#Precision Internet Marketing

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

I clicked on a video essay about Snow White and off the rip, the guy called Snow White a "passive domestic weirdo with no personality" and quickly figured out he is one of THOSE critics. He also got one about Ariel and you bet your ass he is one of these "gave up her voice for a man", "The Little Mermaid is misogynistic" dipshits. I have yet to watch the video, but I know for a fact he is one of those guys. His videos reek of that smartass, sanctimonious, leftist bullshit just by reading the titles and looking at the thumbnails. This guy also has a video defending Twilight. You can't make this damn shit up.

[keywordriser1]

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[aiweirdness]

When questioned, chatgpt doubles down on how it is definitely correct.

But it's not relying on some weird glitchy interpretation of the art itself, a la adversarial turtle-gun. It just reports the drawing as definitely being of the word "lies" because that kind of self-consistency is what would happen in the kind of human-human conversations in its internet training data. I tested this by starting a brand new chat and then asking it what the art from the previous chat said.

Google's bard, on the other hand, interprets it differently

Bard has the same tendency to generate illegible ASCII art and then praise its legibility, except in its case, all its art is cows.

Not to be outdone, bing chat (GPT-4) will also praise its own ASCII art - once you get it to admit it even can generate and rate ASCII art. For the "balanced" and "precise" versions I had to make my request all fancy and quantitative.

With Bing chat I wasn't able to ask it to read its own ASCII art because it strips out all the formatting and is therefore illegible - oh wait, no, even the "precise" version tries to read it anyways.

These language models are so unmoored from the truth that it's astonishing that people are marketing them as search engines.

More at AI Weirdness

[vexwerewolf]

If I could ask you for some advice, what do you think helps the flavour text of a mech or piece of equipment sell a player on the fantasy of using it?

I'm finding it frustratingly difficult to do so with my own homebrew content: I can come up with lore and backstory easily enough, but re-reading it feels dry, and I can't help but contrast it with how the descrptions in official content and other supplements is more evocative, at least for mechs.

Let's observe some corebook Lancer flavour text and examine the various varieties it comes in.

Purely Functional

While it's usually not the most fun type of flavour text, this just tells us what the weapon is, and - if it has any particular tags or on-hit effects - why it's like that. The Hand Cannon is a good example: here's what it is (modified pistol), here's why it does more damage, and here's why it has Loading.

The main advantage of Purely Functional flavour text is that it provides space for other types of flavour text to breathe. Flavour text is a great place for jokes, but it's not good for every piece of flavour text to be a joke - the pauses between notes in music are just as important as the notes.

Obfuscating Vendorspeak

The Bristlecrown Flechette Launcher this is a great example of dark humour that Lancer uses quite often: marketing fast-talk to cover up something really unpleasant. The joke here is based on us understanding precisely what the equipment does mechanically, and then seeing how the manufacturer tries to sell it. There's a bunch of dense technobabble here meant to obfuscate the fact that this weapon fires knives in every direction specifically designed to kill infantry.

Deadpan Weirdness

The joke here relies on describing something extremely weird like it's the most natural thing in the world. Wait, you're telling me that in a world where I can just print new parts if the old ones break, they put DRM on my fucking knife and I have to apologise to the fucking knife maker to get a new one? What the fuck, dude? Why are you acting like this makes any sense?!

My sword uploads fucking what to the Space Internet?!

Third-Act Twist

This type of flavour text disguises itself as something else - most often Purely Functional - and then hits you with Third Act Twist. It makes you go "wait, what?!" It's very classic setup-punchline stuff. You're telling me my mech can rot?!

As a side note, Lancer loves to use this for its NHPs.

WHY DID YOU PUT THAT IN SCARE QUOTES, LUCIFER

Worldbuilding

This is similar to the Purely Functional, but instead of just describing technical specifications of the weapons, it puts the weapon in the broader context of the setting's history. Okay, so we know what this weapon is and what it does - why was it built? What was the original use case, and why? Most importantly, what can the existence of this weapon tell us about the world that build it?

Whimsical Aside

This is the insertion of a light-hearted, humanising little insertion regarding how this piece of equipment gets used in the field. This serves to remind us that soldiers aren't cold, unfeeling killing machines: they can be as emotional, irreverent and silly as the rest of us, and they do things like name their mobile bombs...

