and sustainable solutions across oceans, food, and energy.

Ahead of the Blue Economy Finance Forum in Monaco and the 2025 UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, this strategic partnership will allow Builders Vision and The Earthshot Prize to work together to accelerate much-needed innovation, elevate global awareness, and increase investment in ocean-focused initiatives.

Just 3% of the world’s oceans are currently fully protected, underscoring the need for more investment and support to address this critical gap by the end of the decade – a focus for both organisations.

Achieving this vision, however, requires addressing a significant challenge of the cumulative $900 billion funding gap between now and 2030 for ocean conservation and regeneration. The partnership aims to bridge that gap by bringing together key leaders, government representatives, partners, and institutions committed to the blue economy.

To bolster and strengthen The Prize’s pipeline of ocean solutions and increase the level of investment, Builders Vision will play a key role in supporting The Prize’s ocean strategy, leveraging its expertise to:

● Support pivotal initiatives, including the development of new ocean funds

● Map the ocean innovation and funding landscape

● Generate actionable insights to guide investors, innovators, policymakers, and funders

● Convene a global audience to foster collaboration and drive solutions

● Highlight the ocean’s critical impact and commercial opportunities through storytelling

Builders Vision brings a deep commitment to impact and sees this partnership as an opportunity to increase visibility, funding, and innovation for marine ecosystems.

At the 2025 Blue Economy Finance Forum, The Earthshot Prize and Builders Vision will convene public and private sector leaders to demonstrate the investment case for the ocean and showcase both innovative investment opportunities and successful innovations that support and grow a sustainable blue economy.

The Prince of Wales will be delivering remarks at the 2025 Blue Economy Finance Forum in the final Heads of States and Government session.

A highlight of the event will be a session featuring ocean partners, investors, and HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, where ten investment-ready ventures redefining ocean-based industries will be presented, offering investors exclusive access to the next wave of innovative Earthshot ocean solutions. Earthshot Finalists Abalobi, Notpla, Coast 4C and Nature Metrics will be taking part.

[mtnman451]

Another One:

I've made no secret that I have a fondness for "Old Sayings." I like them because there's so much truthfulness in them. Here's one I really love. ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. One thing we should understand when dealing with Leftists, Liberals, and Democrats is that they will rabidly support causes vocally but when it comes right down to it their actions show they don't really support those causes they're just using those causes per se and are using those causes in an attempt to control us. Let's examine some of their actions concerning "Climate Change." As we know they vehemently support the assertion that Climate Change is real and accelerating every day no action is taken against it. They're against any proliferation of anything that has to do with the promotion or use of Fossil Fuels. If that truly was the case then why, after protesting against The Keystone XL Pipeline and losing in 2017, did most ALL the protesters there leave a Toxic Waste Dump behind? It would stand to reason, if they have such a reverence for The Environment, it should be for ALL of the environment not just one part of it, correct? That's what I thought but I guess I'm wrong.

Now fast forward to what's happening in The US now. Elon Musk, due to the success of his Electric Car Company, Tesla, used to be the darling of the Left and Climate Change supporters. Now, since Musk has supported President Trump and his helping him in his quest to slim down our government, Leftists, Liberals and Democrats have made him Public Enemy Number 1. They're selling their Teslas, Vandalizing Tesla dealerships, charging stations and, in fact, trashing and destroying Tesla's that belong to other people. Now here's the rub. Everyone knows that the batteries in Electric Cars are filled with, yep, Toxic Heavy Metals which when introduced into our environment from a ruptured battery of a vandalized Electric car would contaminate the environment but it would seem that Leftists, Liberals and Democrats are good with that as long as they're the ones doing it. Strange, huh?

If you don't think EVERYTHING they do is about Controlling You, Think Again.

Btw, the saying "Actions Speak Louder than Words" can also be applied to what Leftists, Liberals and Democrats are doing in the areas of Law & Order also. They SAY they're all for The Rule of Law and Law & Order but at every turn they cause nothing but chaos as their DA's release violent criminals without bail, they violently protest in support of people that hate our allies, support Terrorist Organizations, and they go "Judge Shopping" to find sympathetic Judges to stop the deportation of violent international Narco/Terrorist Gang members. If you ask me, those are some strange things for people who say they value The Rule of Law and Law & Order in our country to be doing, don't you think?

[bnhaobservation]

Technological progress in BNHA

So, this post was inspired by how, in replay to this post @donquixotehomura said:

And the fact that it was stated that the appearance of quirks had caused society’s science to be slowed down due to the chaos “we would have been able to take interstellar trips/travel by now” or something among those lines, yeah the initial chaos would have caused that but then using quirks and such science should have been catapulted into very advanced levels, like with the damn technology for hero support and the science fiction technology levels in UA (honestly they can move buildings, have force fields, the robots etc).

There are people with intelligence quirks, people with technology quirks, and many quirks that could seriously advance science really quickly, I guess no one thought of it cause… We have super powers now… Ig

Also like the century or two is a long enough time for technology to advance fast if we use the same rate technology advances in our modern day world (the more science advances the easier/faster it is for more science to advance) then yeah in this amount of time there should have been much more science and most certainly much more quirk based science…. What I’m saying is someone would have invented a way to nullify quirks if even temporarily on top of putting regular science back on track.

