#and we have the most LAX return policy EVER!!! you CAN return USED THINGS!!! FOR A FULL REFUND!! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!!

[transgeoffrickly]

tip for customers: don't be fucking gross. additionally, don't open product you don't fucking buy

[clansayeed]

Bound by Destiny II, part 1 ― Chapter 9: The Matriarch

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny II, part 1 ⥽

While struggling with nightmares of lives she’s never lived, a shadow from the past looming over her city, and the proposed idea that her life may just be a little bit too weird to handle alone, Nadya makes sure to tell herself that everything is perfect just the way it is. If only. When the self-proclaimed King of Vampires (and Maker of her sometimes-girlfriend and always-boss, can’t forget that little tidbit) Gaius Augustine returns intent on claiming Manhattan as the throne that was promised, she and her friends find themselves forced into the task of saving the world. But with millennia-old vampires and an Order of hunters on their heels as well as allies hiding catastrophic secrets at their backs… it won’t be an easy task. Too bad destiny didn’t exactly ask for her input.

Bound by Destiny II and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Destiny II tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

Cadence reveals the last person to hold the Amulet of Nero was Isadora de la Rosa; unfettered mafia boss and matriarch of the New Orleans vampires. And she isn't happy about a couple of out-of-towners wandering around her territory without permission.

[READ IT ON AO3]

Some might say Lily enjoys it a little too much.

Before they even step foot in Flechette they have to stop no less than five times to get her to calm down.

“Calm down — calm down?” The last time Nadya saw her like this was after Maricruz’s birthday, and no matter what Jax said she’s still not unconvinced a couple of the Shadow Den’s donors weren’t on something; if you catch her meaning.

“How could I possibly be calm at a time like this? Don’t you realize what’s happening Nadi’? We’re living a real life True Blood fantasy right now.”

“Yeah, see — don’t even think about mentioning that once we’re inside, please?” Cadence tugs at the collar of his shirt uncomfortably. “They know every reference, no matter how obscure. There are no strikes in a place like this; if you bring pop culture into their world they will kick us out — and that’s only if Izzy’s feeling generous.”

“Why do they care?” asks Nadya.

“For the misconception of it all. Flechette may be a cover, and Izzy is certainly no dominatrix. But most of their money these days comes from loyal customers and members. The de la Rosa dynasty is accustomed to a certain amount of wealth and status. Risk that… and it isn’t uncommon for you to go ‘missing.’”

Adrian’s surprise is quickly clouded by narrowed eyes and a stern frown. “That’s against your Accords, though, surely.”

“In the same way unauthorized Turning is against the rules of your Clans.”

That sobers Lily up pretty quickly. She and Nadya exchange glances; both trying to hide their worry from the other. But Lily pulls her a little bit closer by their linked arms and Nadya doesn’t exactly stop her.

Admittedly Nadya would feel a lot better if Katherine had joined them for this, too. But only claimed humans were exempt from what Cadence describes as a pretty lax ‘feeding policy’ beyond the club’s front doors. “And no,” the huntress hadn’t even given Nadya the breath to ask, “that’s not a thing Cade and I have done. I like my freedom a little too much for that.”

He looks her up and down warily; eyes lingering on her very healthy and very not-bitten neck. “You are claimed, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t feel a —”

“I said yes, Cadence,” she lifts her bracelet and lets the compass-esque charm of Clan Sayeed catch on the nearby neon lights. The hardest part is not letting it feel like a ball and chain weighing her down and reminding Nadya of her problems back home.

She’s got enough of those in front of her at the moment.

He acts as their local tour guide along the way; pointing out places and spaces every once in a while with a fun little factoid about the city’s histories; the ones both human and supernatural. It’s a good front — for most of their trip Nadya’s so interested in listening and imagining that she almost doesn’t notice what Cadence is really doing. It doesn’t hurt that the vampire sounds so sure of himself, too.

But then he’s halfway through a story about some stone troll (still yet to be seen, still yet to be believed) that tried to run for city Mayor and that’s neither distracting nor interesting. It’s just talking for the sake of talking.

“You’re rambling,” Nadya realizes — and realizes at the same time it was a much more astonishing revelation in her head than it is out loud, “like… nervous rambling.”

The blond scoffs. “What? If you weren’t interested all you had to do was —”

“Nope—I hear it too.” Lily’s eyes narrow, and beside her Adrian looks like he’s playing everything back on a mental tape recorder. “Trust me — I’ve lived with it long enough. That’s some Grade A tongue-twisting. Why’re you nervous?”

“I’m not… going to be able to convince you, am I?”

His blue eyes flicker to Adrian; some kind of Older Vampire Solidarity thing, but if Nadya and Lily are suspicious then Adrian sees no reason not to join in. Broad shoulders slump in his sweater and Cadence gestures for them to keep walking.

“I don’t hide that I have a history with the de la Rosas. When I first arrived in New Orleans the laws were far more lax and by all accounts Carlo let me off easy for coming onto his territory in secret.”

Lily’s eyebrows raise. “Even if you didn’t know what you did was wrong?” And Cadence nods.

“Even then. I served my dues and paid my debts. In his last days I would have even called him an acquaintance — which is saying quite a lot if you ever met him.”

“I did,” Adrian nods in agreement, “and that’s… high praise.”

“Isadora took over the Family affairs in the middle of the Mardi Gras crisis. We worked together then because we needed to — and because Izzy’s a cunning woman.” A strange look glazes Cadence’s eyes behind his lenses; something Nadya might almost call nostalgic. “She has an acute sense of smell for power; when it shifts, where it goes, and how to attain as much of it as she can. A short while after Kathy and I returned from New York she paid me a visit at my office.”

“Not for tea, I’m guessing?”

Of course not. “The overall purpose of it was a goodbye. All debts, no matter how small, were cleared. She made it clear she would have nothing more to do with me — and by extension, neither would the Family. The New Accords bind us legally and magically; through them I will always have a say in matters concerning the vampire community here. But beyond that…”

His words trail off into the night air but they don’t need to be heard for the visitors to understand them clearly. Beyond that, Cadence is risking a lot to bring them to Flechette; to Isadora.

It’s a knowledge that clearly makes Adrian uneasy. “Once we arrive, if you need to leave — it might be better that way.”

“Without me there’s nothing tying you to the city. The moment you step inside she’ll already know when you arrived. And the first thing she will want to know is why you didn’t declare yourselves until hours later. You may be spared, Adrian, for your title up North. But I don’t see Lily walking out without at least a decade of service to the Family dragging her down.”

Cadence pushes up his glasses with a resigned sigh. “This is the best way. But I know the risks. Don’t worry about me.”

His smile is strained and doesn’t last long — quickly he turns and resumes leading them on but this time in a stony and stifling silence.

Nadya feels a squeeze on her arm and finds Lily’s eyes completely devoid of their earlier delight. It’s a look she recognizes; one similar to the moments before their descent into the Council Chamber.

Just like then, she squeezes back. Their pinkies linked in a silent promise to one another; I’ll keep you safe.

They go down a block or two more before Flechette comes into view around the corner. Actually — it’s pretty hard to miss. It stands at the end of the street, borders the last of the buildings distinct to the French Quarter. This whole time Nadya’s been under the assumption that without Cadence guiding them they might not even know what to look for.

But now she’s pretty sure she could have found the place without her glasses.

There’s no ignoring the club bass pounding so loud it almost shakes the pavement. Like he reads her mind Cadence immediately explains in a lowered voice; “Fae wards seal the sound around the block. Works great for the music… and any other noises that might draw attention.” Thick black metal bars seal off the windows. Nadya and Lily exchange half-chuckles; reminded of the city.

Two men in suits stand on either side of the entrance. Nadya watches one with a clipboard in hand undo the hook of a velvet rope and allow a couple inside. She pretends the dark stains on their clothes illuminated by the neon lights are fake campy homemade blood. For her own sanity.

A large rose hums with electricity over the second floor windows. Below it; Flechette in large blocked capitals.

“What’s it mean in English?” Lily asks with a nudge to Adrian’s shoulder. Because of course he knows French. Nadya once watched him spend an entire work evening on a conference call with some biotech company in Lyon. He’s actually pretty good.

“It means dart, or arrow, something along those lines.” But the translation is nothing without the answer, so they all turn to the nerd.

He surprises them with a shrug. “Hell if I know. It’s always been the name of Carlo’s business. It was a photo house when I came to town; specializing in ones you definitely didn’t want to show your mates on the front lines. Catering after that, hired performers after the second war, and an escort service briefly when the dot-com boom hit nationwide. The club was actually Izzy’s idea after she came back up from Miami. A small group of our kind pitched in to own one together for an unlimited feeding source. It’s definitely been their most successful venture.”

“All of which had to do with sex; in one form or another.” Adrian states dryly.

“Sex sells, baby. Even sexy caterers.” Lily bumps her hip into his — he’s so taken aback that he nearly stumbles off the curb. Nadya doesn’t even try to hide her laughter.

The hairs on the back of Nadya’s neck stand up alert as they pass the queued line. Envious eyes drilling holes right through her; judging her and Lily and Adrian and Cadence, too. All of them like they’re on a shiny silver platter.

She makes the mistake of looking back when a scoff catches distant in her ear. The offender couldn’t be older than a college kid — obviously shirtless underneath his black leather jacket and for a moment she sees something glinting near his upper lip and it almost makes her stumble. But a quick look into his eyes and Nadya notices right away they’re the wrong shade of red. Too bright, too wide, too human.

He blinks and the colored contact shifts in place.

“Nadya, come on.” Adrian calls; and Lily tugs at her sleeve until the pair of them fast-walk passed the rest and through the sleek black door held open for them begrudgingly.

She looks into the doorman’s eyes, too. Those aren’t contacts.

“What happened back there?” Lily whispers at her side. Up ahead Cadence starts to lead them down a short hallway and in the dark humidity Nadya has to make a conscious effort to remind herself she’s not going to find the Baron at the end of this tunnel. “Did that kid say something to you?”

Nadya blinks back to reality. “What — no, no. He… he was wearing colored contacts.”

“So? I have every color of the rainbow back home. You’ve seen me in ‘em.”

“Yeah…” and Lily’s talking sense; they both know it — but the knowledge doesn’t shake the unease from her bones.

“What was it then?”

“He was doing it to look like one of them.” One of you. “Did you see his face, Lil’? He was so young.”

He makes Nadya think of who she was at that age. How little she knew about the world — not even counting the vampires, the Ferals; the scary truths hidden in the dark. She’s a good person — she surrounds herself with good people. But the Vegas of the world; the Lesters and the Priyas and anyone else who would even consider the awful act of Turning someone that young? They’re all too real.

When will I start to see those memories, Nadya wonders, how long until they tear me in two?

Lily’s steps falter; she hesitates. “Are you sure you can do this right now?”

It doesn’t matter whether she can or not. “It’s something I’ve gotta do anyway.” Luckily they follow Cadence and Adrian through a doorway covered by a velvet curtain shortly after; so she doesn’t have to keep talking about it.

From the outside it definitely didn’t look like Flechette could hold this many people. The building has several stories but only one floor — she has to crane her neck up high to see lights in iron-wrought fixtures all the way up top. Between the floor and ceiling various cages hang on heavy chains; scattered for space and each one with a dancing individual — a big one a little too high up for Nadya’s comfort sports three.

Servers in different states of undress — but all bearing the same thick black collar and silvery rose-engraved pendant — flit back and forth through other similarly curtained entrances with trays. Trays of drinks, one passes with three glass bowls of multicolored pills, and oh look that one has a fancy assortment of plugs… the use for which Nadya will very happily keep from her head.

Some members are dancing, others are grinding — all of them care about themselves, the person(s) they’re with, or the ones closest to them giving a show. She had expected to feel a lot of unusual things here but relief was not one of them. Not that she’s complaining.

But even though Nadya can’t tell by first glance who here is human and who is vampire; she knows for a fact the last time she was in a room with this many of them things were drastically different for her. She wasn’t a Bloodkeeper back then. Well — she was, but none of this was happening to her.

So it comes as no surprise when she locks eyes with someone—certainly a vampire—and feels something wet in her mouth that definitely isn’t there. Slick and succulent and all she has to do is bite — harder this time…

Nadya forces her eyes down and lets Lily weave her through the path Cadence carves for them. “Do you think this place is campy,” Lily calls over the music only growing louder the deeper in they go, “or do you think camp is based on places like this?!”

“I think we need to hurry up!”

“Spoilsport!”

Everything’s going just great until she’s yanked to a halt.

With one hand as a blinder Nadya shakily raises her eyes to see what’s happening.

Just up ahead Cadence and a short and balding man are locked in heated debate. The music mostly drowns them out but she catches an angry “bastard” and Cadence’s accented “demand you let us through” before it all dissolves back into noise.

“Adrian,” Lily hisses, and even that makes Nadya feel a little fuzzy, thoughts that aren’t hers starting to filter in through her best friend’s touch. Lily somehow keeping her grounded and making her feel less present at the same time, “we gotta get her somewhere — I don’t know, just somewhere not here.”

Somewhere not here sounds amazing. Yes please!

The sleek black shoes step out of Nadya’s sight — there’s a thud and the nearby laughter and conversation goes quiet. Which, of course, somehow makes Nadya’s situation feel worse.

Adrian holds the smaller man up by the front of his ruined suit; feet dangling a good foot from the ground and up in his face, words she can’t understand because she never mastered the art of lip-reading hissed between his fangs.

Cadence tries to push him back but Adrian snaps something that gets him to back off. He jerks his chin in Nadya’s direction and for a moment she holds his red-eyed gaze and doesn’t… quite recognize who she’s looking at.

And that has nothing to do with her pounding head. It has everything to do with Adrian — and Adrian alone.

Sweat beads on Nadya’s brow and stings in her eyes — she’s five solid seconds from passing out when the curtain Baldy is guarding gets pushed back and a woman dressed like she’s ready for a Victorian funeral stands as barrier. She observes each of them silently — or Nadya doesn’t see her lips move anyway — before her eyes fall on Cadence and grow hard.

Adrian drops the doorman and gestures for the two of them to come forward. It’d be a real freakin’ help if she could hear anything right now.

It helps that once they’re off the main club floor and the (surprisingly sound-muffling) curtains are closed behind them she finds immediate relief. She can hear again (and not the echoes of memories — all the better) but boy does her head hurt.

While Lily rubs the small of her back, one of the collared servers offers her a tray with a glass of water and three white pills.

“You have no reason to worry, they are for the headache; nothing more.”

The woman speaks out of sight which is ominous enough but Nadya really could care less. She’d do anything to stifle the pain, the memories; and practically launches the pills into her throat before chasing them down until the water glass is empty.

“Th—Thank you.”

“Of course,” Nadya hears the shifting sound of cloth on leather while she rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms, “I would have you collect yourself before we proceed.”

She goes to lean against Lily — where’s Lily?

“Wait, what do you mean pro—ceed…”

A larger and rougher hand than Lily’s comes down on Nadya’s shoulder. Strong enough to hold her back; keep her at bay. And when everything, including her full range of sight, finally comes back…

She really wishes it hadn’t. She’d like to take her thanks back too, while she’s at it.

Isadora de la Rosa sits as a blooming rose on an onyx canvas; dark waves of hair almost blending in except where the shine catches the light. The brightest part of her (and the room at large) is the crisp white of her pinstriped pantsuit. She watches Nadya with an unreadable deadpan and a cigarette between her long fingers. With all the black in the room the smoke can’t hide as it curls up into the air and dissipates.

Her desk, large and not unlike Adrian’s back at the office, is flanked by the Victorian funeral woman and another, much younger girl dressed similarly. She can’t be more than Nadya’s age. Maybe closer to the human boy back outside in line.