... or call resupply drones "mech snacks."

The Ominous Out-Of-Context Quote That Explains Nothing And Only Raises More Questions

As I've said in multiple textmash memes, this is basically Tom and Miguel's shorthand for "this technology is Intensely Fucked Up in a way that it is more fun and scary not to explain." This is essentially Lancer's version of SCP's [REDACTED].

You might think this is the domain of HORUS, and you'd be right, but every single manufacturer indulges in these - although IPS-N had to wait until NRFaW to get theirs:

What the fuck do you mean by that, Lancer?

[agaypsychicrat]

You can save Russian queers from genocide

A week ago the Russian Supreme Court made a ruling declaring LGBT community an extremist organization. The precise contents of the ruling, as well as the process, were made secret, so there’s no official information on what is being banned, but if we take into account previous cases of Russia using this tactic (Like with Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation), any kind of support, from saying things on the internet to financial support, or dissemination of information about LGBT is banned. It also basically criminalizes queer people’s existence. The sentences are up to 12 years in prison - harsher than for murder.

This has already led to majority of Russian LGBT organizations dissolving and evacuating or going into crisis mode and cutting offline support. A number of previously friendly endocrinologists have stopped working with trans people for self-preservation, even if they already changed the documents - a situation especially dangerous for trans masculine people, as while trans women can get HRT without a prescription or from gray market, testosterone is a heavily regulated substance. The entire support system is headed for collapse, it’s hard to predict what will happen when prosecutions begin. It’s important to notice that conversion therapy is legal in Russia, and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has a database of transpeople who have changed their documents.

In light of this, a German queer organization Quarteera has launched a petition which will have to be considered by German government if it reaches 50 k signatures, regarding easing the asylum process for Russian LGBT people, particularly issuing humanitarian visas and residence permits not just for activists. While everything is in German, anyone from around the world can sign the petition, not only German citizens. The petition is here - http://quarteera.de/petition

Here’s the instruction in English: https://imgur.com/a/Fgi9yIh

Update the petition expired a few days ago so im not sure if you can still vote

I copied the post from r/196 https://www.reddit.com/r/196/s/qcersiwxh1

[octuscle]

Hi, im a 19 yo nerd, yesterday some kids wre playing with a soccer ball in front of my house, the ball got into the garden of my house and when i threw it out, i didnt nlticed i threw it a bit far and it arrived into the house across the street, breaking a window, the neighbor, a single man, came to my house and told my parents what i did, he demands i repair the window by myself, i dont know how to do that, can you give me a little help?

First of all, you do what you do best. You sit down at your computer. Enter "repair soccer window" into Google. A lot of things come up that won't help you at all. Care tips for footballs. And advertisements for household contents and liability insurance. The soccer care thing doesn't look very helpful, but it might be interesting.

Shit, you can waste a lot of time on the Internet very quickly. After half an hour, you're back to the current and upcoming match day in the Premier League. But you still don't know anything about repairing windows. "Repairing windows". Perhaps it would help to remove soccer from the search query. It doesn't matter why the window is broken. It just needs to be repaired.

Now we're getting closer to the point. Lots of tutorials on youtube. Surely there's something there. Unfortunately, you don't even know what kind of window is broken. And what exactly is broken. Damn, just how many different types of window panes there are. You can find an article about German windows. They have a lot of damn cool features. I wonder if that would be a market to sell and install German ones here. What this tilt function is supposed to do is still not clear to you. But these shutters on the windows are hot shit. You'd like to install something like that at your parents' house.

You're guaranteed not to install something from Schüco for a few thousand dollars in your neighbor's house… You're assuming that your neighbor will have vertical sliding windows in most of the rooms, just like you do. Probably made of aluminum. A shame, really. Horizontal sliding windows made of wood with glazing bars would fit the character of the house much better.

Haven't you ever worked for your neighbor? You must still have plans and views from the street side. Or at least a photo. Yes, here. Where were you standing again? How hard did you throw the ball? What was the wind like? Just because you did an apprenticeship as a carpenter doesn't mean you're stupid. So it's probably the window of the study on the second floor. Yes, it must have been rotten, you can see that quite clearly in the photo. Just replacing the glass won't help much.