Like here I’ll reference the meta dampeners from the Flash TV series (Arrow Verse, CW) the meta humans appeared only in one city, and while we’re never given a solid count of how many there are we know that there are about 200 give or take that choose to become criminals and about 10 or 20 of the revolving door of meta heroes that work with the Flash, all that and Cisco and the Government (well ARGUS) invented a ton of shit to counter Meta Humans, Meta Dampeners that can be put all over facilities, the “boot” a device Cisco invented, basically a meta cuff bazooka (I can’t really explain it but you can look it up), the meta cuffs that were a thing given to the Flash in star laps from like, basically month one, Meta Prisons I mean there is the repurposed Pipeline for the Particle Accelerator in Star Laps that was used but then apparently Iron Heights now has their own Meta Wing with Meta Dampeners in the walls, cells and everything.

Yeah I know the writing in that show is also fucked and in need of divine help at this point but the in the show it all takes about a YEAR OR TWO!!! for all the anti meta human weapons and devices (I’m pretty sure I missed a few, like some energy guns that basically shock the metas, the specific ones such as speedster weapons etc)… Like… Two years…..BNHA world had 100x that amount of time and NO ONE CAME UP WITH A QUIRK DAMPENER DEVICE?!!!

I do remember the ‘Maidens’ but there are just glorified cuffs

So many things to say...

Let’s start with the Doylist explanation for why Horikoshi had characters claiming that without Quirk age starting they would be enjoying interstellar travels.

It’s clear Horikoshi wanted his story to be placed in the future but, at the same time, he wanted the future to look like present time so people dress like we do and use technology that we use.

For him it’s practical as he doesn’t have to create a futuristic setting and it helps readers to better identify with the characters in the BNHA world because, apart for the Quirk, they’re like them.

Only... he could have just said it wasn’t the future, the characters were also in 2014 but the one OF A PARALLEL REALITY in which, instead than world war 2, humanity had to deal with the birth of Quirks.

Why this would have been a better option?

Because the birth of Quirk wasn’t the equivalent to a worldwide nuclear war sometime in the 1990s has resulted in the destruction of most of civilization like in “Hokuto no Ken”, no it was merely the equivalent of a civil war.

And an ongoing war has NEVER slowed up the technological progress, it has HURRIED it up because both parties try to use improvements in technology to win over the other party. Hell, even in middle age people would invent new things when a war was starting, even if it were just a siege, even in ancient Roman age.

We even see it in the story after Japan becomes nobody’s land and the coffin in the sky and All Might’s armor are created.

Of course the losing/minority side might have had more trouble to access technology but the idea all of sudden progress is halted is ludicrous because it would require humanity to lose access to technology, as in scientists, energy sources, machineries and this doesn’t happen.

Short after Yoichi was kidnapped with see AFO in a building and all around there are artificial lights, a sign electricity is working. Bruce can run a computer and tell Kudo he now has two Quirks, meaning he also has some freshly invented machine that can tell him so.

On the other side, progress continuing doesn’t mean in 100 years we’ll enjoy interstellar travels like we do with a fly between America and Europe.

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) had plans for the plane and the helicopters but the first heavier-than-air flying machine, considered the invention of the airplane, occurred on December 17, 1903, while the first manned, free flight of a helicopter occurred on November 13, 1907. The first man went to space on April 12, 1961 but currently we’re at around only 721 people him included who managed to also travel in space.

Progress doesn’t happen simply because time passes by but because someone discovers something that allows it to happen.

Men had to depend FOR CENTURIES on fire only to light their houses until someone came up with a way to use electricity, FOR CENTURIES we had mails and messages that needed to be carried from a place to the other, then someone came up with the telegraph and the phone and now we’ve email and video calls.

So no, Quirks wouldn’t halt progress, but we’ve no way to know how far progress would have gone. Maybe it would have never been to the point of granting interstellar travels because humanity would have still missed the key invention/energy source/material needed to archive them.

So the best Watsonian explanation we could offer to the words of that ‘important guy’ Midoriya speaks about in chap 59 is that he’s a misinformed moron or that aims to spread discontent toward people with Quirk, so maybe he was one of those guys who were racist toward them.

The Doylist explanation though is that Horikoshi didn’t plan well his past which is something that occurs way too often in the story.

Now… why no one came up with a Quirk suppressing device and would it be possible to come up with one?

Quirks are fictional, it’s possible to create a Quirk suppressing device only if Horikoshi says it’s possible to do so.

It’s not a matter of science, it’s a matter of fiction, fiction that allows drugs like Trigger that give a boost to a Quirk regardless of the type of the Quirk or Quirk erasing bullets or a Quirk that erase Quirks, or a Quirk that steals Quirks but doesn’t allow for suppressing Quirk cuffs, so that people with strong Quirks once arrested are wrapped in bindings and then closed in tubes (the Iron Maidens) and then they’re kept always tied and immobilized in Tartarus with machine guns aimed at them and ready to shoot if they do so much as scratch their back.

THIS IS A NARRATIVE CHOICE, it’s not something that had to be done because there was no other way around it. I’ve a hard time thinking it never dawned on Horikoshi to create such devices (true, storywise it would have stopped a jailed AFO from communicating with his other self outside of prison but did we really need that?).

And it’s hard to explain it in a Watsonian way because we can’t claim people/governments wouldn’t be interested in having Quirk suppressing cuffs as it would be much easier and much more human to manage Villains with them… and Villains too would likely be interested in a way to suppress other people’s Quirks, and since we’ve drugs that boost Quirks, it’s hard to think they couldn’t come up with a drug that has the opposite level but can only keep people unconscious or tied.