Nadya could do without the three large suited bodyguards holding three stakes to her three friends’ hearts though. If there was one thing she had to complain about, it would be that.

“You’re really leaning into the whole mafia vibe now, I see.” Cadence quips, and there’s a little quirk of his lips as the (much shorter) man behind him struggles to keep the blond held back with the stake right over his heart. It wavers and ends up more near his stomach.

He throws a look down behind him. “Looking well, Tony. Be a peach and push up my glasses for me?”

‘Tony’ hesitates — then slowly pushes them up from where they were perched dangerously on the tip of Cadence’s nose.

“Thank you.”

“Shut it.”

It’s not unlikely that the man restraining Nadya is a vampire too; but there’s no harm in trying to get herself free, right? She wiggles — the grip tightens so hard her knees almost buckle. “Ow ow owowow!”

“Get your hands off of her!” Adrian barks; and judging by the shadow that flickers over the dark, crow-like features of the vampire holding him, he’s giving her the best fight of everyone.

Lily immediately goes for some part to bite — Nadya’s got some serious respect for that. But not if it costs Lily her life—er… undeath.

And all the while Isadora de la Rosa just looks on. Not with amusement, not with malice; more bored than anything. The perpetual exhaustion with everything she must witness reminds Nadya, achingly, of Kamilah.

Cadence sighs. He’s the only one who hasn’t bothered with even the slightest escape attempt. “Adrian, stop.”

“Listen to him, Mister Raines,” Isadora finally says; but instead of looking at him she’s focused on snubbing her cigarette in an ash tray so black Nadya almost thinks it’s the desk, “you aren’t exactly giving the finest impression of your so-called revered Council of vampires. Compose yourself — and die with dignity.”

I’m sorry, do what with dignity?!

She raises two fingers as if to signal, but in a panic Nadya cries out before she can bring it down to act.

“Wait—please Miss de la Rosa, please don’t hurt him—them—anyone!”

It would have come off less whiny and beg-y if Nadya had some plan to distract Isadora, all of her vampire mafia guards, all the vampire mafia fetishists on the other side of the curtain, and get everyone out alive and intact. But she doesn’t — so the look the vampiress gives her — the one that screams ‘I had no respect for you to begin with but you’ve definitely lost some regardless’ — is justified.

Finally Isadora raises a single brow. “Well?”

“W-What?”

The younger of the women near her desk giggles under her shroud. The other shoots her a look — maybe? She definitely looks that way and it definitely shuts her up.

“I assumed you had more to your impassioned plea,” de la Rosa leans back in her chair, “but if that is not the case…”

Nadya opens her mouth but all that comes out is a long, deep, and extremely masculine groan. Oh thank god that wasn’t her.

“Why are you pulling this, Izzy?” Which is apparently not a nickname that’s public knowledge because oh dear god they are so going to die right now. “This is a stunt your father would pull.”

Isadora’s features flicker in obvious annoyance. “Did anyone ask you, Cadence?” She snaps. “Tony, cut out his tongue.”

“Tony don’t you dare.”

Tony probably would — if he could reach that high. “Didn’t I tell you to shut it?”

“Anthony.”

“Y-Yes ma’am!”

Calling it chaos would be a kind understatement. And Nadya can’t even tell if Cadence is doing anything on purpose; all of these little irritants that make one woman laugh and distract another and fluster Tony and make Isadora look ready to—

Nadya blinks and Adrian’s a blur — then he’s a blur with a stake that he hurls to the floor before taking his captor’s head in both hands. He doesn’t look like Adrian again and the sight of it has her more terrified than anything that’s happened so far.

“Let. them. go.” He grits in even measure. “Or I rip her head off.”

To her credit Isadora takes the threat coolly and in stride. “Will you now?”

“We came here willingly, Isadora. None of this hostility is necessary.”

“We shall have to agree to disagree on that.”

“Let them go and we can talk — like civilized people.”

Slowly she stands, does up the button at the bottom of her blazer and smooths down her skirt. More Wall Street than kinkfest. “What about this has given you the impression I want to talk about anything? You have power, Raines, I’ll give you that. So I forgave you for slighting me once. But you know what they say… Happens once, shame on me. Happens twice… ensure it doesn’t happen a third time.”

Lily squirms. “That’s… not a thing people say, like at all.”

“Lil’.”

“Well it’s not!”

But thankfully Isadora is too fixated on Adrian to have noticed.

“Examples have to be made,” she continues, “and what message would I be sending my Family if I were to let you wander my city unpunished?”

Adrian growls. “There were extenuating circumstances.”

“There are always extenuating circumstances with you.” But Isadora doesn’t meet Adrian’s eyes as she says it — Nadya catches her looking away from Cadence with a sigh. “I have a responsibility to keep me and mine safe.”

“We aren’t the threat.”

She answers with silence and pursed lips. The tension in the room shifts uncomfortably — and just like that Adrian seems to realize he’s the one holding a woman hostage. Conflict paints thick across his face as he takes in their options, the faces of the foreign vampires watching his every move.

Resigned, he lets the de la Rosa vampire go. Steps back with hands held up.

Nadya lets out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. It sends her into a coughing fit and draws his attention — distracts Adrian just enough for the older of the veiled women to come up at his side with a new stake sharp at his ribs.

But it’s with an unparalleled relief that she sees her Adrian again in his concern.

“Nadya, are you okay?”

She nods and swallows air like it’s in short supply. “Fine and dandy. Are you?”

He doesn’t answer.

Only now they’re back in the same predicament and this time without any element of surprise. And she does not want to die in a fetish club in New Orleans…

At least not without telling Kamilah how sorry she is.

The dark rug muffles the tap-tap of the Southern vampire’s heels as she approaches Adrian; closes the space between them. “If you’re going to threaten anyone, Raines, next time it had better be me.”

“Noted.”

She clenches a fist at her side but has the willpower not to raise it. “Why are you back in my territory anyway?”

Behind her, Cadence swallows audibly. Before Adrian can even open his mouth she’s turned her back on him. Knows now he’s not the one she should be questioning.

The pained frustration of decision furrows Isadora’s dark brow. “You idiot… can’t you see, Cadence, that this is exactly what I meant when I said I wanted you far away from us? You invite trouble — worse than that, you are oblivious to the fact.”

His broad shoulders slump. “You’re the one who brought out the stakes.”

“I gave you what you wanted. Why do you insist on complicating my life? Why could you not take your lead and leave the Quarter?”

He recoils, affronted. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “What? I — this is my home just as much as it is yours.”

“I think we both know that not to be the case.”

“Izz—”

“No, not you,” she presses a finger to his lips; Cadence falls silent, “someone else… you.”

Nadya’s nerve drops out of her stomach when Isadora decides to round on her. Nadya does not handle herself well in front of powerful women in business attire, and if her current track record is anything to go by she’s not exactly going to be their saving grace here.

“Me?”

“You, yes. What was your name again?”

She feels like she’s eaten fancy cheese; but she endures. “Nadya, I’m Nadya.”

“And why do you keep such unusual company, Nadya?”

Well that’s not what she was expecting. “How do you know it’s not the other way around?”

“Because you don’t look like a pet human. At least not like the ones out there.” Isadora waves a hand towards the main club. “And because you seem to have an acute understanding of what is happening here. You have not dissolved into panic, and you wear the claim of a vampire not present with us on your wrist.”

The heavy hand leaves her shoulder and Isadora approaches sultry; catlike. She reaches forward and takes Nadya’s hand in her own — strokes her thumb over a knuckle and for a moment she almost thinks the vampiress is going to kiss the back of it.

Instead she turns Nadya’s wrist up and examines the way the dim lighting catches her bracelet. Isadora speaks low, now; so low Nadya strains to hear her.

“Is Kamilah Sayeed here, as well? How is she doing these days?”

“You know Kamilah?” Of course she knows Kamilah. Why are you even surprised?

Isadora doesn’t break her hold. Nadya knows exactly what will happen if she tries to take it upon herself to separate them though. “That was not an answer.”

“No — No she’s not here. She stayed in New York.”

Isadora seems amused, which in Nadya’s opinion is a welcome change from murderous. But they definitely can — and probably do — exist in the same house.

“Why are you and your friends in my city?”

Nadya tries to look over her shoulder to Adrian. Hoping; praying he could somehow give her something to say. Because all she can think is the truth and telling everyone the truth isn’t exactly part of the plan.

Adrian sees her panic. “She’s got nothing to do with this, Isadora. Leave her alone.”

“See the more you say that, Raines, the more I think you’re not telling me the truth. So, Nadya, I’ll ask again.”

“Isadora —”

He’d probably do better yelling at a brick wall. She finds it all too easy to ignore him; let him fade into the background as she leans down and close to Nadya’s face. Tilts her chin up with a dark and manicured fingertip.

“Why are you and your friends in my city?”

Vampires can’t hypnotize people, right? Like, Adrian and Kamilah would have made it a point to tell her if vampires could hypnotize people, right? If Jax and Maricruz had shared some innate vamp-y hypnosis secret with Lily, then Lily would have told her, right?

Nadya can’t say she’s ever been hypnotized before so she isn’t certain but wow does it feel like Isadora’s trying to hypnotize her. Making her look deep into her eyes, red and practically glowing with pupils narrowed into slits and the way her voice curls around her words is… is really pretty and…

Holy mother of crap can vampires hypnotize people?!

While Adrian struggles to peer over Isadora’s shoulder to see exactly why Nadya’s gone so quiet, Cadence doesn’t have to. He’s had enough of whatever the heck this is, apparently, and pushes Tony off of him and into the nearest wall with startling ease.

“No — this is too far, Isadora, she’s human for god’s sake!” He gets to them before anyone else can stop him. “Get out of her mind before you do any damage.”

Not that she listens. Maybe she can’t listen. Nadya’s definitely having a harder time hearing the room around them so suffice to say it’s the same for Isadora, right?

Get out of her mind.

Oh god. Get out of my mind. You can’t see what’s in there.

She feels frozen, trapped and bound in a vice of her own skin. But it isn’t something she’s never felt before. She has, and rather recently too. The only difference is Jameson connected them at her temples. Isadora de la Rosa does just as well using only her eyes.

Get out, please. You can’t see.

Why can I not, Nadya? Show me.

I just can’t. You — You won’t like it. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it one bit.

How about I make that decision for myself?

���What are you standing around for?” shouts Lily. “Get her away! Nadya, can you hear me? Nadya!”

But Cadence hesitates; hands hovering just over them. “If I break the connection while Izzy’s pressing in… it might not go well.”

Lily looks to Adrian in a panic. “Dude!”

“Cadence, it’s okay. Do it.”

He frowns at Adrian; his glasses slip down his nose. “She’s a powerful psychic, Adrian. I don’t want Nadya to get hurt.”

“She won’t be. Break them up.”

Can someone break us up, please?!

Why are you resisting me? What are you hiding?

“But —”

“Nadya’s not the one who’ll be hurt! Just—listen to me and do it!”

Convicted and terrified, Cadence places his hands on the backs of their necks and pulls.

When Nadya opens her eyes she knows, objectively, that there’s been a passage of time. But the usual sluggishness, the feeling like she’s emerging from a pit of black sludge isn’t there. Somehow, she was both conscious… and not.

The carpet is itchy under her palms and Nadya might have shattered her tail bone into a thousand pieces. It sure feels that way. Adrian holds her halfway upright with a hand firm in the middle of her back. She’s grateful that he’s both worried and cautious enough to keep from touching her directly; and instead his hand hovers just shy of her face.

“Nadya, can you hear me?”

But that’s Lily’s voice — oh, Lily’s there too. She speaks again but slower; “How many fingers am I holding up?”

She squints. Everything is still blurry.

“I don’t… I can’t…” then it hits her, “you’re holding up my glasses, aren’t you?”

They fall into her waiting hand. When everything comes into clear (if smudged with a stampede of fingerprints) view Nadya looks up to see Lily beaming.

“She’s in the clear.”

“No,” comes Isadora’s growl from somewhere not in her immediate reach—thank god, “none of you are.”

It’s a little relieving that Nadya wasn’t the only one thrown on her butt. But Isadora’s recovery is faster and that’s a big yikes. She pushes the worried faces and reaches of her subordinates aside and stands on her own. She tries to smooth herself back to her previous perfection but the damage is done — there’s no changing the tension coiling tightly inside her, or the wild uncertainty in her eyes.

Something happened — Nadya’s foggy on exactly what but she knows that much. Just like she knows the look Isadora’s giving her.

She knows.

A ragged groan breaks the silence and all eyes turn to Cadence who was somehow also thrown off his feet; only he doesn’t have anyone to check up on him. Nadya gives a pleading look to Lily and immediately she’s at his side. He’s groggy, but despite the shaking in his arms he can hold himself up. He’ll live — long enough for her to thank him anyway.

Isadora has never been the type to be at a loss for words. Nadya can see it now; decades of being loud, being harsh; whatever it took to be respected in the world. Whatever it took to carry on the de la Rosa name and legacy.

The city hadn’t even given her the chance to mourn him.

“You shouldn’t be possible,” she whispers, and Nadya laughs — says the vampire.

Adrian looks between them with growing confusion. “What happened?”

She pats at his arm and he gets the hint; helps Nadya and her knocking knees to stand. She’s tired of being looked down on by them, believe it or not, so if she can look Isadora in the eyes then she’s going to.

“You wanted to know why we were here, in New Orleans,” Nadya speaks slowly to keep her voice from betraying just how shaken up she really feels, “well now you do.”

When Nadya closes her eyes she can see it; the Amulet of Nero. In flashes of printed-out pictures on Adrian’s office wall and resting cupped in Cadence’s palms and held dangling by the chain up to the light of this very office; reverent — and solemn, too. A gift from someone given up a long time ago.

All that through Isadora’s eyes.

Nadya sighs and rubs her aching temple. “She doesn’t have the Amulet.”

Neither Adrian nor Lily hide their shock. “How do you know?” he asks. But how can she reasonably say she just does?

When Isadora steps forward one of the veiled women reaches out to try and stop her. Nadya can feel the energy—uneasy-uncertain-doubtful-fearful-of-the-unknown—coming from the Southern vampires like waves of endless nausea. But her hand is batted away. Isadora is the only one certain of anything right now.

“You’re right,” she answers in measured caution, “the Amulet is no longer in my possession. But I can tell you where it is… and, should you be willing, try and help you get it back.”

Murmurs of confusion ripple out from the other vampires. Isadora shrugs them off — her intense focus on Nadya strong; stalwart.

You’ve seen what’s at stake. What could—will—happen if we don’t.

Yes, I have.

Nadya nods.

“We could use all the help we can get.”

[chandeloor]

the ONLY good thing i can say about bath and body works company policy is that our return policy is like. the most lax thing i’ve ever seen

they take “100% satisfaction guaranteed” very seriously. we have paper bags, and i’ve had customers joke with me like “haha so if the bag rips and my stuff falls and breaks i can come back right? haha” and then be genuinely shocked when i say “yeah absolutely.” like of course it’s more limited if you don’t have a receipt but even then like...lol.

buy an item and it shattered/spilled/leaked? bring it back and you’ll get a new one.

despised the scent and used half of it? bring it back and we’ll refund you.

had this item for 5 years and it collected dust in your cabinets until you remembered you wanted something else? bring it in and we���ll do an exchange

bath and body works works their employees like slaves and it sucks ass but at least you can return that candle you hated, i guess

[stoweboyd]

Thomas Piketty's Capital: everything you need to know about the surprise bestseller | Paul Mason's 2014 review of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century:

Piketty's argument is that, in an economy where the rate of return on capital outstrips the rate of growth, inherited wealth will always grow faster than earned wealth. So the fact that rich kids can swan aimlessly from gap year to internship to a job at father's bank/ministry/TV network – while the poor kids sweat into their barista uniforms – is not an accident: it is the system working normally.