Nowadays, working on the computer is half the battle. Calculating material requirements, programming saws for cutting. And downloading some porn in between. Hehehe, unlike your father, you don't need to hang up raunchy calendars in the workshop anymore. Your father is hardly ever seen here anyway. It's no longer his world. In his day, a carpenter needed a hammer and a saw, he used to say. Old man, those days are long gone.

Before you start, you went to your neighbor's house across the street. Real life is sometimes more reliable than virtual life. But it was the right window, you measured it again with your laser measuring device. You had miscalculated by a few millimeters. You are a craftsman with passion and dedication. You don't mess around. You deliver precision work.

"Mr. T, better than before my throw," you say with a grin. But it's the pure truth. But you know exactly why your neighbor insisted that you carry out the repair. He'll do anything to get you to fix things in his house. And when no more chairs tip over and no more doors squeak, you'll take care of Mr. T. yourself.

He asks if you can have a look at the shower after the window. While you take off your dungarees, you say that you are a carpenter and not a plumber. You will probably need help. You don't have to ask Mr. T for long.

[visionoasis]

I’ve been getting waist deep back into Oddworld and Oddworld has been a franchise I would describe as the most beautiful ugly thing I’ve ever seen. I remember seeing the cutscenes as a kid and being absolutely mesmerized by them. I could only enjoy it by proxy. As an adult I love playing these games. There was a time I was worried this franchise had died and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy more depth from it.

I came from a very sheltered home and it was one of the first gritty pieces of media I had ever really experienced. It was “my” secret experience. I ran across the cutscenes on accident on YouTube on my PSP. (Which my parents didn’t know could use wifi. It was in the early days of handheld internet.)

It has always had this beautiful rich detail and lore, even before Soulstorm. Classically everything from it looks like it came from a horror. Oddworld Soulstorm’s cutscenes are some of the beautiful on the market to date. I’ll die on that hill. Oddworld Soulstorm is stunning to look at. The art of Oddworld is so intense and precise. It’s also one of the most imaginative on the market visually to date as well. Looking at Oddworld is a spectacle in the best possible way. I wish more mainstream talked about how gorgeous Soulstorm is. Because it is an animated masterpiece. The main character Abe is also such a strange protagonist in the best way. I love this franchise.

Now. Oddworld is no secret. But if you haven’t seen Oddworld’s cutscenes ever, it’s something you should experience. Especially if you love animation like I do.

[sepal-sea]

I don't think zepotha is actually bad in the way ppl (on tumblr) think it is.

Ok so goncharov functions pretty much exactly like a real movie might. Chances are, if you weren't given context to the meme, you would legitimately think this obscure homoerotic mafia movie rocketed to internet fame by shipping obsessed tumblrites was real, because it's totally plausible! It's not a shallow meme either, people legitimately posted about it in the in-depth and realistic way an online fandom would post about it, even disagreeing or having bad takes about it. Goncharov is basically the acting-out of any other tumblr fandom but now with a movie that doesn't exist. Because tumblr is a text-based platform it's really easy to line out this kind of analysis and fan behavior, and to agree on an accepted canon. Goncharov is remarkably centralized, and bits of "canon" rarely go against each other, and instead add to each other. You could easily make a real movie out of the accepted canon.

Zepotha, meanwhile, shows only the most shallow understanding of it's genre or potential fanbase. It's all "you look like this girl" and "this reminds me of this scene". It doesn't feel like a legitimate fanbase. But I think that's not inaccurate to how things that are popular on tiktok function. An obscure horror movie rocketed to tiktok fame would one hundred percent have a fandom largedly composed of only the most surface-level, visual aspects of it (of course with a small group of freaks posting the most insanely detailed videos ever about it). In that way, the trick functions exactly as intended. Also, with tiktok being a video-based platform that is of course going to predispose ppl to the most visual elements of fan culture. That's not the main reason zepotha is worse though, because videos about zepotha were not actually the main form of content on tiktok. Commenting was. Even though zepotha SHOULD be more centralized, as it WAS actually organized by one person, it's not, precisely because it was based around commenting and spreading the meme. This makes it hard to find a solid line of "canon", as comments are attached to videos which are basically impossible to neatly string together and follow along with. That's why there was so much conflicting confirmation; there were a bunch of different "the girl"s in zepotha, a ton of different "the scene"s, but anything past that was unexplored. this is the reason I think that zepotha is worse, but it's also not really anyone's fault-this would have happened due to the medium no matter what. I still think it was really cool and fun how people decided to join in on this meme, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that it was being used to market a song. I appreciate the purity of goncharov as a labor of love, but I also don't think zepotha being a marketing scheme automatically makes it bad. Artists need all the help they can get, and it's nice that this person managed to make a viral meme that actually helped their song, entirely based on a fake horror movie bit. I probably would have thought zepotha was really funny and cool if goncharov didn't already exist (and was way better).