[mariacallous]

What would a force hostile to the United States—a nation whose power has been the envy of the world for more than seven decades—do if it were able to set up an influential pipeline for policy ideas directly to the White House? Or, better yet, if it could somehow burrow into the mind of its president?

With so many points of U.S. strength, it is hard to know where to begin. One might start by fanning a backlash against the long-standing, if halting, trend in U.S. society toward inclusiveness, which has gradually sought to bring disfavored groups into the fold of the country’s prosperity. This might include waging a war against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—one that, in its most Orwellian dimension, would extend to policing the use of words such as “bias,” “privilege,” and “equality” in government agencies.

One might pull the rug out from under a country sitting on the doorstop of Washington’s long-standing European allies, which has suffered invasion and continued assault from a revanchist autocracy bent on expansion. For instance, one might shy away from identifying Russia as the aggressor in Ukraine and sometimes blame the latter for the conflict, all while conceding major Russian war aims even before the start of peace negotiations.

One might criticize European democracies such as Germany for not providing more space to extreme-right political parties that have openly flirted with ideology reminiscent of the Nazis. Or one might disparage longtime friends and democratic allies, from Canada to Japan, saying that they are cheating the United States, imposing high tariffs on them, and demanding that they pay for the security protection they get from Washington.

One might ravage the staff and budget of the Internal Revenue Service, the body that collects the taxes that fund the government, while passing budget resolutions that will provide large tax breaks to the wealthy—all but ensuring massive increases in future budget deficits. While doing so, one might insinuate that Social Security—a pillar of the U.S. political compact since the Great Depression—is being fleeced by millions of phantom super-centenarians, whose relatives cheat the system by collecting benefit checks long after their deaths.

One might withdraw from United Nations bodies such as the Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization, thus ceding influence to countries that make no pretense of respecting human dignity and freedom, and ending U.S. leadership in combatting diseases that threaten people worldwide.

One might try to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides technical assistance and funding to much poorer countries to boost their economic development while also bolstering U.S. soft power.

One might liquidate the country’s international broadcasting capacity, ending the delivery of relatively objective news to hundreds of millions of people who live under dictatorships, including in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.

One might seek to hinder the development of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind while pushing the acceleration of fossil fuel production, not only ensuring huge environmental damage, but also ceding U.S. leadership in a sector that is vital to future wealth and competition.

Why stop there, though? One could move to weaken a body such as the National Institutes of Health, which has long been a major force in the United States’ world-leading medical research, or even take a swipe at one its biggest recent triumphs: the breakneck development of the mRNA vaccine technology that helped the United States become a global leader in limiting the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are so many ideas for how to sap Washington’s strength that one could imagine fatigue setting in among those charged with manning the pipeline to the president imagined at the outset of this column. But it turns out that U.S. President Donald Trump does not even need such a unit. And there is little sign of his administration slowing down its efforts to sap the country’s vitality. His team’s other ideas involve hindering nuclear safety and research for nuclear energy and weapons, degrading the country’s ability to monitor or even discuss global warming, and defunding weather forecasts. There are many more.

With a list as prodigious as this, it has taken me too long to get to perhaps the brightest, and most insidious, idea of all for bringing the United States down to the status of an average power: pursuing a campaign of destruction against the country’s world-leading universities. The Trump administration is already carrying this out on several fronts, with little sign that most Americans are concerned about or even aware of what is happening.

This campaign was signaled in advance by hostile rhetoric from conservatives such as Vice President J.D. Vance. Even before he was elected, Vance, himself a product of elite education, spoke of U.S. higher education as “the enemy.” Since Trump returned to office, his government has acted accordingly. It has moved to undercut federal support for university-based research, tightened visa access for international students, and made U.S. campuses a priority area in its war against diversity. Potentially most damaging of all, it has weaponized the idea of antisemitism as a tool to extend the government’s political control into university departments and classrooms.

Full disclosure: I have been a professor at Columbia University—ground zero for much of this campaign—for nearly two decades. Protests on my campus over Israel’s offensive tactics in Gaza have been the pretext for much of this; now, the Trump administration practically equates criticism of Israel with legally punishable antisemitism.

I lived and taught through the period of campus protests, and it is my sense that they were overwhelmingly peaceful, but I would never rule out the possibility that Jewish students were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable by the signs, slogans, or even taunts of some individual protestors. However, this should not be used to justify restricting one of the most vital U.S. freedoms and the essence of the country’s culture of excellence in higher education: free speech.

By arresting and seeking to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and legal permanent resident of the United States, for participating in these protests, the administration has revealed its hand and shown that its war on education and war on speech are fundamentally intertwined. Not only has Khalil never been charged with a crime, but in interviews, Department of Homeland Security officials have been unable to clearly explain his alleged offense.

The punishments and supposed remedies run together. The Trump administration has canceled $400 million in government funding to Columbia unless the university fulfills a series of wildly unreasonable demands. This includes the requirement that Columbia’s department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies be placed under “receivership,” which would remove oversight of the department from its faculty.

“We’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. It’s been coming and coming, and not everybody is prepared to read it that way,” Lee Bollinger, Columbia’s longtime former president, said last week. “Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions. You neutralize the branches of government; you neutralize the media; you neutralize the universities, and you’re on your way.”