If you get slow growth alongside better financial returns, then inherited wealth will, on average, "dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime's labour by a wide margin", says Piketty. Wealth will concentrate to levels incompatible with democracy, let alone social justice. Capitalism, in short, automatically creates levels of inequality that are unsustainable. The rising wealth of the 1% is neither a blip, nor rhetoric.

To understand why the mainstream finds this proposition so annoying, you have to understand that "distribution" – the polite name for inequality – was thought to be a closed subject. Simon Kuznets, the Belarussian émigré who became a major figure in American economics, used the available data to show that, while societies become more unequal in the first stages of industrialisation, inequality subsides as they achieve maturity. This "Kuznets Curve" had been accepted by most parts of the economics profession until Piketty and his collaborators produced the evidence that it is false.

In fact, the curve goes in exactly the opposite direction: capitalism started out unequal, flattened inequality for much of the 20th century, but is now headed back towards Dickensian levels of inequality worldwide.

Piketty accepts that the fruits of economic maturity – skills, training and education of the workforce – do promote greater equality. But they can be offset by a more fundamental tendency towards inequality, which is unleashed wherever demographics or low taxation or weak labour organisation allows it. Many of the book's 700 pages are spent marshalling the evidence that 21st-century capitalism is on a one-way journey towards inequality – unless we do something.

And that something has to be -- at the least -- a refashioning of capitalism, or -- at the other extreme -- revolution. But in either case we will need to confiscate capital, by taxation or other, more aggressive means of redistribution.

Piketty has, more accurately, placed an unexploded bomb within mainstream, classical economics. If the underlying cause of the 2008 bank catastrophe was falling incomes alongside rising financial wealth then, says Piketty, these were no accident: no product of lax regulation or simple greed. The crisis is the product of the system working normally, and we should expect more.

One of the most compelling chapters is Piketty's discussion of the near-universal rise of what he calls the "social state". The relentless growth in the proportion of national income consumed by the state, spent on universal services, pensions and benefits, he argues, is an irreversible feature of modern capitalism. He notes that redistribution has become a question of "rights to" things – healthcare and pensions – rather than simply a problem of taxation rates. His solution is a specific, progressive tax on private wealth: an exceptional tax on capital, possibly combined with the overt use of inflation.

The policy logic for the left is clear. For much of the 20th century, redistribution was handled through taxes on income. In the 21st century, any party that wants to redistribute would have to confiscate wealth, not just income.

Or at the very least, start taxing wealth, not just income. Mason seems to have anticipated -- or inspired? -- Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax. Piketty in fact proposes a cure much like what we are hearing in the 2020 presidential race: a 15% tax on capital and a 80% tax on high incomes.

He offers up a stark image of the inherent nature of inequality in a slow-growth, unregulated capitalism:

All that social democracy and liberalism can produce, with their current policies, is the oligarch's yacht co-existing with the food bank for ever.

[whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome]

Ship meme: Wayne and Katy 5, 9, 10

ship headcanon meme from THIS POST (check it out if you haven’t already)

5. Who says ‘I love you’ first?

That depends on how you’re counting. Katy says the words, easy as breathing, has done since she could talk, no problem. It’s never a formality or a reflex, it’s 100% genuine every time she says it. Wayne only says it a handful of times, but he shows it every day, cooking and doing dishes together, planting her favourite flowers in the vegetable patch, carrying the basket of wet laundry for her so she can peg it out, bringing her coffee in bed for their traditional Sunday morning lie-in.

Once Katy told him she was thinking about keeping bees, to save them some money instead of hiring them every Spring for pollination. So he looks up plans and builds her some boxes the very next day. He calls around town to find a hive that someone wants shot of, and buys a secondhand but still-in-good-nick spinner and a beesuit and veil. It’s worth it, the splinters and stings and running around, all of it, when she pops the first bite of honeycomb into his mouth and smiles at him.

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

This one’s tough, because they’re never really uncomfortable enough with each other that they get embarrassed.

The first time they get drunk, like, properly drunk, they’re in their study room, chilling on the secondhand loveseat they got from Uncle Eddie and Aunt Marian. They’re sixteen tomorrow, and consider themselves very grown up, capable of handling pretty much anything, including liquor. Their parents are the lax sort, so they’ve had a wee dram here and there, usually in tea, or warm milk with honey if they’re ill.

Tonight though, it’s the day before their birthday, they’re supervision-free, it’s the height of summer, and their parents are away on a date, so the twins decide to start their revels early. They nick the whiskey from the kitchen and make sure to load up on snacks to bring upstairs with them so they don’t have to chance sneaking back down to the kitchen after their parents get home. Very responsible, very forward-thinking; they’re totally nailing adulting. They’re not even going anywhere, so they can’t possibly get into too much trouble, right?

Wrong.

They’re getting quietly tanked, chirping an old episode of MST3K, and booze is as booze does, so Katy has to wee. She stands up to go, or rather, she tries to stand up. All the alcohol goes to her head all at once, and she immediately over-balances. The only thing that saves her from taking a header into the coffee table is Wayne throwing his arms around her and pulling her back into his lap. Concussion successfully avoided, yay, but the pressure around her middle only exacerbates her original problem.

‘Wayne, you gotta let me up, I gotta go.’ She pats his arm, tapping out.

‘You gonna be alright?’ Wayne seems sceptical, but releases her nonetheless. It’s not fair he sounds so much more sober than she feels.

‘I’ll be fine, I just wasn’t expecting it.’ To be honest, Katy’d expected being drunk to feel kinda similar to smoking pot, which she’s pretty used to by now. She stands up much more slowly this time, moving very deliberately, and makes her way to the washroom between the study and their bedroom. Her fingers refuse to cooperate with the pocket door and the button of her shorts, but she does eventually get things sorted before she gets too desperate.

While she’s sitting there, she decides to make things easier on her future self and change into pyjama shorts. She’s a genius, she’s handling this so well. The pocket door to the bedroom gives her just as much trouble as the one leading to the study. Rather than tempting Fate by attempting to stand on one leg, Katy sits on the bed to get changed. She’s just pulling her shorts up when Wayne chooses that moment to bang on the door.

‘Are you okay in there?’ he calls through the door.

‘I’m just putting on some pyjamas.’

Wayne sounds disgruntled. ‘It’s been twenty minutes. I thought maybe you’d fallen again.’

Awwwwwww. He was always looking out for her. Katy slides the door open and leans against the frame, smiling. ‘Were you worried about me?’

Wayne’s habitual squint is a bit uneven, so maybe he’s not as unaffected as she thought. Good to know. ‘I don’t wanna hafta explain to our parents that I’m suddenly an only child, no.’

Witty as ever. ‘C’mon, let’s go back to the sofa.’ Katy slides an arm around Wayne and they lean against each other as they walk a little unsteadily back to the loveseat. Once they’re settled back down, they keep absently nibbling their snacks and passing the whiskey back and forth. It gets late enough that they hear the truck coming up the laneway, and they share a moment of visceral, heart-stopping paranoia, like somehow their parents are gonna just know, via telepathy or some other Spooky Parent Power.

Normality reasserts itself when after a couple of minutes, there’s a complete lack of doors opening and shutting. Wayne barely leans out the window before he registers the slight sway of the truck, and for the sake of his sanity he launches himself backwards before he can see anything unfortunate, but he hadn’t counted on Katy being right behind him and he bowls them both over in his haste.

‘Oof,’ is all she says, staring up at the ceiling. A moment of silence passes between them before Wayne speaks.

“They’re gonna be in the truck a while.’

Another moment of silence while this works its way through Katy’s brain. ‘Oh my God,’ she moans, voice full of despair, ‘we have to ride in that truck!’ She rolls over next to him and buries her face in his shoulder. ‘I really, really wish you hadn’t’a said that.’

Wayne sighs, puts his arm around her shoulders, and pats her sympathetically. ‘Sorry, kiddo, but if I have to suffer, so do you.’

‘That is not covered under for better or for worse,’ she says, muffled.

‘Twins for life, honey. No getting divorced.’

Katy raises her head to look at him and digs her pointy little chin into his ribs extra hard, just ‘cos she can. ‘You’re a terrible person. I’m gonna trade you in.’

Wayne adopts the snootiest Customer Service voice he can muster. ‘I’m afraid the sixty-day return policy has lapsed.’ He grins. ‘You’re stuck with me.’

She hums, ‘Well, if that’s the case. I suppose you do have your uses.’ Katy snuggles closer and lays her head back down. ‘You’re pretty comfy, for a start.’

‘Oh, well. As long as I’m useful.’

‘Like a good piece of furniture. Decorative and sturdy.’

They giggle quietly until they hear the back door open and shut. There’s the sound of feet on the stairs, and then a quick tapping at the study door as their parents wish them goodnight in passing, and they warmly return the sentiment from their spot on the floor.

When they hear their parents’ door close, Katy whispers, ‘There’s one way to try and erase that image.’

Wayne nods. ‘That’s a Texas-sized 10-4.’

They relocate back to the sofa again, piling pillows on one end and stretching out across it as they resume passing the bottle back and forth. Eventually, the television switches over to a new programme, and by that time, their parents’ snores are echoing through the house. They’re both so relaxed it almost feels like a Sin, breaking the peace, but Katy’s had the most excellent idea and it would be rude and selfish if she didn’t share it.  

‘Hey, Wayne,’ she queries.

His hand pauses petting her hair. ‘Katy Kat?’

‘Wanna go have a smoke on the roof?’

Oh, that’s class. ‘I’d have a dart.’

The biggest benefit to their room being on the complete opposite side of the house from their parents’ is that it’s practically soundproof. They don’t hear any night noises they don’t wanna hear, and they get easy access to the roof via the porch gable and the big window in the study. Wayne gets the gear from the sock drawer and they climb out on top of the porch, only a little wobbly. From there, Wayne hoists himself up onto the roof proper, then pulls Katy up after, and they settle in for a dart and a joint respectively. They’re flushed and warm from the drink, and the smokes go straight to their heads, leaving them dizzy and giggly; but the night air is bracing and helps cool them off.

They lay back together and point out all the constellations they can remember, then start making up new ones and giving them the most ridiculous backstories they can come up with. After about half an hour, the whiskey jacket wears off and Katy gets cold enough she wants to go inside. Getting down is a lot more of a challenge than getting up had been. Any other time they’d just jump for it, or else they’re sneaking out and shinning it down the tree, but those are both too noisy to be real options. They eventually work out that they have to sit down and then lower themselves in a weird sort of reverse pull-up type manoeuver. Or, well, Wayne has to lower himself and then lift Katy down. There’s a close call as she shifts her weight forward when he’s not expecting it, but they recover and no one falls or breaks anything, so they carefully climb back in the window.

Safely ensconced back on the couch, they’re in that space between drunk and sober where judgement has left the building, but you’re absolutely certain you’re making an unbiased, totally objective decision to have another drink. Killing the last third of the bottle seems like a brilliant idea. Things take a sharp nose-dive from that point. Where before they’d been slowly sipping at the whiskey, now they take gulps; after all, they’d handled it so far, right? The television plays softly in the background, but they’ve long since lost the plot. Whatever’s going on, it involves a robot, a Cat-man, an idiot, and some prick with an H on his forehead. Drunchies are no joke, and before they know it all the snacks have mysteriously disappeared and they’ve no memory of finishing them.

That was the tipping point, it seems, because the nausea comes on, creeping up like a thief in an alley, the heartburn and the churning bile and the spins, and oh fuck, the spins. Katy’s head feels tight like a migraine, but also weirdly floaty, like she’s too high. Wayne’s not doing much better himself, breathing slow and heavy and focussed on one spot on the ceiling to try and quell the urge to spit. If they’re very, very still, they might be able to power through this.

Luck is not on their side. Katy needs the bin, now. She turns to ask Wayne to grab it and-

A strangled ‘Wayne,’ is all the warning he gets before Katy hurls right in his lap. For a moment, he’s too stunned to do anything, but then she retches and does it again, and that’s what triggers his gag reflex, the sound and the smell and the warm liquid splash, and Wayne tosses his cookies even as he’s reaching for the rubbish bin. That sets Katy off again, and they’re caught in a vicious cycle of calling Huey until there’s nothing left in either of them to bring up.

They have to use every towel in the bathroom to clean up the mess, dry heaving the whole time, until it’s as good as they’re going to get it in the middle of the night. They rinse their mouths out and brush their teeth very gingerly, trying not to set off another round of gastrointestinal rebellion. Katy still feels hot and woozy and not a little gross, and she refuses to get in bed like this and mess up the nice, clean sheets. Wayne doesn’t exactly smell like a bed of roses either, so they sluice off and get into fresh, non-puky pyjamas. Katy’s head is clear enough by then that she has the foresight to make them both drink some goddamn water and take some aspirin before they get in bed.

The next morning is a special level of Hell, ‘cos it turns out their parents are totally on to them. Busted. As if being wretchedly hungover weren’t punishment enough, their parents make sure to be extra loud and unsympathetic to their misery. Birthday pancakes bring no joy, the smell of frying bacon is revolting, and the very idea of anything as acidic as orange juice has them both on the razor’s edge of being ill again.

Wayne and Katy Suffer through breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen after, until some buckets, brushes, and heavy-duty surface cleaner are shoved into their hands. They trudge upstairs and start scrubbing the puke out of the floorboards. Every part of the sofa needs to be cleaned as well; the cushions, the upholstery, the cover. Even the remote for the television. All of this on top of their regular chores leaves them shaky and exhausted by lunchtime.

The bollocking they get is definitely well-deserved, but neither of the twins has the strength to tolerate it. Wayne just crawls under the table and lays face-down and still, waiting for death, and Katy pillows her abominably sore head on her arms and tunes out until it’s over. They’re grounded for the foreseeable future, and just to make sure they don’t have any time to get into any more mischief, they’ll be doing chores over at Uncle Eddie’s as well as at home. The only pity they’re shown is a sleeve of dry crackers and some ginger beer to settle their bellies. The rest of the day is spent hauling bales and mucking stalls.

After dinner they go straight to bed, no shuckin’ and jivin’. They pinkie swear that next time, they’re gonna take about fifty percent off the whiskey and double down on the water. They grow up to be champion lushes, the pair of ‘em.

10. What two songs, two books and two luxury items do they take to a desert island?

Katy:

Music: House of Tom Bombadil by Nickel Creek, ‘cos Katy’s secretly a huge Nerd, and A Thousand Years by Christina Perri even though it’s so Basic White Girl, because no matter how cheesy, she genuinely loves it.

Books: The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett (her favourite since childhood,) and How to Invent Everything by Ryan North, a surprisingly useful survival guide.

Luxury Items: A tarpaulin, because Katy’s nothing if not Practical, and sunscreen for Wayne, ‘cos he’ll never think of it and he burns like paper.

Wayne:

Music: Wayne actually has the most rubbish taste in music. If he likes anything good, it’s purely by accident. He brings a cover of Can’t Hold Us by Macklemore as Gaeilge and Animals by Nickleback.

Books: Le Petit Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. It’s his favourite, and it’s set in a desert, so. And since he knows every word off by heart in English and in French, to keep him engaged he’ll also bring Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence. Sure, it’s on-theme and all.

Luxury Items: A flint and a hammer hatchet. With these he can make simple tools, and with simple tools he can make complex tools, and with complex tools he can make anything.

(Edit: I only just now realised that perhaps this meant two total, as in one of each item for each of them, rather than they both bring two of each item. Oh, well. What’s done is done.)

[priceofliberty]

Damn international jewr- sorry, """the media""" attacking poor little won paul for somebody else making explicitly antisemitic statements under his name You really gonna fall for this shit and dig your heels in? Even if i took it on good faith that it wasnt the man himself who made that posts, why the fuck does he have such a fucking antisemitic following? Why does he have a racist antisemite running his social media? Face it, your fave is an old cryptofascist.