TLDR: it's not zepotha's fault it's worse than goncharov, it's tiktok's fault. Also, zepotha isn't even that bad, it's just not as good as goncharov, and we're overly defensive bc we see it as a cheap knockoff

[nurjahan774]

Importance of digital marketing:

Reach your target audience where they spend their time. The average person spends over 6 hours a day on the internet, so it's important to be present where your potential customers are. Digital marketing allows you to reach your target audience on a variety of platforms, including search engines, social media, email,and websites.

Target your ideal audience. With digital marketing, you can target your ideal audience with laser precision. This is because digital marketing platforms allow you to collect data about your audience, such as their demographics, interests, and online behavior. Once you have this data, you can create targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to resonate with your ideal audience.

Measure your results and optimize your campaigns. Digital marketing is highly measurable. This means that you can track the performance of your campaigns and see what's working and what's not. This data allows you to make adjustments to your campaigns in real time to improve your results.

Cost-effectiveness. Digital marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business. There are a variety of free and low-cost digital marketing tools and platforms available. Additionally, you can scale your digital marketing campaigns up or down as needed, depending on your budget.

Compete with larger corporations. Digital marketing levels the playing field for businesses of all sizes. With digital marketing, you can compete with larger corporations for the same keywords and target audience. This is because digital marketing platforms rank your website or content based on relevancy, not budget.

In addition to these five importance, digital marketing can also help you to:

Build brand awareness

Generate leads and sales

Improve customer relationships

Increase website traffic

Boost SEO rankings

Establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry

Overall, digital marketing is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. It allows you to reach your target audience, measure your results, and optimize your campaigns to achieve your business goals.

[amirhamza74]

What are the advantages of digital marketing? Digital marketing offers numerous advantages over traditional marketing methods. Some of the key benefits include: 1. Cost-Effectiveness: Digital marketing is often more affordable than traditional marketing channels like TV, radio, and print. Campaigns can be tailored to fit any budget, allowing small businesses to compete with larger companies. 2. Measurability: Digital marketing provides detailed analytics and reporting, enabling marketers to track the performance of their campaigns in real time. Metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI) are easily measurable. 3. Targeted Reach: Digital marketing allows precise targeting based on demographics, interests, behavior, and location. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads enable marketers to reach specific audiences that are more likely to be interested in their products or services. 4. Flexibility and Agility: Digital marketing campaigns can be quickly adjusted based on performance data. Marketers can experiment with different strategies and tactics without significant delays or costs. 5. Global Reach: The Internet provides access to a global audience, enabling businesses to expand their market beyond local or regional boundaries. E-commerce platforms and international shipping options further support global expansion. 6. Enhanced Engagement: Digital marketing channels, such as social media, email, and content marketing, facilitate direct interaction with customers. Two-way communication allows for better customer relationships and improved customer satisfaction. 7. Personalization: Digital marketing tools allow for personalized marketing messages based on user behavior and preferences. Personalization can significantly improve the customer experience and increase conversion rates. 8. Higher Conversion Rates: Digital marketing strategies like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media marketing can drive highly targeted traffic to websites. This targeted traffic is more likely to convert into leads or sales. 9. Better Customer Experience: Digital marketing enables businesses to provide a seamless and integrated customer experience across various online channels. Techniques such as remarketing and automated email responses can enhance the overall customer journey. hashtag#Overall, digital marketing offers a versatile, efficient, and effective way for businesses to reach and engage with their target audience, leading to increased brand awareness, customer loyalty, and revenue growth.