Although routinely unacknowledged as such, the country’s universities are the crown jewel in its entire democratic system. Some, such as Harvard University, are considerably older than the nation itself. But more than that, the United States’ sense of itself—of law, of science, of the humanities—flows from its campuses and their great tradition of academic freedom, including free speech. This is also true of the United States’ economic, technological, and military prowess.

Universities have been able to buttress U.S. leadership largely because of their pull on ambitious people from all over the world, many of whom have fervently embraced U.S. ideals, becoming naturalized as citizens or spreading democratic values overseas. The powerful force that attracts them is built on more than individual hopes of wealth, or even of personal achievement. It is built on freedom, and once that ultimate value—practically an American brand—is destroyed, it may never be restored.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this Chicago Tribune story:

Water is sacred and central to the way of life of Indigenous tribes in the Great Lakes region.

For generations, the interconnected streams, rivers and lakes have been a source of food, transportation, and cultural identity through ceremonies and traditions.

That is why they have been fighting for over a decade to remove the Line 5 pipeline not only from land they own but also from proximity to the life-giving watershed.

Line 5, owned by Calgary-based Enbridge, transports over 20 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids from Wisconsin to Ontario each day via the Straits of Mackinac, which connect lakes Michigan and Huron. And each day, the pipeline’s aging infrastructure and vulnerability to anchor strikes pose a risk to the drinking water of tens of millions in the Great Lakes region, according to activists and Indigenous communities.

“I always tell people that the Straits of Mackinac is like a heart attack waiting to happen, when we’ve already suffered all these other injuries and risks elsewhere along the line,” said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, 50 miles north of the straits.

More than 1 million gallons of oil have reportedly spilled in the past 50 years along the pipeline’s 645-mile route, though never at the straits. Experts say it’s hard to quantify, or even imagine, the impact of that much oil spilled in varying quantities over such a long time. Operators are only required to report spills of a particular size or cost threshold.

Gravelle, who recently joined another Ojibwe tribal leader in Chicago to talk about their fight against Line 5, said a component of their resistance is rooted in tribal sovereignty.

“But if you pull the scope back, it’s really about clean water,” she said. “And for us to not respect that or want to take care of it is very shocking, especially when we’re running into water issues in other parts of the country as well as other parts of the globe.”

President Donald Trump declared an “energy emergency” the day he took office. Under the executive order, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it would accelerate the review process for Enbridge’s project to build an underground tunnel to house a new Line 5 pipeline.

In a March letter, tribal leaders said the Army Corps had failed them and said the final straw was not being consulted over the decision to expedite Enbridge’s construction permit under the emergency declaration.

“How is it an emergency when (Line 5) is already operational, product is already flowing through it? You’re forcing these permits through under the guise of an emergency,” Gravelle said. “I saw it as a convenient loophole to force this project ahead.”

[fezwearingjellybananas]

Cisco as Killer Frost AU for the 5+ headcanons :D

That seems like an interesting idea, thank you for that one, there's a few points that could happen? Post Flashpoint it's the fall out from Dante's death? Or maybe...

The Cold Gun core was never intended to be a weapon. It was a fast-acting super-cooling mechanism meant to be part of the accelerator's failsafe measures. Hartley had been the one to give Cisco the task of improving the existing cooling method and Cisco was pretty sure this was meant to be a test, so he was definitely using it to make Hartley eat his words.

2. It's not a test, though Hartley's not going to trust Cisco with that. He managed to weasel back into Harrison's good graces about the accelerator once already- clearly it was his own calculations that were wrong, he'd only been inside to check and of course that was what happened, of course Harrison Wells couldn't possibly be wrong, of course he knew so much more than Hartley- but he knows it won't happen again. He knows no one else will take his word over Harrison's, he knows his job is already on thin ice. But he also knows if Harrison won't listen to him, it's better for him to be at S.T.A.R. Labs where he can sneak his own additional failsafes into the accelerator to at least mitigate the damage Harrison is about to unleash on the city.

3. Eobard is distracted in the few days before. Barry Allen decides to choose now to run off to Starling City, where he's away from Eobard's cameras for the first time in a long time, where Eobard tracking his phone shows he's at Queen Consolidated, and now Eobard has to at the very last minute find a way to make sure Barry Allen of all people actually gets to where he needs him to be on time. He can't run and get him himself, not yet, he can't get there and back himself, why is Barry so frustrating all the time. And because Barry has been causing problems yet again, now he only has a few hours to undo whatever it was Hartley just slipped into his accelerator under the guise of doing his final checks on the mechanics. This is all Barry's fault.

4. Ronnie Raymond isn't a physicist. He's a structural engineer. His job isn't to make the accelerator work, that's Doctor Wells and Hartley, his job is to make sure that whatever happens, the building stays standing. That everyone in that building is as safe as they can possibly be from any failures within the accelerator. Ronnie Raymond does his job that night. But he can do more, he knows every failsafe, he knows how to shut the accelerator down manually if every other system fails, except he brought Cisco down with him and now Cisco's saying something about something he made and gave to Hartley and, before Ronnie can stop him, Cisco is the one running into the Pipeline that night. Cisco is the one who doesn't make it out the Pipeline that night.