Yikes dude, what a way to start your “question”. Even tongue-in-cheek, its incredibly distasteful for you to temper your submission with anti-semitism. Reeks of, how do you say, cryptofascism.

On apparent Good Faith™, Ron Paul’s verified twitter account put out a response to the racist imagery, denouncing it as such and attributing it to an “intern”.

What should be taken away from this?

It is incontestable that the company kept by Dr. Paul includes at least one individual who deliberately or inadvertently associated the ‘Cultural Marxism’ Facebook post with an image that returns as the first result in a Google search of “Cultural Marxism”

We can surmise from this that the vetting process to become a staffer for Ron Paul is ostensibly lax. I would venture to say that such an interview doesn’t include questions like “Are you a racist/cryptofascist?” Ultimately how the individual came to be under Paul’s advisory is of little consequence after-the-fact.

The antisemtic views of those who follow Paul, or subscribe to libertarian philosophy, or liberty-focused conservatism, etc., is not unique to these groups. Antisemitism pervades the culture of American politics and is very evident in the vocal minorities of across party lines. The “libertarian-to-fascist” pipeline is not a phenomena unique to libertarianism, but I still think its worth observing and deconstructing.

With respect to fascism, “cryptofascism” and the apparent ‘appeal’ of this extremist ideology, I want to start with a quote.

One of the reasons fascism is growing is precisely because the people who are gradually drawn in are not aware that they are becoming part of an ideological tradition. It only seems like a series of habits, urges, inflections, put downs, jokes, message boards, memes, and so on. What could be the harm? But what these people are actually doing is becoming part of an extended and strong philosophical anti-liberal tradition that adds up to a full social and political outlook and agenda. The habits of mind, particularly the hate and the disregard for basic human dignity, becomes addictive and corrosive of rationality, tolerance, balance, and normal social virtue, and then, one day, you wake up a full-on fascist who doesn’t believe in anything but power. This is why so many people are confused about the alt-right. It is not one thing. It is instead an ever evolving continuum of belief, a trajectory constantly in motion toward a position that is finally egregious and corrosive of all decency.

—Jeffrey A. Tucker 

This characterization of fascism is at odds with contemporary rhetoric which asserts that your ‘casual bigot’ [I say this mockingly] must therefore be a fascist. Tucker’s words imply that this descent to fascist ideology can be universally experienced regardless of one’s starting ideology.

You asked “why the fuck does he have such a fucking antisemitic following? Why does he have a racist antisemite running his social media?” and so my answer lays within the context of what I’ve presented here. If I had to guess, its because the uninitiated “libertarian” hears about the bogeyman of ‘Cultural Marxism’ in a context which is divorced of its history as a dog-whistle. It’s taken at face-value, and like most ideologues are wont to do, no follow up research is ever performed. Again, I personally don’t think it makes a difference whether the image was deliberately or accidentally used in the first place.

That being said, I think its incredibly disingenuous to assert that Ron Paul is a cryptofascist. In over 40 years, the man has never once proposed any legislation or argued for any policy which even closely resembles fascism, let alone nationalism or white supremacy. The man has a history of openly associating with contemptible people, but that—alone—does not make someone a fascist, and it certainly doesn’t mean everything they have ever been associated with is suddenly (or sneakily) fascism. Show me one policy or piece of legislation, or even a soundbyte Paul has uttered that proves his intent to usher in a new era of goosestepping white supremacists.

Paul has publicly dedicated most of his life and political tenure to fighting against clear injustices, calling out the Drug War for its systemic racism, denouncing the criminal justice system and police state as racist, calling for an end to wars abroad, etc. I don’t worship the man, he’s not flawless. I point this out only to illustrate that characterizing the man as a fascist really helps to dilute the concept in American political discourse. 

Personally I have found it very difficult to follow him after 2012 because instead of doubling down on the logical conclusions of his purported ideology (i.e. anti-state anarchism), he seems to doubling down on his Republican allegiances, trying to appeal to so-called “conservatarians”. Does Paul have some latent racist tendencies? Given his history of association, its hard to dismiss such claims. 

Does this mean he’s a fascist, or quiet supporter? I do not believe it does; the accusation comes off as a knee-jerk reaction to the deplorable image which was shared on his social media. When Paul starts amassing brownshirts or calls for systemic discrimination against minorities, Jewish communities, or other categories considered by fascists to be “undesirables” then I will be among the first to call him out for his fascist ideology.

[livinginlandmarketing]

Even before COVID began body-slamming the economy, California’s counties were slipping deeper into debt.

An analysis by former state Sen. John Moorlach — a certified public accountant who lost his seat in Sacramento in November but is aiming to return to the Orange County Board of Supervisors next year — found that the twin burdens of pension promises and health benefits for retired workers has vastly increased the financial strain on county governments over the past decade and, by extension, on taxpayers as well.

John Moorlach looks over a stack of papers in the state Senate in 2018. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

When Moorlach first crunched these numbers back in 2010, the overwhelming majority of counties — 45 of 58 — were healthily in the black. Assets were greater than liabilities.

A decade later, fortunes had dramatically reversed. Moorlach’s latest number-crunching finds only three counties in the black. The overwhelming majority — 55 of 58 — owe far more than they have.

How did such a startling downturn happen? Rules have changed, requiring public agencies to honestly report their liabilities. And it isn’t pretty.

Red ink

Numbers that were once relegated to small-print footnotes in obscure financial reports are now factored into agencies’ bottom lines, revealing a sea of red ink.

Consider Riverside County. In 2010, it ranked No. 9 for its fiscal health, with a $652 per-resident surplus. A decade later, it had sunk to No. 19, with a $857 deficit per resident.

Orange County improved in the county-by-county ranking over the decade, going from No. 46 (with a $3 deficit per resident, one of the few in the red back then) to No. 24 (with a $1,112 deficit per resident).

San Bernardino also improved rank-wise, from No. 39 (with an $87 per-person surplus) to No. 6 (with a $326 per-person deficit). And Los Angeles County improved its rank as well, rising from No. 52 (with a $204 deficit per person) to No. 49 (with a $2,864 deficit per-person).

That so many counties could improve in their relative rankings even as per-person debt rose illustrates the depth of the problems they face. And it’s not just counties — it’s cities, school districts, special districts and the state itself as well, all grappling with the cost of promises they made to workers that are far more expensive than they ever imagined.

“Finally revealing the true financial positions of municipalities in this last decade has had a profound impact,” Moorlach writes. “It’s unfortunate GASB (the Governmental Accounting Standards Board) took this long to require governments to report what the private sector has been doing for decades.”

Pandemic pain?

Personal income, corporation and sales taxes are running billions of dollars ahead of projections despite the pandemic. Sales taxes, though, are running about 3 percent below last year. (Legislative Analyst’s Office)

Moorlach’s analysis, dire as it may be, reflects the time before COVID-19 hit.

Yet despite the pandemic, three of the four large Southern California counties plan to spend millions more this year than they did last year.

The shortfalls many officials warn about are not so much pandemic-inspired as due to the regular, increasing costs of doing business: salary increases for workers, ballooning payments into retirement systems, retiree health care.

At the state level, tax collections are healthier than expected considering the effects of stay-at-home orders on the economy. Personal income and corporate taxes are running billions of dollars ahead of pandemic-inspired projections, according to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

At the local level, property tax revenues are largely coming in as expected as well. Taxable sales, though, are down, translating into sales tax collections about 3.4% lower than last year. That’s real money, but not as crippling as many have feared.

“I do see some reports on sales tax decreases, but these declines appear relatively modest,” said Joe Nation, professor of public policy at Stanford University and a former Democratic assemblyman, by email.

David Crane, lecturer in public policy at Stanford, president of the nonprofit Govern For California and Democrat who was an adviser to then-Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, noted that a recent bulletin from the state Department of Finance found that California’s tax revenues in September were 43 percent greater than forecast in June.

“Revenues for the first three months of the current fiscal year are now $8.7 billion greater than forecast,” he wrote. “That’s good news for programs worried about funding cuts.”

Income tax withholdings in California are running slightly ahead of last year, despite the pandemic. (Legislative Analyst’s Office)

And everyone is worried about funding cuts — even when revenue rises.

In L.A. County, expected revenue is up some $1.8 billion over the prior fiscal year, to $38.2 billion.

In Orange County, expected revenue is up $306 million, to $7.5 billion.

In Riverside County, revenue is slated to rise by some $700 million, to $6.5 billion.

But those increases aren’t enough. “It’s critical to note that while revenue has increased, the county’s current costs have risen at a much faster rate than revenue projections,” Riverside County officials said in a budget primer.

San Bernardino County, meanwhile, is girding for greater strain with what officials dubbed a “make-believe budget” because so much is unknown. It’s bracing for revenue to drop some $400 million.

Billions from CARES

All four counties have received federal CARES Act funding to help curb the pandemic’s sting. Los Angeles County got $1.22 billion; Orange County, $627 million; Riverside, $483.7 million; and San Bernardino, $430.6 million.

Monthly sales and use tax payments to local agencies. (California Department of Tax and Fee Administration)

“These monies fund the County’s response to the COVID-19 public health emergency, including medical costs, public health expenses, public health measures, and $111 million allocated to cities and small businesses for COVID-19-related economic recovery and costs,” Orange County explained in a statement.

Still, Orange County pulled $30 million from its Catastrophic Event Reserve to cover “pandemic-related County revenue losses,” and it projects that revenues may drop more than $145 million in this fiscal year. That’s less than 2 percent of the county’s total budget.

Counties are arms of state government, providing services like public safety, justice, social services and health care to those in most need. Federal lawmakers are negotiating over a new pandemic aid package that could include another $160 billion for state and local governments. Meantime, they’re freezing positions, transferring funds and dipping into reserves to make ends meet.

Crane, of Stanford, has long studied how governments are often loathe to lay out the root causes of their financial strains. “See if you can find anything that discloses that rapidly growing spending on unfunded pension promises is crowding out other expenditures,” he said in a critique of the Pasadena Unified School District in 2018. “Executives of corporations and nonprofits would get in serious trouble if they issued statements with similar misleading non-disclosures.”

The Southern California News Group recently reported that there were at least 99 local sales tax measures on the ballot in California as local governments tried to find a way to make ends meet. None of them said, “We need more money, in part, to pay for spiking public pension costs,” but they did say things like “for municipal services, including emergency response, public safety” and “for general city services.” More than 70 of the proposed sales tax hikes passed.

Moving forward

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office noted weakness in some parts of the state economy.

Pandemic or not, counties — and all levels of government — must make ends meet, one way or another, Moorlach said.

There’s not much give on soaring pension obligations — courts have ruled that pension benefits are set in stone the day workers are hired, and benefits can only be adjusted up, not down — but there is wiggle room on the growing burden of health care for retirees. The courts have ruled that retiree health benefits are not a promise set in stone, and they can be negotiated down.

That’s what Orange County did back in 2006 — and partly why O.C. shot up from No. 46 on the financial soundness ranking list a decade ago to No. 24 today.

“That made a big difference but still — everyone is facing this crowding-out,” Moorlach said. “Counties are slowly slipping in the wrong direction en masse.”

Related Articles

Shipping crunch: Kohl’s, JC Penney’s say shoppers should buy early

Bubble Watch: Appraisers see overinflated home prices in Southern California

Nurses, healthcare workers authorize possible strike at 3 area hospitals

Laid off concession workers stage protest at LAX

US jobless claims jump to 853,000 amid coronavirus resurgence

-on December 12, 2020 at 11:05PM by Teri Sforza

[businessliveme]

How Beyonce & Mariah Carey helped turn Airbnb into a luxury brand

(Bloomberg) –For one week in the summer of 2015, consumers of celebrity gossip news couldn’t escape Mariah Carey’s trip to Malibu, California. Her stay at an Airbnb there, which she chronicled on Instagram, made headline writers swoon. It was covered in TMZ (“Mariah Carey: I USED AIRBNB… For My Sick Malibu Rental”), Page Six (“Inside Mariah Carey’s $10K-a-night Airbnb rental”) and PopSugar (“Mariah Carey’s $10,000-a-Night Airbnb Is the Ultimate Fantasy,” along with a slideshow).

But the pop star didn’t just happen to see the listing idly scrolling through the app. Carey was a test run of what would become a wildly successful celebrity marketing campaign for a young, scrappy startup. Airbnb Inc. covered the cost of the Malibu stay, and it was just the beginning. The company had relationships with about 65 celebrities and went on to provide free lodging for several of the world’s biggest stars, including Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé.

All the company asked for in return was that, if they had a good time, they consider posting about it online.

Today, influencer marketing is a more than $6 billion industry. A single post can command upward of $1 million. But the lucrative practice has attracted scrutiny from U.S. regulators as influencers and celebrities blur the lines of content and advertising. Instagram recently came under fire over influencers shilling diet teas with ingredients approved for use only as laxatives. The Federal Trade Commission issued new guidance for social media disclosure this month.

Read: Luxury resort Dusit Thani Maldives sweeps five global awards

But Airbnb’s celebrity marketing program, the details of which haven’t been previously reported, started before most people knew what an influencer was. It was a harbinger of the celebrity marketing bonanza to come and played a role in setting up Airbnb as an alternative to high-end resorts—now a key part of the company’s strategy as it seeks to justify a $31 billion valuation and go public next year.

As public investors look less kindly on money-losing tech companies, it helps that booking a beach-side villa is far more profitable than renting a spare bedroom in Queens, New York. To bolster that strategy, Airbnb made one of its largest-ever acquisitions in 2017 for a business called Luxury Retreats and introduced a mansion-rental service in summer 2018 called Airbnb Luxe.

“The Mariah relationship has become legendary for Airbnb,” says Jonathan Mildenhall, who was Airbnb’s chief marketing officer at the time.

Airbnb declined to provide details on its relationships with celebrities. “As a hospitality company that embraces hosting, we work with a number of celebrities and public personalities and often pick up the tab,” a spokeswoman wrote in an emailed statement.

Before a company can get a star to use and endorse its products to millions of followers, though, it has to get an introduction. At the time, Airbnb didn’t have the budget to go through the typical gatekeepers. Talent agencies that might broker a traditional sponsorship deal were prohibitively expensive, Mildenhall says.

So Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s chief executive officer, offered an unconventional idea. There was a guy in Las Vegas who ran a nightclub packed with celebrities, who were his friends; he hosted their parties; and they might just listen to his recommendations about a house-rental app. “Go and check this guy out,” Mildenhall recalls Chesky telling him. “See if it’s authentic.”

Chesky’s guy was Jeff Beacher. His nightclub, Beacher’s Madhouse, was the stuff of Las Vegas legend. Beacher himself was a nightlife institution, dubbed at different times a “celebrity showman” by Rolling Stone, a “great innovator” by Entrepreneur and a “corpulent clown prince” by the Las Vegas Weekly.

Beacher’s Madhouse started getting attention in Las Vegas in the mid-2000s. It was a vaudevillian bacchanal, with Beacher onstage as emcee often wearing a red satin ringmaster’s vest. The show featured little people costumed as Oompa Loompas dangling from the ceiling on zip lines to deliver bottles of Champagne to tables. There were sword swallowers, live goats, contortionists and performers known as Mini Britney Spears and Mini Donald Trump. At points, the show also claimed to feature the world’s smallest and the world’s oldest strippers.

Read: 33 genius travel hacks to upgrade your holiday trips 

But the most remarkable feature of Beacher’s Madhouse was the patrons: Celebrity news sites chronicled appearances by Bieber, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mick Jagger at its Las Vegas and, later, Los Angeles locations. Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas all threw birthday parties there. “You have this seven-and-a-half-foot transvestite and all these wild performers doing all kinds of crazy things like getting into washing machines and, you know, crushing hands with their giant boobs,” says Larry Rudolph, the talent manager for Britney Spears. “It was just a party.”