[ammg-old2]

In the last decade, cacti have exploded in popularity, becoming a mainstay of hipster decor around the world – from the homes of China’s growing middle class and the meticulous cactus gardens in Japan to the fashionable cafes of Europe.

In the US alone, sales of cacti and succulents surged 64% between 2012 and 2017; a market that is now estimated to be worth tens of millions. But rising demand has met a thorny problem: cacti are extremely slow-growing, with some species taking decades to grow from seed to full maturity. Hence, many opt for the shortcut: pulling them right out of the ground.

For land managers and scientists who work with cacti, the problem appears to be on the rise. While the precise scale is difficult to measure, and catching thieves red-handed in remote deserts is nearly impossible, major busts offer clues. In 2014, more than 2,600 stolen cacti were seized at US borders – up from 411 just a year before. But law enforcement officials and field scientists say that data represents only a tiny fraction of cactus actually being stolen.

“When I first started we rarely investigated cactus theft,” said one US Fish and Wildlife Service detective, who asked not to be named due to the undercover nature of his work. He has covered the south-west region for more than a decade and says the problem is increasing. “Now we are prosecuting cases involving thousands of plants at a time. The demand is so high that I fear we can’t stop the illegal trade going on.”

While many plants fall victim to underground cactus cartels, a seemingly more benign form of theft has become part of the problem, too. International visitors who come to the south-west specifically to view rare cactus in the wild sometimes take a souvenir home, and social media is exacerbating the problem.

“We’ve had Austrian, German and Italian collectors express strong interest on social media for these plants and they share GPS coordinates,” said Wendell “Woody” Minnich, the former president of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America. “Some of these people come to steal, especially when a new species is identified. They hide the plants in their suitcase and take them back to their greenhouse in Europe.”

Minnich, 71, has been a cactus grower and nursery operator in New Mexico for 50 years. He said the internet had significantly accelerated theft of rare, slow-growing cactus species over the last decade. A case in point: Sclerocactus havasupaiensis, which is native to one drainage at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, was being auctioned on eBay in early January by a seller in Ukraine. It was just one of more than 365 internationally protected plant species that are openly traded on Amazon and eBay.

“Do a Google search on Sclerocactus and you can find people in Russia selling them,” said Minnich. “I have been on public lands in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado where years ago Sclerocactus were everywhere, and recently I found just a bunch of little holes in the ground.”

[elbiotipo]

One thing regarding videogame consoles in Campoestela is that by the time it takes place ("500 years after Gagarin") most physical videogame consoles, cartridges, disks, etc. are degraded to be unusuable except for those carefully preserved in museums and antique societies (and there must be countless online games that are just... lost). Most, or rather all games from our current console era(s) are preserved in emulation. Another thing that is always a theme in Campoestela, however, is cultural and species diversity, it's a setting with hundreds (thousands?) of different sentient species and each with their own countless languages and cultures. Things like that are common in Campoestela, most common use things like clothes, electronics, utensils, tools, have to be made with many species in mind and are often tailored, like going to a spacesuit tailor, an electronicman, etc

While this removes the idea of my characters rummaging through street markets in search of ancient videogames, it does open some interesting possibilites. So instead of mass-produced standarized consoles, videogaming in Campoestela resembles building a PC, except even more artisanal because you have to factor anatomical differences... someone like Ragua could work with a human controller "fine", but come on, you do like REAL gamers do and go to your local electronics shop in the big space station and ask them to build a controller and console for you. This has bearing in the plot because Ragua was a cringefail gamergirl in her ancient precursor civilization, and besides being thrown into an unknown time away from everything and everyone she ever knew, she's also concerned all her favorite fandoms and videogames are now only known to archeologists, if that. So she is trying to learn what kind of 'future' videogames are there (the graphics suck so much).