5. There are parts in the accelerator that were not on Eobard's original plans. Cisco told Ronnie Hartley put at least one of them there. Jax, Hartley's new intern- meant to keep him occupied and out the accelerator, so much for that plan- has disappeared, Hartley has some figures that line up with what the accelerator did instead of Eobard's calculations he made sure would show it working, and Hartley trusted no one with his suspicions and now seems to be lying low, he makes it so easy for Eobard to pin the failure on him.

6. The first thing Cisco feels when he wakes up is cold. He doesn't know where he is, doesn't know what happened, all he can feel is this incredible cold.

7. There's a man next to him, shivering, and Cisco reaches a hand to help him up and watches him cry out and pull back, away from Cisco, away from where Cisco sees ice forming as he draws the man's body temperature into himself. He pushes himself back, falls off the table he seems to be lying on, out the room he's in, the morgue he's been put in, and Cisco runs.

And he doesn't stop.

8. Barry Allen wakes up in S.T.A.R. Labs nine months after he was struck by lightning, right on schedule. He wakes up to two people standing over him, Doctor Caitlin Snow, and her fiancé, Ronnie Raymond.

9. The first time Barry hears Cisco Ramon's name, it's the first day he wakes up. Caitlin gives him the suit Cisco made, designed for firefighters, never finished, and by some miracle (or rather, by Eobard's interference), it fits Barry perfectly. Barry has a few ideas, and Caitlin doesn't think Cisco would mind at all.

10. The second time Barry hears Cisco Ramon's name, it's the day he faces Leonard Snart and the Cold Gun. Ronnie recognises the device Cisco designed, the one meant to protect and the one that killed him. It could only have killed him, the body they pulled from the Pipeline was frozen solid, and part of Ronnie still thinks it should have been him.

11. The first time Barry meets the man they call Killer Frost he doesn't find out his name. He runs Bette's body out onto the water, watches her sink and glow, and runs back to shore. Eiling is leaving, packing his soldiers up like nothing had happened, and Barry plans on confronting him there and then, but before he can get close a blast of ice freezes his feet to the floor. He recognises him- the short, spiked white hair like frost, Barry saw him with Eiling earlier. He braces himself for a fight, but the man just warns him to stay away from Eiling and a circus, and leaves him trapped just out of sight while he heads back to the soldiers.

12. Frost is the codename of one of A.R.G.U.S.'s agents. Barry finds that one out in Starling City after the Captain Boomerang adventure. They call him Killer Frost because, well. He's very good at his job.

13. He shows up a few other times too, usually to offer a hand at a moment Barry needed it. There's no Pipeline this time around, something was already happening at Iron Heights, and Barry finds Frost there too. He doesn't trust Frost's employers, but something about the man himself seems sad, and just seems to draw Barry in.

14. Without a Pipeline, Hartley has to break into the lab the old-fashioned way. He's met with anger from Caitlin and Ronnie, who blame him for their friend's death, and curiosity from Barry.

15. Hartley was telling the truth- they find Jefferson Jackson merged with Professor Stein. They manage to separate them, Jax doesn't think Hartley would have sabotaged anything, and Hartley tells Barry he needs to be careful of something called the Circus, just like Frost did.

16. And Jax has something else to tell Barry- just Barry, he doesn't know if anyone else would believe him- but Frost was there when Eiling took Professor Stein. Frost helped them get away again. And Jax just got a glimpse, but he's certain Killer Frost is Cisco Ramon.

17. Barry has spent over half his life with people not believing him. He knows what it's like for no one to listen to you, even when you're right. Jax he knows he can trust. He's already asked Felicity and she's found a file about an A.R.G.U.S. project called the Circus, and she's working on getting him more about what that is. But if Barry can trust Hartley, then he can't trust Doctor Wells.

18. He's pretty sure he can trust Caitlin and Ronnie. They're his friends. He's been given a wedding invitation now they've finally set a date. But Cisco is their friend and Barry followed up on Jax's theory by tracking down Dante Ramon who is adamant his brother is still out there somewhere, that they never got given his body and there was a reason, he's so sure he's seen Cisco, but he's still not sure about telling them, not until he's got proof. Joe is Joe, Barry knows he's had some doubts about Wells before, and there's one person Barry knows without a shadow of a doubt he can trust with everything, one person who will believe him without question.

19. Iris is not impressed it's taken Barry this long to confess he's the Flash, but she does know her mentor at Picture News is working on something about Wells, and she might be able to ask him some questions. And Eddie- Barry reasoned he probably shouldn't ask Iris to keep a secret like this from her boyfriend, and Eddie's his friend, he trusts him too- admits Joe asked him to sneak around Wells' house after Hartley smashed that skylight to see if there was anything suspicious.

20. Eddie also has a politician for a father. He might be able to get Barry some more answers about what exactly the Circus is too.

21. Caitlin keeps getting these weird dreams about Doctor Wells murdering her. And also about Cisco trying to save her.

22. The Circus is where A.R.G.U.S. keeps dangerous metahumans and aliens. And ones they can use. And when they found Cisco, running and scared and alone, they thought they could use him. His powers hurt people, that's all he can do now, but if he stays loyal, if he acts like one of them, if he only hurts the people they want him to, then he stays out of those cells. He can do that. He can follow all the orders Agent Gunn gives him.