Beacher was, in short, just the kind of unconventional power broker Airbnb needed. His friendship with Mariah Carey was well documented. Beacher made the introductions, and after Carey’s first stay in July 2015, she traveled to another Airbnb a few months later. The following year, the singer again stayed with Airbnb in a $22 million Colorado mansion during an Aspen getaway.

Soon after Airbnb started working with Beacher, the startup knew something had clicked. Mildenhall, who ran marketing from 2014 to 2018, “realized that there was this authentic relationship between him and Mariah,” he says. “It wasn’t financially driven.”

Airbnb hired Beacher as an outside “entertainment relations consultant.” Here’s how it worked: Unlike the influencer marketing that’s become standard today, Mildenhall says no financial contracts were drawn and no money changed hands—unless you count the cost of the rental. (Which, to be clear, the FTC would.) The arrangements were largely informal. “It’s not, ‘Wear this handbag; I’ll give you $10,000,’” Mildenhall says. “If they enjoy it, if they have had a good experience, then they talk about that on their own social media platforms.”

Soon, Airbnb was racking up celebrity appearances: It housed Kylie Jenner in a $50 million, 23-bedroom complex in Turks and Caicos. It put up Spears in a $6,000-a-night Malibu villa for Valentine’s Day. And it sheltered all three Jonas brothers in a New York townhouse that had a pool with a waterfall.

But it was in 2016, less than a year into Beacher’s consulting contract, that the startup scored a real coup. After playing to more than 115 million people at the Super Bowl Halftime Show, Beyoncé retired to an opulent mansion in Los Altos Hills, California, equipped with an infinity pool, a chicken coop and 60 fruit trees. She posted a picture of herself on Facebook, sitting near a sleek outdoor fireplace at night, writing: “It was a super weekend Airbnb.”

There were dozens of articles about the exploit. E! News noted the property’s livestock, while the Washington Post and BuzzFeed raised questions about whether the post was sponsored. Either way, the hit turned into a streak. The following year, Lady Gaga posted a picture of herself in a different opulent mansion after her 2017 Super Bowl performance. She wrote: “Thank you @airbnb for the gorgeous home in Houston for #SB51.”

There are rules around disclosing sponsorships. The basic premise of the guidelines demands a “clear and conspicuous” disclaimer of any commercial relationship with the poster and the brand they’re posting about. But the rules leave room for interpretation and have historically not been stringently enforced. As a result, they’re routinely ignored. Ambiguous sponsored content, whereby a social media user receives pay or free goods that they then post about online, has “run rampant,” says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a digital rights group.

In its work with celebrities, Airbnb says it was careful not to run afoul of regulators. “We adhere to FTC guidelines by incorporating them into our engagements with these individuals,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email.

Still, particularly in the early days, some celebrity posts about their Airbnbs occupied a gray area. In 2016, around the time the FTC stepped up enforcement of sponsored posts, Truth in Advertising, a consumer advocacy group, sent a letter to members of the Kardashian and Jenner family complaining of “a multitude of posts” about shoes, food and other products that did not clearly disclose commercial relationships, prompting the family to revise many of them. In one, wherein Kylie Jenner stood statuesquely in a white bathing suit above a sun-soaked pool, the text changed from, “Thanks for the birthday home, @airbnb,” to: “Thanks for the gift of a lovely birthday home, @airbnb.”

Lady Gaga similarly edited her original Super Bowl post to clarify that the Airbnb home was a “gift.” And after reporters asked if Beyoncé’s Super Bowl post was sponsored, she eventually deleted it.

More recently, as the FTC has updated its guidelines on what disclosures are required, celebrities’ simple thank-yous to Airbnb have generally been replaced with more explicit language, like the caption in this post from Bieber, which reads, “Thanks for hooking me up, @airbnb.” Instagram has also changed its policies to help address disclosures of commercial relationships for the burgeoning influencer marketing industry. An executive at the Facebook Inc.-owned app recently said there’s no evidence disclosure detracts from a campaign’s effectiveness.

“When Airbnb started working with celebrities, the guidelines weren’t clearly established,” Mildenhall wrote in an email. “We worked closely with the FTC to evolve our approach so that the posts clearly referenced that Airbnb had gifted the home for the duration of the stay. This is now commonplace practice for all celebrity endorsements.”

Beacher also says he made sure his deals were compliant with the “constantly evolving landscape” of FTC requirements, adding, “Each company I worked with has very black-and-white and strict policies when it comes to following FTC regulations.”

Last year, Mildenhall left Airbnb and started his own agency called TwentyFirstCenturyBrand. Beacher also ended his work with Airbnb in 2018, after a roughly three-year collaboration. Over that time, technology startups became a significant part of Beacher’s business. He served as a consultant for Lyft Inc. for two years and says he helped build out its celebrity marketing efforts. A Lyft spokeswoman says Beacher started working with the company’s culture and entertainment team a couple of years after it was formed and that the group is “thankful for his support.”

In conversation, Beacher is given to grand pronouncements. (“I am very good at the media,” he says.) But he is loath to talk about the specifics of his business relationships and is constantly worried about violating non-disclosures agreements. Asked for comment about the mechanics of his deals with Airbnb, Beacher wrote in an email: “The No. 1 rule of celebrity endorsements is to never discuss either side of an endorsement deal and always keep yourself behind the scenes.”

He is more open about his enthusiasm for vitamin drips, a procedure popular with such stars as Chrissy Teigen and Kendall Jenner, who once ended up in the hospital as a result, according to reports. Beacher, who now embraces a health-conscious lifestyle, often speaks publicly about how his time in the entertainment industry almost killed him.

In 2014, after more than a decade running Beacher’s Madhouse, he was depressed and gaining weight. “I got really crazy fat,” Beacher says over an arugula salad lunch in San Francisco, “like, morbidly obese, 440 pounds.” He blames the breakdown on the death of his business partner, stress and various medications he was taking at the time. “My friends gave me, like, a fat intervention,” Beacher says. He went to a raw vegan retreat in West Palm Beach, Florida, got gastric bypass surgery in 2015 and took a hiatus from work.

After that, Beacher pulled back from the fast-paced, late-night world of club-running and turned to more corporate pursuits. As Beacher began connecting celebrities with tech companies, word got around. “He became known in some of these circles as a person with connections to Silicon Valley,” says Rudolph, who has managed both Spears and Miley Cyrus. Beacher was the person to call, Rudolph says, “if somebody wanted to get in touch with Lyft or something like that.”

Today, Beacher says he’s working with about 10 companies. One of those is Wheels Labs Inc., an electric mini-bike rental startup founded by the brothers who created the dog-walking app Wag Labs Inc., where he was also a consultant. Wheels last month raised $50 million. A spokesman for the company says it has worked with Beacher to create more than a dozen customized bikes for celebrities.

But the world of online advertising has changed a lot since Beacher started. “Now it’s like every publicist in the world with a generic pitch deck using buzzwords is pitching big, five-, ten-thousand-dollar retainers,” he sighs. “It’s just very, very saturated.”

These days, Beacher says, he’s spending more time on other endeavors such as investing. For example, he holds stock in scooter startup Lime, most recently valued at $2 billion, as well as Health House LLC, a fitness chain co-founded by the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and backed by the Winklevoss twins. Beacher recently got back from another vegan retreat, lost 20 pounds and over the summer was spotted on Rebel Wilson’s Instagram feed, cavorting at Walt Disney World.

In the Instagram photos, Cinderella’s Castle rises picturesquely in the background. Wilson’s caption reads: “Thanks to everyone at Disney for this incredible day.” Representatives for the actress and Walt Disney Co. didn’t respond to requests for comment as to whether the post was sponsored.

The post How Beyonce & Mariah Carey helped turn Airbnb into a luxury brand appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/33mTwQk via IFTTT

[mikemortgage]

How foreign companies use Canada’s universities to steal away huge chunks of intellectual property

Canada has a rich history of innovation, but in the next few decades, powerful technological forces will transform the global economy. Large multinational companies have jumped out to a headstart in the race to succeed, and Canada runs the risk of falling behind. At stake is nothing less than our prosperity and economic well-being. The Financial Post set out explore what is needed for businesses to flourish and grow. You can find all of our coverage here.

OTTAWA — In November 2017, the head of Google LLC’s parent company praised Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for Canada’s advances in artificial intelligence, saying he was “enormously thankful to Canadians” for its contributions to AI research and, by extension, its contributions to Google’s bottom line.

Alphabet Inc. chairman Eric Schmidt, who was speaking to Trudeau at a Google event in Toronto, explained how the company had built much of its cutting-edge software, which it later sold through various finished products, in Canadian office spaces.

“We now use it throughout our entire business and it’s a major driver of our corporate success,” he said. “So we owe you.”

Innovation means no one ever ‘graduates’: Learning happens year-round. Industry and schools must adjust

Innovation Nation: How technology is taking the guesswork out of pricing crude oil

Move over oil, Big Data is the new fuel to run the world

The comments probably gratified many in the room, but for some it was a reminder that Canada, for all its advances in research and development, routinely gives away huge chunks of its intellectual property rights to foreign multinationals — often through the very academic institutions that it pays to develop innovative new technologies and concepts.

Companies such as Google and Apple Inc. increasingly rely on Canadian workers, who come cheaper than those in Silicon Valley, and universities to bolster their corporate know-how, then sell the finished products through U.S. headquarters.

This reliance is a well-known struggle that homegrown companies have to deal with, but some observers say the lax rules around Canada’s university R&D programs have limited the potential economic outputs of those efforts, which have fallen well short of political ambitions.

Federal and provincial bodies funnel approximately $12 billion into research and development efforts every year, according to a 2017 report by the University of Toronto, consisting of a mix of government grants, tax credits, loans and other measures.

But some of those funding efforts may increasingly end up creating IP for foreign companies. In 2016, 58 per cent of the patents granted to Canadian inventors were assigned to companies located in other countries, up from 45 per cent in 2005.

The report found a “glaring gap between invention and ownership” when studying Canada’s ability to generate returns on the patents it develops, ranking it 12th out of 17 nations on this measure.

“It’s pennies on the dollar for the amount of money you put in,” said Jim Hinton, fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

In Ottawa, federal ministers tend to use every available breath to promote job growth through “innovative” programs, often through consortiums involving university research centres. But Hinton and others say the results of such programs in terms of economic output are so weak that government officials need to reconsider how they are sold to the public.

“We have to say this is a philanthropic thing, we can’t be saying it’s generating money,” Hinton said. “The universities have oversold what they’re able to deliver on.”

The reasons for the shortcoming, if viewed that way, are complicated. Part of the problem, observers say, is that university professors are afforded an immense amount of discretion on which companies they partner with for research, and there is minimal oversight about who they partner with and how. The approach to intellectual property, and who ultimately keeps it, also differs from one university to the next.

Hamid Arabzadeh, founder and chief executive of Ranovus Inc., an Ottawa company that develops efficient infrastructure for data storage systems, said multinational companies have largely crowded out much of the available university research grants. The company in its early stages, he said, had to fight hard just to find somewhat obscure professors that it could work with.

“Pretty much everything that is above the ground level has already been picked up,” he said. “So what we have to do is go find things that are below ground and that have talent.”

That crowding out, at least in the telecom space, Arabzadeh said, is largely a result of Nortel Networks Corp. going bust in 2009, which left a dearth of Canadian firms to lead research and development.

Nortel was instead replaced by major international companies such as Ericsson, Huawei Technologies Co. and Cisco Systems Inc., which have deep pockets and are able to focus their efforts on the most sought-after professors.

“Huawei may have 10 people in Ottawa, and their only job is for each of them to work with five professors, get their IP, send it to China, assess it, shortlist it, get it productized, all with thousands and thousands of people behind them,” Arabzadeh said. “My job is to build a business here that is sustainable, so I cannot assign 10 of my guys to go and work with these professors.”

Ranovus has secured a number of public innovation grants to develop technologies, including $20 million from Ottawa’s Strategic Innovation Fund.

But the ability of Huawei and others to work with select professors also gives them a direct funnel to up-and-coming talent, allowing them to hire the students of the professors they work with, Arabzadeh said.

Canada has a broad suite of government research programs, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), and Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), to name just a few.

Graeme Moffat, senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, said the NSERC research program has some of the lightest restrictions pertaining to how partnerships are formed and that many other programs are similarly open.

For example, some programs might force a foreign company to establish an office in Canada, but don’t put explicit boundaries around who gets to keep the IP.

“There’s money flowing everywhere, without necessarily an overarching strategy to it, other than spend money on innovation,” Moffat said.

NSERC recently laid out a new framework for its research partnership program, and said the “open model of the program enables the research community the flexibility to construct projects that will yield strong outcomes and benefits for all parties.”

Moffat said Canadian universities need to strike more of a “middle ground” with multinationals in their research partnerships in order to retain more IP in Canada. At the very least, he said, there should be provisions in place to ensure more high-skilled workers remain in Canadian tech hubs.

“If highly qualified people who are working on these grants are staying in Canada, then the net benefit to Canada is probably there, because the best IP walks on two legs,” he said. “However, there’s nothing really constraining the movement of intellectual property.”

Despite all the public money going into such research programs, Canada has little hard information on how much economic output the country receives from them.

“It’s been mostly just box checking,” Moffat said.

That Canada loses IP through its university programs is not a new challenge, but observers say the problem could deepen as the government appears increasingly willing to spend on innovation, either directly or indirectly.

Ottawa’s 2018 budget boosted funding for academic institutions by $3.2 billion over the next five years, an increase of 25 per cent. It has also raised direct spending levels.

It was a point Schmidt made in his 2017 conversation with Trudeau, just two years into the Liberal mandate.

“You’ve done a lot, and you’ve done it very quickly,” he said.

Trudeau, perhaps unaware that local firms are broadly unsatisfied with Google’s prominence in Canadian R&D, doubled down on Ottawa’s efforts to secure more foreign research funding, joking that Schmidt was “on record” with his promise to spend more in Canada.

“We’ll make sure that works out,” Trudeau said.

• Email: jsnyder@postmedia.com | Twitter: jesse_snyder

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2tQ6zum via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[ronijashworth]

Getting an HTTPS migration done in an enterprise environment

There have been some excellent articles written about the steps necessary for a successful HTTP to HTTPS migration. Although we know that a move is becoming more and more pressing, knowing what to do is only a small part of the story when you’re working in an enterprise environment. Somehow, we need to figure out at the very least:

Who do we need to persuade, and what’s going to convince them?

How are we going to mitigate risk as much as possible?

How are we going to get the actual details done? - some of these steps are simple but hard

Many of you will be living this, and be feeling these challenges keenly. We’ve been putting a lot of thought and a lot of work into helping our points of contact make these cases and get these migrations done. Here are some pointers and tips we’ve learned along the way; hopefully they’ll help you.