In the separate Biopunk Future setting (2143, more 'realistic' even with the talking dolphins), consoles are still produced, even if Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are long gone by successive global economic crises. In this setting, WW3 and the Ecocide managed to devastate global industries and telecommunication, lots of things preserved in the internet were lost and people are acutely aware of it, making physical media more important than ever. Melanie (the communist catgirl) was raised by her grandparents in one of the shops that dedicates precisely to recovering and emulating old media, with an especial focus on nerd and otaku culture. And that's one of the reasons why she's Like That. Overall, electronics have also taken in a more modular and conservative bent (almost back to brick phones), since the era of global commerce is reaching its twilight and society prefers things that are cheap and last long instead of flashy. Retro videogames are very much in, and since many characters have entered public domain and people are nostalgic for an era where things were simpler and half of the biosphere didn't die, there is a retro wave in the past decades. There was an era around the mid 21th century were lots of people were hooked to VR and AI characters and it was considered a global health crisis, but that was stupid and we don't talk about it.

[beardedmrbean]

MEXICO CITY — In a small town in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán, members of a criminal group forced residents to pay for high-cost internet service — or face death.

After these threats, residents made monthly extortion payments while simultaneously reporting the situation to authorities.

After months of investigations, officials raided three properties, finding evidence such as antennas, internet repeater equipment and connections, which were handed over to the prosecutor's office.

While it may sound surprising for Mexico's drug cartels to be involved in internet service, those who follow the criminal groups' activities aren't at all surprised.

"Drug cartels have diversified their operations since their inception," security analyst David Saucedo said. "Many of them started as criminal organizations whose main activity wasn’t drug trafficking."

Some gangs were involved in, for example, fuel theft, others were involved in vehicle theft and others specialized in robbing public transportation, Saucedo said.

“Criminal groups that joined drug trafficking already had these other activities beforehand.”

Besides the billions of dollars cartels make from the drug trafficking industry, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says the most powerful drug cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation (CJNG), are involved in many illegal ventures that result in profits.

“The Sinaloa Cartel is most closely identified with drug trafficking but is also engaged in extortion, the theft of petroleum and ores, weapons trafficking, migrant smuggling, and prostitution,” the 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment states.

CJNG directs the theft of fuel from pipelines, extorts agave and avocado farmers, migrants and prison officials, and taxes migrant smugglers, the report said.

"The portfolio is extensive. However, while drug trafficking is the most profitable activity, it has a longer recovery time for the investment compared to other ... criminal activities, which yield almost immediate profit," Saucedo said.

From cartels calling older Americans to offer timeshares in Mexico, leading to the loss of nearly $40 million, to cartel-backed smugglers reaping growing profits in the trafficking of migrants across the U.S-Mexico border, their criminal range is extensive.

Here are some ways where the cartels have extended their reach:

Fuel theft

Fuel theft, known as huachicoleo in Mexico, is a highly profitable activity for organized crime groups. In the first nine months of 2022, Mexico's state-owned oil company, Pemex, lost $730 million from illegal pipeline taps.

Cartels in Mexico have developed a sophisticated approach to fuel theft, which involves corruption, precision and violence.

This includes tactics such as bribing Pemex employees and local officials for information, drilling precise illegal taps into pipelines, and using modified tanker trucks to transport stolen fuel for distribution in black market networks.

Several cartels are involved in this criminal activity. For instance, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, led by Jose Antonio Yepez, also known as El Marro, established its dominance through fuel theft before entering into drug trafficking.

Additionally, CJNG and the Gulf Cartel are also linked to fuel theft, which supports their criminal activities.

Avocados

Mexico's multibillion-dollar avocado industry, which continues to break records for exports every year, has also been one of the main targets for drug cartels.

Avocados are known as “green gold” in Mexico, and the country has become the world’s largest producer of the popular fruit.

But as growers’ fortunes have risen, they have faced increasing threats from drug cartels seeking a share of the profits.

In Michoacán, the only state authorized to export the fruit to the U.S., CJNG and local gangs demand payments from farmers, often referred to as "protection fees."

These fees can range from $135 to $500 per hectare monthly, depending on the size of the farm and the level of perceived threat.

The extortion process begins with cartels identifying and targeting profitable farms. Armed cartel members then approach the farmers, issuing threats of violence or property damage if the farmers refuse to comply.

In February 2022, the U.S. suspended avocado imports from Mexico after a U.S. official received a death threat while working in Uruapan.

The imports resumed a week later following new safety measures applied by Mexico’s government in the region.