23. Cisco knows why they're interested in the Flash. He could either be very dangerous, or very useful, or both. He could be another agent just like him, and he doesn't deserve that. The Flash seems so earnest about wanting to help people, he seems so good, and his new orders to bring him in feel wrong. But someone with the Flash's powers made Eiling disappear, someone with the Flash's powers is behind Simon Stagg's disappearance, and it was only a matter of time before they found an excuse to bring him in, and it was always going to be down to Cisco, he's the only one with the powers to do that. He can't stall forever. But he could disobey an order. His first one. He could talk to the Flash, get his own answers.

24. Barry Allen first meets Cisco Ramon at Jitters. He has some questions, ones Barry can only answer by telling him about the Man in Yellow. He's less forthcoming about his own answers, but Barry has his friends, he's managed to piece together enough, and Cisco denies none of it. He just goes to leave, leaving Barry with a coffee and a faint smile, and Barry grabs his hand and tells him one last thing before he goes.

25. Cisco disobeyed an order. He's still refusing to bring the Flash in. He knew what that would mean. He knew they've had a cell ready for him since the moment he arrived here. Maybe before. He knows no one has ever left the Circus, not alive. He knows no one knows where it is, and everyone he loves thinks he's dead, they would never know to look for him. He should be scared of this. Six hours ago, he was. He's not now though. The metal closes closes in front of him and Cisco just closes his eyes and remembers what Barry told him.

"I'll save you, Cisco. I promise."

And Cisco, without hesitation, believes him.

[5+ headcanons for an AU]

[abhibaj]

Precision, Pipeline, and Performance: Annie Arora's Blueprint for ABM Success

In the dynamic realm of B2B Marketing, the shift from generic outreach to targeted engagement has been profound. Traditional methods, often characterized by broad campaigns, are giving way to more nuanced strategies that prioritize individual account needs. This evolution underscores the growing importance of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) in today's competitive landscape.

Annie Arora, the Account-Based Marketing Manager at Icertis, exemplifies this transition. With a rich background in customer marketing and integrated campaigns, she brings a wealth of experience to the table. Her insights, as shared in a recent interview, shed light on the transformative power of ABM when executed with precision and purpose.

Get full insights@ https://itechseries.com/interviews/abm-personalization-performance/

Personalization: The Heartbeat of Modern ABM

At the core of effective ABM lies Personalized Marketing. Annie emphasizes that understanding the unique challenges and goals of each account is paramount. By tailoring content and engagement strategies to resonate with specific stakeholders, marketers can foster deeper connections and drive meaningful interactions.

This approach moves beyond mere customization; it's about creating experiences that reflect a genuine understanding of the client's business landscape. Such personalization not only enhances engagement but also positions the brand as a trusted partner in the client's success journey.

Aligning Marketing with Revenue: A Strategic Imperative

One of the standout themes from Annie's discourse is the alignment of marketing initiatives with revenue objectives. In the past, marketing and sales often operated in silos, leading to fragmented strategies and missed opportunities. Today, the integration of these functions is essential for driving pipeline growth and achieving business goals.

Annie advocates for a collaborative approach where marketing efforts are directly linked to revenue outcomes. By focusing on metrics that matter—such as pipeline contribution and deal acceleration—marketers can demonstrate tangible value and secure their seat at the strategic table.

Building Strategic Programs: The Blueprint for Scalable Success

Developing strategic programs that are both scalable and effective is a challenge many marketers face. Annie's methodology involves a blend of data-driven insights and creative execution. By leveraging analytics to identify high-potential accounts and crafting tailored engagement plans, she ensures that marketing efforts are both efficient and impactful.

These programs are not static; they evolve based on feedback and performance metrics. Continuous optimization ensures that the strategies remain aligned with changing market dynamics and client needs, fostering sustained success.

The Role of Technology in Enhancing ABM Strategies

Incorporating technology into ABM strategies has become indispensable. Tools that offer insights into buyer behavior, content performance, and engagement levels empower marketers to make informed decisions. Annie highlights the importance of selecting platforms that integrate seamlessly with existing systems, ensuring a cohesive approach to account management.

Moreover, automation facilitates the delivery of personalized content at scale, allowing marketers to maintain a high level of customization without compromising efficiency. This technological synergy is crucial for executing sophisticated ABM campaigns that resonate with target audiences.

Explore the latest marketing and tech insights@ https://itechseries.com/gtm-library/

Measuring Success: Beyond Traditional Metrics

Traditional marketing metrics, while informative, often fall short in capturing the full impact of ABM initiatives. Annie advocates for a more holistic approach to measurement, one that encompasses both quantitative and qualitative indicators. Metrics such as account engagement levels, influence on deal progression, and customer feedback provide a more comprehensive view of campaign effectiveness.

This nuanced understanding of success enables marketers to refine their strategies continuously, ensuring that efforts are aligned with overarching business objectives and delivering measurable value.

Navigating Challenges: Adaptability in a Dynamic Landscape

The B2B marketing landscape is characterized by rapid changes and evolving client expectations. Annie underscores the importance of adaptability in navigating these challenges. Whether it's responding to shifts in buyer behavior or integrating new technologies, a flexible approach is key to maintaining relevance and effectiveness.

Furthermore, fostering a culture of continuous learning within marketing teams ensures that professionals are equipped to handle emerging trends and complexities, positioning the organization for sustained success.

The Future of ABM: Embracing Innovation and Collaboration

Looking ahead, the future of ABM lies in embracing innovation and fostering cross-functional collaboration. Annie envisions a landscape where marketing, sales, and customer success teams work in unison to deliver cohesive and compelling experiences to clients. This integrated approach not only enhances customer satisfaction but also drives business growth.