Sidenote: read about how we used our ODN platform to help to ship an urgent HTTPS migration for a major retailer

If you want to get some sense of the challenges, or if you don’t regularly work with large sites in complex organisations, the journey of the BBC to secure their news section might give you some idea of the complexity:

Two years ago, they talk about making changes at their CDNs to enable HTTPS in the future when the individual products (e.g. homepage or travel news) get to the point of being ready on the back-end

By the end of 2017, they are talking about enabling HTTPS to their origins and worrying about how to warm up the HTTPS caches

June 2018 we get the Medium post about the elusive padlock on BBC News after problems like an Indian government-mandated network block that rendered the site totally inaccessible

And then even after all that effort, we realise that the first links I shared there are on the “BBC blogs” section of the site which is still insecure:

Making the case for the enterprise HTTPS migration

In some cases, I find that business cases and return on investment are the most powerful drivers of change, and there are possible approaches that could use data to make this case (looking first at drops in conversion rate from warnings over unsecured pages) but my first approach would be an argument that looks more like this:

We’re definitely going to have to do this eventually

External changes mean that we shouldn’t keep putting it off - there are reputational, business, and operational risks from delaying

It’s a more risk-averse argument focusing on avoidance of downside, but it has powerful emotional elements to it:

1. We’re definitely going to have to do this eventually

There are plenty of rational arguments for the move to HTTPS (great article) but this is mainly an argument that no matter what decisions we make, we can’t put this off forever. We can look at competitors, large sites, and external moves (e.g. by Chrome) to make this point powerfully:

Websites are moving to HTTPS at unprecedented rates

Google research shows that:

More than half of large sites now have HTTPS available (moving from 39% to 54% in the year to Feb 2017) with default HTTPS doubling in a single year

The bigger / more popular a site is, the greater its chance of having HTTPS available and the greater the chance of it using HTTPS by default

A majority of desktop browsing now occurs over HTTPS

All of which means that users are becoming more accustomed to seeing HTTPS everywhere and increasingly expect it. We have even seen this in qualitative feedback from website user testing (create a free account to watch this video):

High ranking websites are particularly likely to be HTTPS

In just 9 months, after announcing HTTPS as a (minor) ranking factor, the % of HTTPS results on page 1 of Google search results jumped from 30% to over 50%:

New features increasingly assume HTTPS connections

Features like HTTP/2 (which can bring significant speed improvements to many sites), and service workers (which are required for app-like capabilities such as offline functionality) require or assume the presence of HTTPS connections. If you aren’t already up to speed on them, this presentation by our VP Product, Tom Anthony will tell you what you need to know (create a free account to watch this video).

2. External changes mean we should do it now

Browser changes increase the urgency of making the change

We have known for some time that Google in particular was going to use their Chrome browser to push webmasters to HTTPS. Initially, the just flagged sites as insecure if they were on HTTP when a form was detected:

They then announced further changes to take it from just those pages to any HTTP page:

This actually isn’t Google’s last planned update on this theme, there will be a release of Chrome sometime soon that highlights the insecurity in red:

Not only is this change raising the profile of your security setup with your users and customers and most likely hurting engagement and conversion rate, but it is starting to bring bad press down on those who haven’t made the move yet. This BBC article, for example calls out a number of sites by name and cautions that while you shouldn’t necessarily entirely avoid sites that are still on HTTP, “you should be wary on those that require you to sign in or which let you buy goods and services through them”.

Mitigating the risk of an HTTPS migration

OK, so we know it’s something we want to do, and key stakeholders are coming around to the idea, but pretty early in the process, someone is going to bring up risk factors, and how we can minimise and mitigate as many of the risks as possible.

Aside from thorough testing in a staging environment, what else can you do to reduce the risks of going to HTTPS? One key tool in the arsenal is Content Security Policy (CSP) headers. One of the hardest parts of the move is avoiding mixed-content warnings, where your (secure) page references HTTP resources and assets. A good way of mitigating risks and avoiding UI issues and broken functionality from blocked assets is to roll out HTTPS initially with a very lax CSP that allows insecure assets, but reports them via the report-uri policy directive. This means, that on any HTTPS page that uses HTTP resources, the browser will still report the page as insecure but it will work and you will get collect data on which resources are still in use where.

As you then remove all HTTP dependencies, you can tighten up the CSP to much stricter policies and achieve the “secure” label in the browser. Once all pages are fully on HTTPS and redirects are in place, you can add HSTS (Strict-Transport-Security) to the mix. HSTS is a header served on the HTTPS version of your site that is cached by browsers and informs them not to trust the HTTP version in future and always to request the HTTPS version of every page on your site (until the expiry of the HSTS setting).

(Note: the more important security is to your site, the further down this rabbit-hole you may wish to go - right up to preloaded HSTS sites - though note that this is not easily reversible even temporarily in the event of certificate errors.)

There are a variety of great resources on the SEO details, with checklists and processes to follow, so I’m not going to repeat all of the steps here. I recommend:

This article on all the benefits of HTTPS and technical features you can use once you have moved over

Patrick Stox outlined the process, and Aleyda published a great checklist on the SEO steps and implications

You may find it useful to refer to the official Google line (from John Mueller) to reassure stakeholders about Google’s view of the process and its benefits

THOUGH I am very concerned about the advice to “use 302 redirects + rel=canonical to HTTP if you want to test HTTPS but not have it indexed”. I would not recommend ever having canonical links that point to pages that redirect back to the original page (even 302 redirects). I would recommend not doing this.

How are we going to get the details implemented?

As always, knowing what to do and getting agreement to go ahead is only a small part of the battle in many organisations. Large websites and big companies typically have myriad dependencies and integrations of older systems that throw up unexpected roadblocks in the way of the objective. In the case of an HTTPS migration, this is often things like:

We have mixed-content warnings that we can’t deal with at scale - how are we going to update all the references to images on http URLs? What about our 3rd-party plugins and embeds?

Our canonical links all point to the HTTP version of our site and the engineering work to update them across all the different page templates is going to add scary amounts of money to the cost of this project - potentially across multiple back-ends / CMS

We want to add Referrer-policy and especially Content Security Policy headers to enable better testing and mitigate risks, but we have no way to control HTTP headers through our CMS

Recommendations of what to do are worthless if you can’t get them done - a mantra that we repeat a lot at Distilled is it’s not our job to deliver reports - it’s our job to effect change. One of the ways we’ve done this is by building the ODN platform which makes it easy to make agile changes to HTML and HTTP responses. We just completed an urgent HTTPS migration for a major retailer where we addressed exactly these kind of blockers with the platform - you can read more about that here.

If you’re in the unfortunate situation of knowing you need to make the move to HTTPS, and having the organisation aligned, but being blocked by these kinds of technical issue, drop us a line to discuss whether we can help.

CONTACT US TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ODN

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/getting-an-https-migration-done-in-an-enterprise-environment/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[overviewnewss]

April 3: Evangelicals, Trump and Laura Ingraham

http://overviewnews.org/?p=27519 Evangelicals' Trump delusions Manhattan: “Why good Christians should disavow Trump” (Op-Ed, April 1) is beautiful. It completely articulates how any pondering particular person ought to consider Donald Trump. Essentially the most sensible half is the place Michael W. Austin says he would somewhat have an atheist for President who has compassion, advantage and morals. Isn’t that what evangelicals say everybody ought to have? Or are they “do as I say, not as I do” Christians? The chief of the free world ought to lead by instance. What sort of nation would this be if each particular person adopted Trump’s instance? If the President does it, it's subsequently OK? Have any of those so-called Christians ever in contrast or contrasted the actions of Trump to their model of the Bible’s teachings? This text ought to be dedicated to reminiscence of each so-called evangelical and reread earlier than Trump runs for reelection. Joie A. Anderson Armageddon's usher Melbourne, Australia: Simply who or what's a “good Christian”? Plainly Christians who outline themselves by what the Bible says can discover ample justification within the phrases therein to justify nearly any standpoint and any motion. Therefore the help for President Trump from a large variety of well-organized, well-endowed right-wing Christians who take into account themselves to carry the reality, supposedly backed by Jesus himself. They appear wed to Trump due to his success of prophecy in serving to set the stage for Armageddon and the last word return of Jesus Christ to Earth. Has anybody seen how intently the political actuality of this new world is mirroring that described by Hal Lindsey in “The Late Nice Planet Earth”? Stephen Fiyalko Rock on Levittown, L.I.: Thanks on your assessment of this glorious manufacturing (“ ‘Jesus Christ Celebrity’ comes again from the lifeless with John Legend, Sara Bareilles,” April 1). I've cherished all of the theater productions dropped at TV and hope for extra, now that Broadway has priced itself out of attain. “Celebrity” was an ideal providing for Easter Sunday and the forged was very good. That closing scene the place the set separated and have become a cross by the lighting was improbable. I might hope that in some way these feedback get to the producers. I additionally cherished the little backstage views whereas the commercials aired. Rosemary McNerney Standing o Houston: Re “Jesus Christ Celebrity Dwell!”: What a superb manufacturing! Everybody outdid themselves and John Legend was spectacular! Cheryl Duncan-Dudgeon Weak ‘Christ’ Manhattan: He’s an amazing singer, however John Legend isn't any actor. This present was nearly as unhealthy because the revival just a few years in the past. I recommend Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice dig a gap and conceal till individuals who noticed the unique Broadway present overlook this travesty. Frank Giffone Fare evasion Brooklyn: The brand new state price range offers short-term funding for the MTA by imposing surcharges on for-hire automobile providers working beneath 96th St., with the revenues flowing right into a “lock field” earmarked for the MTA. Lock bins have a nasty manner of dissolving into the overall fund for the state, spent on unrelated tasks. New York has been doing that for many years, with Gov. Cuomo and predecessors as ringleaders of that circus. The MTA is an unlimited, bottomless cash pit with an impossible-to-satisfy want for ever-increasing revenues. Add to this equation its historical past of profligate spending with lax oversight, and it turns into only a continuation of the continuing smoke-and-mirrors Ponzi scheme. And we haven’t but heard any noise popping out of Albany that appears like, “Since there's a new income stream feeding into the MTA, there received’t be any fare hikes anytime quickly.” New York State authorities is nothing greater than a prison enterprise. Stan Rosenson Hail and heartless Manhattan: The added payment on cabs is unfair throughout. Suppose you're a senior taking a cab in unhealthy climate to keep away from slippery sidewalks. Whether or not you hail it beneath 96th St. or above, there ought to be no further cost. It's the black-car corporations that ought to have charges; it's they, and never important taxis, which are clogging up streets. But it's the taxis that can lose extra prospects. Tippi Williams No toilet for the weary Staten Island: To the NYC Division of Transportation: Are you conscious that on a few Staten Island ferries, there aren't any working bathrooms? The ladies’s room was locked, so I used to be keen to make use of the boys’s room, however that was locked additionally. With all the cash that the town takes in and all of the fraud and the overpaid company heads, you don’t manage to pay for to repair just a few bathrooms? I suppose since you don’t experience the ferry (you most likely use a limo or a taxi), you don’t care. Dianne Denmark Assault on the messenger Cambria Heights: President Trump’s assaults on Amazon clarify that he's incensed in regards to the protection of his incompetence as it's revealed every day within the Washington Submit. Brick-and-mortar shops have suffered for a few years as Walmart expanded all through the nation, but The Donald has nothing to say about that. Calvin Hill Postal disservice South Ozone Park: To Voicer David Gonzalez: Plain and easy, the Postal Service loses cash with or with out Amazon, partly as a result of by legislation, it has to service the entire United States and partly as a result of, like with most authorities unions, there's completely no accountability. That plus not having to make a revenue isn't a viable marketing strategy. If its parcel service weren’t backed by first-class mail, a monopoly, its bundle supply wouldn't exist. Kenneth Kucinskas The best manner Monsey, N.Y.: Disgrace on the Every day Information. In “Donald lays egg” (April 2), The Information reviews: “The President refused to clarify his tweets to the press as he walked right into a Palm Seaside, Fla., church along with his Slovenian-born spouse, Melania. . .” It is a low-cost try by your paper to attain factors by referencing the First Girl’s nation of delivery whereas reporting on her husband’s immigration insurance policies. What you fail to report is that in contrast to the individuals the President needs to stop from coming into the county, Mrs. Trump entered america legally. Jonathan Gruenebaum Why we’re so imply Hoboken: Our nationwide discourse is meaner as a result of we've a bully within the Oval Workplace propped up by Fox anchors like Laura Ingraham, who mocks gun-survivor teenagers. And conservative commentators like Ann Coulter, who has venom working by her veins. She threatens Trump to construct that wall alongside the Mexican border — or else. How about we construct a wall round her and her ilk who spew hatred and poison our airwaves? You recognize what hell is? Listening to Coulter audiotapes 24/7. Rev. Alexander M. Santora Transfer on, David Fords, N.J.: To David Hogg: You have got an extended life to dwell, and thank God you survived the bloodbath at your college. Nonetheless, attacking Laura Ingraham about her tweet about your alleged whining over your not moving into one among your first two decisions of schools is only a battle of phrases. Please don’t make it into one thing extra by asking for her to be let go from her job. Ingraham is a most cancers survivor. She has kids to lift, and someday you'll too. Forgiveness doesn’t let the particular person go freed from their deed, however it's a liberating of 1’s soul to not grasp onto the anger relating to the deed. I’m constructive there's a college simply ready so that you can apply, and also you could be a credit score to that college as an alumnus. Diane Perez X stands for hate Manhattan: To Voicer Carmen H. Mason: If one is a supporter of the virulent anti-Semitic assaults by Malcolm X, then his teachings and his life are fashions to be pursued by his adherents. Actually, I, for one, can not empathize along with his hate-filled anti-Semitic messages. Sadly, lots of his teachings have contributed to intolerance and even violence. Nelson Marans Not missed Brooklyn: What a tragic time for the FDNY. Their funerals have been emotional and inspirational. It was actually acceptable that Mayor de Blasio didn't converse at Lt. Christopher Raguso’s service. Politicians who don't help you when you are alive shouldn't faux to take action whenever you’ve given your life for our nice nation. James Nash Paying respects Tarrytown, N.Y.: A particular heartfelt due to all of the NYPD members, particularly the members of the NYPD Freeway Patrol bike brigade, who accompanied the funeral of FDNY Lt. Michael Davidson on a really unhappy day for all New Yorkers. The respect proven by the members of each departments was significantly appreciated. Carol Culkin

[rimaregas]

The NYT’s Curious Praise of CEOs As Moral Leaders | #SocialEthics on Blog#42

I happened upon the strangely titled article, The Moral Voice of Corporate America, in the New York Times’ business section. Intrigued, I clicked the author’s bio before beginning to read.

The piece is written no differently than an opinion piece. While it includes many quotes from CEOs, it is almost completely devoid of any nuanced analysis to go with the contrasting facts chosen for the piece, links to assertions made, data, or examples that buttress the arguments made. In short, the piece is nothing more than a glorified ode to CEOS without so much as a thin veil of journalistic ethics, at the very least, presenting the reader with a requisite minimum of background in a larger context, nuance, counter-argumentation, and some analysis. Nothing.

There isn’t even any background reporting on why some of those CEOs might have chosen to throw their lots behind issues having nothing to do with Charlottesville. For example, while Gelles tells readers that Apple’s Tim Cook came out as gay, he could also have informed them that he’s a Southerner. Surely, his distaste for the Trump administration’s bent stems from strong personal views that were informed by a lifetime of exposure to bias of all kinds? Cook has given interviews to the media in the past and spoken out about social issues that he cares deeply about. Why not include some of that, aside from the fact that he’s gay and proud?  I am sure that the decision by Cook (not mentioned in the article) to award $1 million each to the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, with a promise to match 2:1 every dollar Apple employees donate to those two organizations. This was Cook’s response to Trump’s Charlottesville comments. It has nothing to do with his sexual orientation, and everything to do with the sour look on Cook’s face whenever he’s been in the presence of Trump.

You don’t change things by just yelling,’ Apple CEO Tim Cook. ‘

The same goes for Gelles’ approach to his coverage of Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation’s mission is social justice. A reminder of that to Times readers would have contextually placed Walker’s statements. Of course Walker would make such comments! That is what he does on a regular basis, among many other things.

Gelles quotes Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce:

“’When I went to business school, you didn’t see anything like this,” said Marc Benioff, the founder and chief executive of Salesforce. “Nobody talked about taking a stand or adopting a cause.’

Now, Mr. Benioff is at the vanguard of a group of executives who are more connected — to customers, employees, investors and other business leaders — than ever before, and who are unafraid to use their influence.”