Two years later, locals say the situation hasn’t changed much, and avocado growers continue to deal with criminal organizations in the area.

Tortillas

The average Mexican consumes about 70 kilograms of tortillas annually, according to the Mexican Agriculture Ministry. It is a staple in Mexican cuisine, which is why cartels have decided to profit from it.

Extortion from cartels affects nearly 20,000 tortillerías, directly impacting the prices paid by Mexicans.

According to the National Tortilla Council, in an interview with The Washington Post, out of more than 130,000 tortillerías in the country, between 14 to 15% percent suffer from extortion.

Homero López García, the organization's president, told El Sol de México that establishments must pay between $135 and $190 weekly to multiple criminal groups to continue operating.

"Well, look, nothing surprises me anymore," Saucedo, the security analyst, said about cartels extorting tortillerías. "Perhaps it's a somewhat insensitive and cynical posture from me, but the truth is that I remain open to all possibilities in this regard."

Chicken

In a video posted on social media two days before Christmas 2023, an armed group was seen arriving at a poultry shop in Toluca, Mexico, kidnapping four workers and putting them into a white van.

The Mexico state prosecutor's office said the victims were retailers who were forced to buy chicken in some establishments. Likewise, they had to pay a fee of $2.50 per kilo in exchange for not getting killed by the Familia Michoacana cartel.

Authorities said as a result of their efforts to combat extortion, the criminal groups La Familia Michoacana and CJNG lost over $43 million from threatening poultry and egg vendors in municipalities of the Toluca Valley and the southern part of the state.

The state prosecutor's office said in 2023 alone, they received 4,010 complaints for this crime, of which they determined that only one in four was made in person, with the rest being indirect through phone calls, social media, and emails.

Three months later, the four workers kidnapped in December were found alive, and four perpetrators were detained, but those behind the abductions remain on the loose and the extortion of poultry vendors continues, officials said.

'Piso' fee

"They were asking me for $600 monthly for cobro de piso; we reported it, and we had to close for a month," Guillermo, a businessman in downtown Mexico City, told local media, recalling the extortion from the cartel.

The cobro de piso, which is the fee cartels charge business owners in exchange for "protection," has been the main problem for merchants in Mexico City.

"The first group of affected businesses are restaurants, followed by convenience stores in second place, and then jewelry stores in third place," said Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, president of Mexico City’s Chamber of Commerce.

In the past few years, extortions have been on the rise. Depending on the areas, some establishments would receive calls, emails, or in-person visits from armed men asking for the cartel's fee.

"They have tried several times, it's through calls," restaurant owner Israel Zavala told Mexican media. "The trust in the authorities isn't very high; complaints have been filed, but they don't proceed."

Analyst Saucedo said the problem with the metrics is that we have never had access to their accounting books.

“We will never have the total amount of the taxable fee because many do not report it to the authorities.”

In Mexico City, there are many criminal organizations involved in activities such as drug dealing, but also charging extortion fees to small business owners like tortilla shops, street vendors, and taxi drivers.

"Since Mexico City is a densely populated area, and we have a very large informal economy, many people are unfortunately susceptible to paying protection money. Consequently, it is a profitable activity for the local mafias," Saucedo said.

 "Besides paying an official tax to come to work, you have to pay another one to them," Angel Campos, a vendor at a street market in Mexico City, said.

[unhingedselfships]

STOP Posting about kadokura kenshi im TIRED OF SEEING IT my friends on tumblr send me fics on discord it's fuckin comms i was in. a server. right. and aALLLLLLLL of the channels were just kimikura stuff i showed my armani underwear to my girlfriend i flipped the logo and was like look babe when the underwear billionaire. i brush my teeth and look in the mirror and when the smile 50s coded. when the pharmaceuticals abusable. i look at my penis and its a sniper rifle HAHA BANG BANG BANG BANG AAAAARRGGH

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little shit? Ill have you know I graduated top of my class in the underground assassin league, and Ive been involved in numerous secret raids on secret crime lords, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and Im the top sniper in the entire assassin league. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the globe and your IP is being traced by the Pink Virus right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. Youre fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and thats just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the dark web black market and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little clever comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldnt, you didnt, and now youre paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. Youre fucking dead, kiddo.