Innovation, particularly in leveraging emerging technologies and data analytics, will further refine ABM strategies, enabling more precise targeting and personalized engagement. By staying at the forefront of these developments, marketers can ensure their strategies remain effective and impactful.

Need more help @ https://itechseries.com/contact-us/

Conclusion

Annie Arora's insights offer a valuable roadmap for marketers seeking to elevate their ABM strategies. By prioritizing personalization, aligning with revenue goals, leveraging technology, and embracing adaptability, organizations can craft compelling campaigns that resonate with target accounts and drive meaningful results. As the B2B landscape continues to evolve, the principles outlined by Annie serve as guiding tenets for marketers aiming to achieve excellence in Account-Based Marketing.

[t4t4t]

I asked "DeepSeek" about Tiqqun. Lmao:

Building communism in the face of climate collapse—drawing from the insurrectionary, communizing, and anti-state traditions of groups like **Tiqqun** and **The Invisible Committee**—requires a radical rethinking of politics, economy, and everyday life. Their works (*The Coming Insurrection*, *Theory of Bloom*, *How Is It To Be Done?*) suggest that communism isn’t a future state to be achieved but a **process of destituent struggle**—dissolving capitalist social relations while constructing new forms of life.

Here are some key pathways, informed by their thought:

### **1. Destitution, Not Revolution**

Tiqqun/The Invisible Committee reject the classical revolutionary model (seizing state power) in favor of **destituent practices**—withdrawing from, sabotaging, and rendering capitalist governance impossible.

- **Sabotage logistics**: Disrupt supply chains, energy grids, and digital infrastructures that sustain capital.

- **Exodus**: Flee wage labor, build autonomous zones, and reclaim land for communal use.

- **Illegalism**: Reject legalistic activism—climate collapse demands **direct reappropriation** of resources (e.g., squatting, looting warehouses, occupying pipelines).

### **2. Communization in the Ruins**

Communism isn’t a program but an **immediate practice** of sharing, mutual aid, and the abolition of property.

- **Form communes**: Not as hippie retreats, but as **war machines** against capital—self-organized, mobile, and ready to expand.

- **Loot & redistribute**: In climate disasters, bypass NGOs/states—organize **autonomous relief networks** (e.g., the *Common Ground Collective* post-Katrina).

- **Decolonize survival**: Learn from Indigenous land-defense tactics (e.g., ZADAs in Mexico, Rojava’s eco-communes).

### **3. Invisible Infrastructure**

Build **clandestine systems** that bypass state control:

- **Pirate utilities**: Off-grid energy, mesh networks, encrypted comms (see *A Hacker Manifesto*).

- **Black markets for survival**: Trade outside capitalist circuits (e.g., guerrilla gardening, skill-sharing networks).

- **Counter-surveillance**: Evade facial recognition, use burner phones, move unpredictably.

### **4. The Coming Insurrection is Ecological**

Climate collapse isn’t an "issue"—it’s the terrain of struggle.

- **Attack extractivism**: Block pipelines, sabotage mining equipment, disable ports.

- **Rewild class war**: Let capital’s infrastructures decay; accelerate their collapse.

- **Zone of opacity**: Disappear into the cracks—forests, abandoned suburbs, squats—where the state can’t fully see or control.

### **5. No Demands, Only Enemies**

Reformism is a dead end. The state won’t save us—it exists to manage collapse for capital.

- **Affinity groups**: Small, autonomous cells that strike without centralization.

- **Anonymous attacks**: The more ungovernable the terrain, the harder repression becomes.

- **Spread the contagion**: Let each action inspire others, without leaders or representation.

### **Key Texts for Further Study:**

- Tiqqun, *Introduction to Civil War*

- The Invisible Committee, *The Coming Insurrection* / *Now*

- Gilles Dauvé, *To Work or Not to Work?* (on communization)

- Fredy Perlman, *Against His-Story, Against Leviathan*

The goal isn’t to "save the world" but to **make the world ungovernable by capital**, opening spaces where communism becomes the only possible way to live. **No future—only now.**

[msellindia]

Key Benefits and Features of Sales Force Automation (SFA)

Sales Force Automation (SFA) is a powerful tool designed to streamline and optimize sales processes by automating repetitive tasks and providing real-time insights.

[cupcraft]

I urge people more than ever rn to resist believing anti vaxx conspiracies about vaccines being unsafe, and lacking "control groups", and the schedule being bad for children, and that mrna vaccines "change your dna" or "cause immunosuppression leading to turbo cancer (real conspiracy term)", or studies suggesting things arent safe, and that healthy people can just herd immunity it out. So many people easily passively believe some pseudoscience as they make it more palatable to the public and make it an easy pipeline. Just see how food pseudoscience and diet culture is so passive esp around American food being poison..so many people talk about how the eu is cleaner because it bans red 40 (it doesnt and it's not called red 40 over there). And I need people to really really be vigilant with this especially with anti vaxx conspiracies. Rfk jr is pushing to ban covid boosters for babies, children, and pregnant people. Rfk jr is teasing banning covid boosters for "healthy" adults. Rfk jr is telling people to treat measles with vitamin a leading to real cases irl about vitamin toxicity in the ER. All of this connects to his larger plan of eugenics. You need to be fucking vigilant. Eugenics has always been here and it is accelerating and people will for real die due to infectious diseases that are 100% preventable.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Preserved in our archive

A research letter from 2022 highlighting the effects of even "mild" covid on the brain.