Marc Benioff is two years younger than I am. By the time he went to college, business ethics had long come under the influence of Milton Friedman’s 1962 tome, Capitalism and Freedom. Social activism most definitely would not have been a covered topic at USC’s school of business administration by the mid-1980’s, anymore than it would have been at Wharton at any point in time. Such teachings would have been considered heresy.

https://www.rimaregas.com/2015/09/25/from-milton-friedman-to-ronald-dworkin-economics-for-hedgehogs-socialethics-on-blog42/

Politics, particularly in the last nine years, have increasingly clashed with the common-sense business practice of not offending one’s customers. Does that mean that Benioff’s activism was purely motivated by his bottom line? No! But one cannot discount how much of his bottom line would have been affected had he remained silent.

The same holds for many CEOs who have come out of the woodwork both in favor or against a particular social issue that they are both passionate about and affects their particular business’ bottom line. Perfect cases in point are the owners of Chick-A-Fil and Hobby Lobby. Chick-A-Fil distinguished itself a few years back for its openly hostile policy against the LGBTQ community. Hobby Lobby’s owners sued the Obama administration, along with others, not to cover contraceptives as a part of employer-provided health insurance benefits. While one can try and call these behaviors social justice for the extreme right, they are decidedly anti-social when one takes society as a whole, not to mention the fact that both of these businesses cater to conservative customers first and foremost. Once in the fray, they made the conscious choice to forge ahead. Theirs were calculated decisions, both business and moral, to act as they did. Neither corporation has suffered as a result of their calculated risk, whereas Google or Apple, given the same set of choices, would most definitely have suffered serious blows.

One of the relative few counterpoints used in the piece come by way of Travis Kalanick, former Uber CEO. Kalanick is an outlier, as much as recently convicted Pharma Bro, Martin Shkreli. They are not representative of the “dark side” of business.

Proof Tim Cook smiles… Happier times for Travis Kalanick and Tim Cook.

The son of Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, gets a mention for his now publicized email urging his friends to make donations to organizations that are fighting for social justice, in addition to the revelation that Murdoch made a $1 million contribution to the Anti-Defamation League. While it is entirely possible that young Mr. Murdoch is a social justice-minded sort, Fox News is a family-owned business that, at the moment, is saddled with having to contend with a long-running reputation for racism and, more recently, sexism and sexual harassment by their top talent, costing them tens of millions of dollars in settlement fees. All of these things must be weighed, in addition to the fact that James Murdoch was taken aback by Trump’s racist commentary. Murdoch’s shock and resulting benevolence don’t make him, or any one of the other CEOs who have spoken up, moral leaders.

Tech companies get praise for stepping up and obliterating the presence of neo-Nazi website The Stormer, deleting white supremacist content, and the financial accounts of known supremacists. There is no mention of the fact, especially in the case of The Stormer, that these tech companies’ lax policies with fringe elements have long been a bone of contention, particularly with African Americans involved in movements for social justice. For example, it is well-known that Facebook has been suspending the accounts of prominent Black activists as it had been allowing white supremacists to exercise their free speech. Facebook, in particular, has been the subject of much criticism in that regard. It behooved these tech companies to step up and speak out for those reasons, first and foremost.

To his credit, Gelles does include a reminder of some of the more spectacular faux-pas we saw recently:

“When Pepsi this year released an ad featuring Kendall Jenner offering a police officer a soda in the midst of an apparent Black Lives Matter protest, the condemnation was swift. Two years earlier, Starbucks drew wide ridicule when, as part of an effort by Mr. Schultz to start a national conversation on race relations, baristas were encouraged to write “race together” on coffee cups.”

But what’s missing is the obvious mix of ham-fistedness, mixed with a bit of social consciousness, mixed with a whole lot of obvious naked commercialism at a time of deep social anxiety. Starbuck’s attempt came at the height of police brutality cases and while it may have been well-intentioned, the initiative was most definitely ill-planned. The image Starbucks has always fashioned for itself is one of a socially-conscious enterprise, particularly in its partnerships for the overseas procurement of the main ingredient for its business. The leap from that to the national conversation on race was a huge leap.

Egregiously missing from the conversation in the Times piece is any mention of the fact that so many corporations are represented in the highest levels of the Trump administration and dictating the rollback of a dizzying number of regulations, to the point where corporations and the U.S. government are virtually indistinguishable. Add to deep corporate influence in the deregulation of everything to the real problem of American jobs not returning to the U.S., and the perception problem becomes far more acute than ever. For Apple, who used to manufacture everything in a Mac right here at home, the lingering specter of Cook’s unfulfilled promise to bring back at least some manufacturing to the U.S., against the backdrop of the deal Foxconn, Apple’s Chinese manufacturer, just signed in Wisconsin. These are the kinds of problems that underlie the reasons why so many CEOS now feel real pressure to completely disassociate themselves from a government with which they eagerly allied themselves and now cannot afford to be tied to in any way.

Curiously, a related article appeared in Business Day three days earlier, presenting the views, pro and con, of Walmart customers following that company’s CEO’s statement in opposition to President Trump. The piece, with a byline of “New York Times” oddly mirrors the corporate ethics piece both in the things it highlights and the things it fails to analyze.

Walmart’s C.E.O. Had Plenty to Say About Trump. So Did His Customers

“Peter Caprio, 64, had just started pulling out of his parking spot when he realized the cooler he had put in his trunk was holding the rear gate of his BMW sport utility vehicle open.

Mr. Caprio, a school business administrator, said Mr. Trump had made fair points in his news conference on Tuesday, when he said the violence was not just the fault of the white supremacists. “He was right; it’s on both sides,” he said.

But even if he might have agreed with Mr. McMillon’s position, he suggested it was not appropriate for the chief executive of a big company like Walmart to comment on politics.

“The C.E.O. has to worry about stockholders, nobody else,” Mr. Caprio said. “If it doesn’t affect stockholders, best to let it go.””

The comment is both a rather odd and typical one. Our culture has been inculcated in Milton Friedman’s “CEO responsibility to shareholders” mantra. The odd part is hearing it in a Walmart parking lot… One can easily observe the divisions of views that belie our nation’s polarization. The older respondents tended to give conservative responses. The younger respondents gave opposing views. Again, no mention is made of the inextricable association of corporate and government in the Trump administration.

Had this piece appeared in the Wall Street Journal, I would hardly have batted an eyelash. But this piece appeared in the New York Times, a publication that is supposed to be the flagship of liberal media and, as such, one we can count on for a more balanced view. This sort of journalism isn’t honest reporting. It is nothing more than pandering to a skittish corporatocracy that is caught between the hyper-capitalism of our new oligarchy and the simmering ire of an electorate that was already angry with the neoliberal establishment.

Subscribers of any newspaper ought to be able to count on reporting that is neutral, thorough and conveys a modicum of depth. This wasn’t it. Corporate self-interest is morphing with our politics. This isn’t the same as suddenly getting religion and abandoning Milton Friedman’s libertarian business ethics. The addition of a white supremacist president is just the straw that breaks the camel’s back. This is a distinction that the corporate media must make in this kind of reporting. Anything less gives the appearance of shilling for the corporate world they, themselves, are a part of.

Your $1-20 contributions are what keep me and this blog going. Please use the buttons above to subscribe. Thank you!

      The NYT’s Curious Praise of CEOs As Moral Leaders | #SocialEthics on Blog#42 The NYT's Curious Praise of CEOs As Moral Leaders | #SocialEthics on Blog#42

[breaksandbites]

Ever since I posted Facebook check in regarding our migration to New Zealand, I have been getting lots of queries about how did we apply for the immigration? what is the process? Is moving to New Zealand better than living in UAE? How it is different from Australian and Canadian Immigration? etc etc

Looking at the number of questions and interest I decided to write about our experience. But before digging more into the process and details I want to throw some disclaimers:

This is NOT the only way you can apply for NZ immigration

We started the process in 2015 and the policy is now updated a bit, I’ll try to highlight the points which are now changed (according to my information)

Every case is different! Things that worked out for us might not work for you 

WHY NEW ZEALAND?

Let’s rewind our lives to 2015 and play…

We were exploring a couple of options like Canada and Australia (apart from where we are) to apply but the arrow landed at New Zealand in the map eventually.

The quota of Canada was full by the time we thought to submit our application (Common idea is that the job market has saturated over there). Confused between OZ and NZ, we chose NZ main reason being HI’s best friend was already there.

Please note that we were applying just to keep an option open apart from UAE (where we already were at that time). I longed to visit this beautiful country once but this definitely was not the reason to choose New Zealand over all other options.

At this point, you may want to check out Australia’s process as well because it has much bigger market as compared to NZ.

OUR CONDITIONS

We applied family visa under Skilled Migrant Category, HI being the primary applicant (Read about this type of visa here)

We did NOT hire any consultant

We also claimed MY points to guarantee selection of application

Find out whether your skills are needed in New Zealand not in the Skill Shortage List Checker or download the complete lists from the same link.

THE PROCESS

If your occupation is listed in the Skill Shortage List then:

Calculate your points using the Points Calculator at this link.

Apply for your PAR (Pre Assessment Result) Online from NZQA . Side by side, create your account at Immigration New Zealand website and start filling out your Expression of Interest (EOI).

Submit EOI online – Enter the code received as a result of successful PAR in EOI. There is a fee.

Wait for EOI to get selected.

Note: Minimum points requirement is 100 but in order to guarantee selection of your EOI you need a score of 160 (as per last policy change). P.S. The policy keeps on changing

On receipt of notification that it has been selected, wait for preliminary checking to be done. (Start collecting your documents at this time. See FAQs below for examples of documents)

Wait for ITA (Invitation To Apply).

If you get ITA;

Send your degrees to NZQA for full qualification assessment. You’ll need to send your original educational and work related experiences documents to NZQA.

Carry out the Medical process.

Submit formal application within 4 months of ITA (or the last date will be mentioned in the email you will receive). This includes providing all the necessary evidence to back up the points claimed on your EOI. Results of full IQA assessment of qualifications from NZQA, Police checks, Medicals, Proof of relationship etc etc. Pay the fee.

Wait for immigration to assign your application a case officer.

Wait for your application to be processed and answer any questions your case officer asks.

Wait for immigration interview appointment. Usually done after approval of IQA on phone and only if you don’t have a job offer.

Case Officer passes your application to another case officer for audit checking.

You will then receive formal notification of the outcome – the case officers decision. (Either you get a resident visa or job search visa. Keep in mind that your application may get rejected too)

If successful, send in your passports for the residency stickers. Pay the final Migrant levy fee.

On receipt of your passport returned with visas you have 12 months to activate by travelling to NZ. (the duration to make the last entry may be different in some cases)

Attaching ITA Documentation Checklist below (Note: this was customized checklist for our application, yours can be slightly different).

#gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

1

2

3

4

4

TIME

The timeline I am able to deduce based on our experience is as follows:

PAR results from NZQA – within a week 

EOI process – 1 to 3 months

ITA email is received – after a couple of weeks once the EOI is accepted

Time to submit ITA – usually 4 months

Time after ITA till final outcome – atleast 7 months

Time to make entry – 12 months to make first entry, after that your visa becomes valid for 2 more years (We visited NZ in December 2016 as a result of which Trip Of Lifetime series started on the blog, check out some beautiful places to visit in South New Zealand here)

This is NOT a definite/ constant time period rather the total time our end to end process took, yours may take a little more or may be less.

MONEY

I don’t remember how much fees we paid at each step but the whole end to end process may cost you around AED 12,000 – AED 15,000.

  FAQs

Answering some of the common questions I am usually asked these days:

Is NZ Immigration better than others?

The reasons that led us to choose NZ are stated above, I have no idea about how it may or may not be different/ beneficial as compared to the other countries’ immigration. New Zealand is heaven on earth ❤ and apparently the 4th most safest country to live in 😀 (this might help you with the choice 🙂 )

How is moving to New Zealand better than living in UAE?

Well I like, no LOVE UAE. there are loads of advantages of living in UAE.

It is a Muslim state (Being a Muslim I’d say that this is one of the best part)

The food is amazing (everything is halal and available 24×7)

Closer to home (Pakistan)

Tax-free luxurious life

But apart from all the countless pluses, you never get citizenship hence the irony. You will have to leave your home as soon as you lose your job. Living in constant fear of leaving the place which you call your home is scary at times. Sometimes we have to take difficult decisions for better future 🙂

How is the weather there?

The climatic conditions of New Zealand are the opposite of those in the Northern Hemisphere. Typically December to February is summer; March to May is autumn; June to August is winter; and September to November is spring. Also, Wellington is super windy. So we are experiencing windy-rainy-cold days these days.

Did you hire a consultant?

No, HI himself is a consultant (not immigration one though) hence he was appalled at the thought of hiring one. Lol :p Also, the process is pretty easy and straight forward. And the internet is full of helpful articles which is our day-to-day FREE consultant by all means.

From where did you apply?

We applied from UAE

How did you get 160 points?

You can always check out INZ (website for NZ Immigration) for more insights and detailed understanding. The limit was 140 points at the time we applied. Scoring 160 points is very difficult unless you have a job offer from NZ but there is a likelihood that they will update and lax the policy pretty soon – a ray of hope :). I will update here, snap about it and will also share it on my Instagram stories as soon as I’ll come to know about it.

Since minimum points requirement is 100, should I apply even if my points score is below 160?

 Surely the minimum points requirement is 100 but in order to guarantee selection of your EOI you need a score of 160 (as per last policy change). Any less selection is unlikely.

What documents should we collect to submit with ITA?

The supporting documents you will be required to submit with ITA may include:

English marriage certificates

Police clearance certificate (from every location you have lived so far – like in our case we had to collect these certificates from Karachi and UAE)

Spouses should have joint bank account (for verification that you are husband and wife and living together) – We did not have any so we had to prove our relationship through pictures, rental contracts etc etc

Some letters, Envelopes of mails on your address with your name (Aramex, DHL , Pakistan post any couriers)

From where should I get my medical done?

We went to Pakistan to carry out our medical process since it was very much cheaper as compared to UAE. The total cost of going to Pakistan and the entire medical process was less than it would have costed us in UAE. You can also consider going to Turkey for the cause 😉 (it is cheap there as well)

From where should the documents be attested?

Get your documents attested from HEC and MOFA (Ministry Of Foreign Affairs)

How does claiming spouse’s points works and how it is useful?

Spouse’s points can be claimed in order to get the desired score if primary applicant’s point are insufficient to get 160 (as per latest policy change), the spouse then will have to fulfill all the requirements as of the primary applicant. (IELTS score, NZQA assessment result etc etc)

Some Interview Tips please?

Do your homework about the country – they’d like you to have some information about it

Boast about your skill (the one which you are applying in)

Be confident

These were the FAQs I was bombarded with time and again. However, you can read about general kinda queries related to skilled migrant category here.

This was it from my side about our Immigration tales. Hope you all find it informative and easy. If you have queries about the article drop your questions in the comments section below, I will try to help within my reach and limit. And you can always visit INZ to explore more visa options 🙂

All the best to the ones who are thinking/trying to apply or already have applied.

See you soon here 🙂

New Zealand Immigration – Our Story! Ever since I posted Facebook check in regarding our migration to New Zealand, I have been getting lots of queries about

[dietpillswatchdog]

MateFit 28 Day Teatox

The teatox craze seems to show no signs of abating, as hundreds of companies now seem to offer various teas that claim to cleanse and detoxify the body. The trend seems to have caught the eyes of celebrities as well, with megastars like Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears regularly promoting teatox products on social media. One burning question remains: can these products really live up to their considerable hype?

Below we take an in-depth look into MateFit 28 Day Teatox, to see whether this well-known and brand-conscious product is one of the better ones on the market.