[eccentric-nucleus]

so ellaguro/liz ryerson made a big blog post about games, nostalgia, let's plays, etc which touches on a lot of stuff i've been thinking about recently

i think a lot of what my feelings come down to is... videogames, the internet as a whole, used to be a scene. it was something new and weird that people weren't really sure about. how it fit into society or how it was possible to interact with it, nobody knew. you could do whatever. and as time has gone on the scene has ossified into a market: people know precisely what these things are for and they are for advertising and consumer products.

(that was definitely one of the weird moments i had when i was posting on royalroad. i thought i was trying out a writing exercise and sharing it with some people who might be interested, but lots of people reading were definitely assuming i was positioning a marketable offering for an initial release.)

and like, it doesn't really escape my notice that yeah the idyllic pre-capitalism time i'm ascribing to the earlier internet also took place when i was a kid and thus incidentally unaware of any monetary influence already there. you did, after all, have to pay to get a dial-up internet connection. there's no actual, like, prelapsarian state of grace here. there's just the world. & probably a big part of getting older is seeing the things you used to enjoy either fade away or be streamlined to fit with the rest of society. i used to be with it. now what i'm with isn't 'it'. it'll happen to youuuuuu

[pricechecktranslations]

Hi! I was checking your blog and I noticed that you translated Ichika's new permissions on the use of her art, thank you very much for making that information more accessible, although I think she changed them again, well I got that impression from the last tweets she posted, tbh for me, who doesn't know much about copyright laws, it's starting to get a little confusing.I don't know if it's because of the way she writes it or if it's really a complicated matter.

I think perhaps I'm the one who's not being clear. So I will try to be as precise in my delivery as possible.

Ichika is not talking about legal copyright. She is not saying she'll come after people with a team of lawyers. She is an independent artist on the internet. She is simply talking about what she does and does not approve of people doing with her work, the work she is uploading to her personal artist accounts. She is asking very politely for people to respect these rules. I promise you, it is not complicated.

To go into her newest tweets--she is simply trying to use more clear and unambiguous wording in her permissions page. That's it. Like emphasizing that it is specifically the reupload/reposting of her work that's the problem, and that any acceptable uses of her work (like as icons/headers) ONLY applies to things SHE has posted on her own accounts. If, say, it was done as a commission such as on a video, then she gives no permission for its use.

According to the updated profcard wording:

Ichika does not want people reposting or reuploading her work onto the internet, regardless of whether or not they've made edits to it.

The only exception to this is that people can use her art for blog headers/icons/etc for their personal online accounts. However, this only applies to art that she, Ichika, has posted publicly herself. The only modifications people are allowed to do to these is to trim the art.

If these personal accounts contain any radical or problematic statements, however, she would prefer people did not use her art for them.

She is talking solely from the perspective of her personal approval. Again--the above points are not regarding copyright law, they are regarding her preferences for the way people use her art.

She clarifies at the end that people are allowed to use or reference her art in a manner consistent with basic copyright law.

The only time she mentions copyright law is in the end, and that's just her noting that the usual exceptions to copyright law also apply to her art.

Now, if you plan to do anything at all on the internet, ESPECIALLY in fandom spaces that deal with Japanese media, I would strongly advise you to go and familiarize yourself with said copyright law (again, I am aware that Evillious being Japanese exclusive makes this a piracy fandom by necessity, but that's no excuse not to be aware of what laws you are breaking when you, say, upload the entirety of the "Daughter of Evil" manga to a public drop box). The vast majority of infractions are allowed to happen because the rights holders are gone/aren't aware of them/deem it a waste of time and money to pursue/beneficial for creating a foreign market/etc etc, not because it isn't technically against the law to do.

But anyway I would say that what she's referring to here is something called Fair Use in the US (disclaimer again that I am NOT a lawyer, nor am I familiar with Japanese copyright law). Fair Use allows for limited use of copyright protected material for non-profit purposes. For example, uploading 2 minutes of a 2 hour movie for the purposes of reviewing it, or uploading a small sample of pages from an art book to discuss the contents. I'm less familiar with how one would go about applying Fair Use to just wholesale uploading Ichika's Twitter art solely to have it on your blog, so my advice would be to just not do that, hope that helps.