Dear Editor,

A recent study published in Nature by Douaud and colleagues1 shows that SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with longitudinal effects, particularly on brain structures linked to the olfactory cortex, modestly accelerated reduction in global brain volume, and enhanced cognitive decline. Thus, even mild COVID-19 can be associated with long-lasting deleterious effects on brain structure and function.

Loss of smell and taste are amongst the earliest and most common effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, headaches, memory problems, confusion, or loss of speech and motility occur in some individuals.2 While important progress has been made in understanding SARS-CoV-2-associated neurological manifestations, the underlying mechanisms are under debate and most knowledge stems from analyses of hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19.2 Most infected individuals, however, develop mild to moderate disease and recover without hospitalization. Whether or not mild COVID-19 is associated with long-term neurological manifestations and structural changes indicative of brain damage remained largely unknown.

Douaud and co-workers examined 785 participants of the UK Biobank (www.ukbiobank.ac.uk) who underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) twice with an average inter-scan interval of 3.2 years, and 401 individuals testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection between MRI acquisitions (Fig. 1a). Strengths of the study are the large number of samples, the availability of scans obtained before and after infection, and the multi-parametric quantitative analyses of serial MRI acquisitions.1 These comprehensive and automated analyses with a non-infected control group allowed the authors to dissect consistent brain changes caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection from pre-existing conditions. Altogether, the MRI scan processing pipeline used extracted more than 2,000 features, named imaging-derived phenotypes (IDPs), from each participant’s imaging data. Initially, the authors focused on IDPs involved in the olfactory system. In agreement with the frequent impairment of smell and taste in COVID-19, they found greater atrophy and indicators of increased tissue damage in the anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex and insula, as well as in the ventral striatum, amygdala, hippocampus and para-hippocampal gyrus, which are connected to the primary olfactory cortex (Fig. 1b). Taking advantage of computational models allowing to differentiate changes related to SARS-CoV-2 infection from physiological age-related brain changes (e.g. decreases of brain volume with aging),3 they also explored IDPs covering the entire brain. Although most individuals experienced only mild symptoms of COVID-19, the authors detected an accelerated reduction in whole-brain volume and more pronounced cognitive declines associated with increased atrophy of a cognitive lobule of the cerebellum (crus II) in individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to the control group. These differences remained significant when 15 people who required hospitalization were excluded. Most brain changes for IDPs were moderate (average differences between the two groups of 0.2–2.0%, largest for volume of parahippocampal gyrus and entorhinal cortex) and accelerated brain volume loss was “only” observed in 56–62% of infected participants. Nonetheless, these results strongly suggest that even clinically mild COVID-19 might induce long-term structural alterations of the brain and cognitive impairment.

The study provides unique insights into COVID-19-associated changes in brain structure. The authors took great care in appropriately matching the case and control groups, making it unlikely that observed differences are due to confounding factors, although this possibility can never be entirely excluded. The mechanisms underlying these infection-associated changes, however, remain to be clarified. Viral neurotropism and direct infection of cells of the olfactory system, neuroinflammation and lack of sensory input have been suggested as reasons for the degenerative events in olfactory-related brain structures and neurological complications.4 These mechanisms are not mutually exclusive and may synergize in causing neurodegenerative disorders as consequence of COVID-19.

The study participants became infected between March 2020 and April 2021, before the emergence of the Omicron variant of concern (VOC) that currently dominates the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time period, the Alpha and Beta VOCs dominated in the UK and all results were obtained from individuals between 51 and 81 years of age. It will be of great interest to clarify whether Omicron, that seems to be less pathogenic than other SARS-CoV-2 variants, also causes long-term brain damage. The vaccination status of the participants was not available in the study1 and it will be important to clarify whether long-term changes in brain structure also occur in vaccinated and/or younger individuals. Other important questions are whether these structural changes are reversible or permanent and may even enhance the frequency for neurodegenerative diseases that are usually age-related, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease. Previous findings suggest that cognitive disorders improve over time after severe COVID-19;5 yet it remains to be determined whether the described brain changes will translate into symptoms later in life such as dementia. Douaud and colleagues report that none of top 10 IDPs correlated significantly with the time interval between SARS-CoV-2 infection and the 2nd MRI acquisition, suggesting that the observed abnormalities might be very long-lasting.

Currently, many restrictions and protective measures are relaxed because Omicron is highly transmissible but usually causes mild to moderate acute disease. This raises hope that SARS-CoV-2 may evolve towards reduced pathogenicity and become similar to circulating coronaviruses causing mild respiratory infections. More work needs to be done to clarify whether the current Omicron and future variants of SARS-CoV-2 may also cause lasting brain abnormalities and whether these can be prevented by vaccination or therapy. However, the finding by Douaud and colleagues1 that SARS-CoV-2 causes structural changes in the brain that may be permanent and could relate to neurological decline is of concern and illustrates that the pathogenesis of this virus is markedly different from that of circulating human coronaviruses. Further studies, to elucidate the mechanisms underlying COVID-19-associated neurological abnormalities and how to prevent or reverse them are urgently needed.

REFERENCES (Follow link)