MateFit 28 Day Teatox Pros

Free shipping on all orders

Product is reasonably priced

Many customers like the taste of the teas

MateFit 28 Day Teatox Cons

The majority of customer reviews report that the product is ineffective

No money-back guarantee and a confusing and risky returns policy

Detoxing for the full 28 days could cause serious side effects

Watchdog Rejected Diet Pills

WATCHDOG TIP: Consider using the consumer #1 rated weight loss product – CLICK HERE

What You Need To Know About MateFit 28 Day Teatox

The MateFit 28 Day Teatox is a detox and weight loss pack that promises to cleanse the body of toxins. The pack comes with two different teas; the metabolic boost tea is supposed to act as a weight loss aid and should be consumed daily, and the detox tea is a laxative/diuretic that is designed to be taken every 2 days. The same teas can also be purchased separately, and customers can also opt for a smaller and cheaper 14 day kit.

MateFit is a US-based manufacturer that specializes in teatoxes. The company is heavily promoted by Hollywood celebrities, models and popstars throughout the world of social media, and seems to have invested heavily in its image. The company has pages on every social media site going, and recruits special “MateFit Reps” who spread the company’s brand in exchange for small payments and discounts.

What Are The Side Effects Of MateFit 28 Day Teatox?

Each tea comes with its own side effects, although virtually no customers complain of side effects in their product reviews. The main drawback from drinking the Metabolic Boost Tea is the high caffeine content, which can cause insomnia, restlessness, nausea, high blood pressure and heartrate, and headaches for some people. The licorice in the mix has also cause some customers to feel bloated after drinking the tea.

The MateFit Detox Tea is a laxative and diuretic, which can result in diarrhoea and stomach cramps. Customers should be warned that taking laxatives for the full 28 days (as instructed) can cause serious and costly side effects. Regular use of laxatives for more than 2 weeks at a time can causer the body to become dependent on them, meaning that customers require laxatives in order to go to the bathroom. Passing stools in this way can also cause the body to lose a lot of key electrolytes, which can result in organ and muscle damage if left unchecked.

Allergic reactions to other ingredients in the Detox Tea can also cause heartburn, stomach problems, hot flushes, headaches, mouth sores and uterine contractions.

How Much Does MateFit 28 Day Teatox Cost?

The full 28 day kit costs $45 on the official website and $39 on Amazon. Customers shopping on the official website also have the option of going with the smaller 14 day kit, which costs $25. The teas can also be purchased individually on the official website; a 28 day supply of Detox Tea is $25 ($21 on Amazon) and a 40 day supply of Metabolic Boost Tea costs $35. Shipping is free on all orders.

Our Verdict On MateFit 28 Day Teatox

The MateFit 28 Day Teatox does not impress us. On the basis of the ingredients, this is actually quite surprising; at first glance, we would imagine that the teas would work as advertised. However, the customer reviews on Amazon are generally very negative, with the majority complaining that the products are ineffective or only partially effective (with some compliments reserved for the taste). The fact that the teas don’t seem to come with the expected side effects could be taken as further evidence that they don’t do much at all.

MateFit’s website and returns policy also leave much to be desired. Finding out information about the teas is annoyingly tricky on the official website, with the ingredients list hidden away on a separate page (with the ingredient quantities unlisted). Despite the company claiming that they have a money-back guarantee, the actual returns policy offers no such thing, and is described so poorly that it is almost incoherent.

Overall, MateFit’s policy toward everything seems heavily weighted in favor of image over substance. Much more money and time seems to have been spent advertising the teas than actually making them good, and the website is more stuffed with Instagram-style photos than actual information. There is also no space on the website devoted to informing customers about the dangers of using laxatives for more than 2 weeks, a serious omission that could cause repeat customers to become seriously ill.

Despite the celebrity hype, we do not recommend the MateFit 28 Day Teatox to our readers.

The most popular consumer choice in 2017 is Phentaslim.

With a combination of proven ingredients, superb customer service and a 60-day money-back guarantee, Phentaslim is making big waves in the diet world.

Find out why thousands of people are choosing Phentaslim to achieve their weight loss goals, and why it's also the editor's top selection.

Read the Watchdog Phentaslim review here.

Key Features

Ingredients

Side Effects

Testimonials

Guarantee

Where to Buy

MateFit 28 Day Teatox Review

MateFit’s 28 Day Teatox is the company’s flagship program, combining two teatox products that are intended to be used regularly throughout the month. Billed as a weight loss solution and full body cleanse, the key details of this product (including its ingredients) are kept rather quiet on the official website, making it a potentially hard program for customers to understand before they buy.

MateFit 28 Day Teatox Facts

Manufactured by MateFit

Contains 70g of MateFit Metabolic Boost and 35g of MateFit Detox Tea per pack

28 day weight loss and detox kit

The kit and standalone versions of the product are manufactured and sold by MateFit, an American teatox specialist. MateFit seem to have done extremely well on the advertising front so far, with dozens of celebrities (including Nicki Minaj, Britney Spears, Amber Rose and others) lining up to promote their products throughout the world of social media. The company also tries to recruit MateFit reps, ordinary members of the public who attempt to sign up friends and coworkers for MateFit programs in exchange for financial rewards and discounts. The company can be reached via email at OrderInfo@MateFit.me, and can probably receive messages on their various social media accounts.

How to Take MateFit 28 Day Teatox

The directions for use for MateFit Metabolic Boost are as follows:

Drink in the morning and noon. Pour hot water (around 195 F) in an 8oz glass. Add a teaspoon (2.5g) of MateFit Metabolic Boost into the teabag that comes with your purchase. Let is steep in hot water for 4-5 minutes (if you want to make it stronger and more effective, steep it up to 5-7 minutes). Drink it when you feel comfortable with the temperature. We recommend you add lemon and honey to make it sweeter.

The directions for use for MateFit Detox are as follows:

Use every other night. Pour hot water (around 195 F). Let it steep in hot water for 4-5 minutes (if you want to make it stronger and more effective, steep it up to 8-10 minutes). Drink it when you feel comfortable with the temperature.

MateFit 28 Day Teatox Concerns:

Ingredient quantities not listed and ingredients list hard to spot on official website

No money-back guarantee and a poorly-worded returns policy

Long-term detoxes may come with serious side effects

What Does MateFit 28 Day Teatox Claim To Do?

For the most part, the MateFit 28 Day Teatox promises to act as a body cleanse, clearing the body of toxins that “contribute to bloating, weight gain and an overall feeling of sluggishness”. Conversely, the teatox package is said to reduce bloat, help with weight loss and boost the body’s metabolism. The official website lists the following key benefits of the 28 day package:

Boosts your metabolism

Flushes away unwanted pounds

Reduces puffiness and bloating in the abdomen for a flatter stomach

Increases energy levels

Maximizes weight loss results

Does MateFit 28 Day Teatox Work?

The Metabolic Boost Drink is essentially a combination of three types of tea (oolong, green tea and yerba mate), each of which has been shown to help dieters lose a small amount of weight. Customers could expect a small amount of weight loss and an energy boost if the ingredients are balanced correctly, although readers should be warned that the customer reviews on Amazon suggest that this mix is not particularly effective.

The detox tea contains a mix of ingredients that should work as laxatives and diuretics, meaning that customers should expect more regular bathroom visits. Other ingredients seem to have been included to relieve bowel issues, which seem to have the effect of reducing the more unpleasant side effects of laxatives (we saw no major complaints about side effects in customer reviews). As a general rule, we don’t consider laxative/diuretic products to be effective methods of weight loss or “detoxing”, as any weight loss can only ever be temporary.

What Are The Ingredients of MateFit 28 Day Teatox?

Listed below are the main active ingredients used in the two teas included as part of the MateFit 28 Day Teatox. Readers should note that the ingredient quantities are unlisted, which can make it impossible to estimate how effective each ingredient is within these mixes.

Matefit Metabolic Boost Drink:

Organic Yerba Mate: A plant that is typically brewed as a tea, yerba mate is a natural source of caffeine, and has been the subject of several studies on weight loss. In a 2001 study of 47 healthy overweight adults, researchers found that taking an herbal preparation of yerba mate, guarana, and damiana three times daily for 45 days induced weight loss. It is not clear whether the individual ingredients from this preparation have the same weight loss potential on their own, or how much of each ingredient is required to replicate the results of the study. See our article on Yerba mate for more information. Source: http://ift.tt/1FwNJrn

Sechung Oolong Tea: Oolong tea is a partially fermented tea made from the same plant that black and green teas are made from. Studies have suggested that the caffeine and antioxidants found in Oolong tea improve lipid metabolism in the body, and that chronic consumption of oolong tea could decrease body fat content and reduce body weight by a small amount. Source: http://ift.tt/2cCFqkl

Organic Pinhead Gunpowder Tea: This is simply an exotic version of green tea, where the tea is rolled into pellets that unfurl in the hot water. Green tea is high in a group of antioxidants called catechins. Studies have suggested that catechins and caffeine both increase energy expenditure by boosting the metabolism temporarily. However, the metabolic increase caused by green tea is limited. One study found that the use of green tea was not enough to counteract weight gain following a high calorie diet. Source: http://ift.tt/1tcW0bf

Organic Angelica Root Powder: Angelica may help to treat premature ejaculation in men. In women, it can bring on menstrual periods. It is also used to treat heartburn and flatulence. Source: http://ift.tt/2owRSJj

Guarana Seed Powder: A berry that is naturally high in caffeine, it is often an ingredient in energy drinks and diet pills. Source: http://ift.tt/2cNyGk1

Organic Licorice Root cut: Licorice can be used to treat digestive problems and has achieved mixed results in weight loss trials, but can cause water retention. Source: http://ift.tt/15zgOp1

Organic Stevia: Stevia is a natural sweetener that contains a fraction of the calories and health risks associated with sugar. Source: http://ift.tt/2o9ejCg

Matefit Detox Tea:

Organic Dandelion Root: This plant is primarily used as an effective diuretic and laxative. Source: http://ift.tt/18EjRrQ

Peppermint Loose Leaf Tea: Used to treat digestive problems, IBS, gas, and the common cold, as well as sinus infections. Source: http://ift.tt/2iwYGa6

Organic Rosemary Leaf: Rosemary is taken for a range of digestive problems, including flatulence, heartburn and stomach complaints. No evidence exists to prove whether it is effective at stopping any of these issues. Source: http://ift.tt/2owPmm5;

Organic Senna Leaf: Senna is an FDA-approved non-prescription laxative. It is used to treat constipation. Source: http://ift.tt/2dFQJLQ

Organic Cinnamon Powder: Although cinnamon is often used to relieve the symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, it can sometimes induce IBS. It is not considered a good ingredient for regulating the bowel. Source: http://ift.tt/2owI3v1

Organic Black Pepper: Black pepper extract is used for increasing the bioavailability of nutritional compounds. In other words, it increases the amounts of nutrients that are absorbed into the body in the digestive tract. It may also increase the absorption of various drugs, which may lead to potential side effects. Source: http://bioperine.com/

Organic Ginger Root: Some studies suggest that ginger root is an appetite suppressant. One study used dried ginger powder to make a tea that participants drank with breakfast. Researchers found that satiety levels were much higher when the tea was consumed with breakfast, rather than just the breakfast on its own. Source: http://ift.tt/1JlXMyf

Organic Hibiscus Flower Powder: May work as a laxative. Also used to treat a loss of appetite, which may be counterintuitive for weight loss. Source: http://ift.tt/24rA8OJ

Organic Rhubarb Root Powder: This ingredient is used to treat a range of digestive complaints, including making bowel movements easier to pass. Source: http://ift.tt/2aajK28

Organic Lemongrass Leaf: May be added for flavoring, but Lemongrass can also soothe stomach ache and digestive problems. Source: http://ift.tt/1Pv7qmc

Organic Grapefruit Peel: May Contain Naringin, which could enhance lipid (fat) metabolism in the body. Source: http://ift.tt/1q25hpO

Does MateFit 28 Day Teatox Have Any Side Effects?

The Metabolic Boost Drink does not contain much that could cause side effects, although some customers have complained of bloating. The most major side effect of taking this tea is the high caffeine content, which can cause sleep problems, restlessness, stomach upset, nausea, high blood pressure, headaches, irregular heartbeats and general restlessness. Angelica can also cause fair-skinned people to burn more easily in the sun (as it causes the skin to be temporarily more sensitive).

The MateFit Detox Tea will act as a laxative and diuretic, which obviously can cause diarrhoea, stomach discomfort and cramps. Using the tea for the full 28 days can cause more serious issues, and we do not recommend that customers use this product for more than 2 weeks. Longer-term use of laxatives can cause dependency, meaning that users struggle to go to the bathroom without laxatives to help. Constantly flushing out the body can also cause an electrolyte imbalance, which can lead to organ disorders and muscle weakness over time.

Other ingredients in the detox tea could also cause adverse effects for some people. Rhubarb and ginger can cause heartburn and stomach discomfort, and can lead to heavier periods and uterine contractions for women. Allergic reactions to peppermint can cause hot flushes, headaches and mouth sores.

Caution: Not suitable for individuals under 18 years of age. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding consult a doctor before using this product. If you are taking any medication, or have any type of medical issue, consult with a doctor before using this product. Discontinue use if skin irritation occurs.

Are There Any Customer Reviews For MateFit 28 Day Teatox?

The customer reviews for the MateFit 28 day and 14 day teatoxes are mixed on whether the packs work, with the majority being generally negative. Some customers report losing weight and enjoy the taste of the teas, whereas most others complain that the products are ineffective.

Great products. This is a second time that I’m ordering the tea. I stopped drinking Coffee, lost 4 pounds.

From all the tea I have drink throughout the years, this tea combination is the best so far. To be fair, I only drink the green detox bag because it doesn’t make you bloated. The orange metabolic boost bag, make me bloated and stuff. Will buy the detox bag again only.

I was so excited when I purchased this product but it did not do what it’s advertised to. I’m convinced most of the positive reviews are fake. The metabolic boost tea gave me no energy and the two teas together led to no weight loss, despite my regular exercise and healthy diet. The only plus is that I thought both teas tasted good. I was expecting worse based on other reviews, but was pleasantly surprised. But in no way will I purchase this again, nor would I recommend it to anyone.

First of all, this tea tastes so bad that I could hardly drink it. Secondly, it made me pee all the time, it was awful. All the peeing interrupted my work and sleep. I don’t think this tea does anything but work as a diuretic to make you pee out extra water, making people think they are losing weight and whatnot. My energy level was no different, did not seem to have effect on my appetite. Will not order again, waste of money, not recommended.

Does MateFit 28 Day Teatox Offer a Money-Back Guarantee?

On the official website, MateFit claim that all of their products are protected by a money-back guarantee. However, a detailed look at the confusing returns policy makes this seem untrue. In the same paragraph, MateFit claim that all returned products must be “unused and in the same condition that you received it”, before then stating that they accept “opened” packs 2 sentences later. In any case, the returns policy also states that the company can “reject” a refund after the item has been sent back, and claims that partial refunds may be offered. We don’t consider this odd arrangement to be a real money-back guarantee.

Where Can I Buy MateFit 28 Day Teatox?

MateFit’s various products can be purchased on the official MateFit website and on Amazon. You may also spot some good deals on eBay.

The full 28 day ultimate teatox costs $45 on the official website and $38.99 on Amazon. The smaller 14 day kit costs $24.99 on the official website and is currently out of stock on Amazon. Customers can also buy the individual tea packs if they prefer. A 28 day supply of the detox tea costs $24.99 on the official website, and $20.99 from Amazon. The metabolic boost tea can only be purchased on the MateFit website, and will cost $35 for a 40-day supply. All orders placed on Amazon and the MateFit website come with free shipping.

The post MateFit 28 Day Teatox appeared first on Diet Pills Watchdog.

http://ift.tt/20dXvcA