#because what is a folk tradition if it becomes the preserve of a very narrow demographic? folk means people.

[popsicle-stick]

wanna make a folk costumes of britain zine sooo fuckign bad.........

[patriotsnet]

What Do Republicans Like About Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-do-republicans-like-about-trump/

What Do Republicans Like About Trump

How Wyoming Voters Are Reacting To Rep Cheneys Leadership Battle

What should the Republican Party do about Trump?

Many Republicans, including McCarthy, have decided that the path to retake majority control of the House requires embracing Trump, which means either repeating his false assertions that the election was stolen or keeping quiet, neither of which Cheney has been willing to do.

McCarthy has long viewed Trump as important to helping him become the next House speaker and important to helping Republicans win the midterm elections said a House Republican aide who works for neither McCarthy or Cheney.

The aide described the leadership fight as “a s— show” and “something that should never really have happened,” expressing anger over its handling.

“I think it’s dumb when we always try to claim that we’re this big party that we’re pushing out someone who has a slightly different opinion,” the aide said, adding, “It’s just absurd to me.”

Another senior Republican congressional aide argued that Cheney was likely to be removed because she keeps publicly disagreeing with McCarthy, not because of her criticism of Trump.

“As conference chair, was spending more time bashing Republicans than Democrats” at the recent House retreat, the aide said, adding that McCarthy “was literally the only thing keeping her in leadership.”

Many Republicans have lamented that the squabble is distracting from anti-Biden messaging, which is what they say will actually help them in the midterms.

America Should Deport Illegal Immigrants

Republicans believe that illegal immigrants, no matter the reason they are in this country, should be forcibly removed from the U.S. Although illegal immigrants are often motivated to come to the U.S. by companies who hire them, Republicans generally believe that the focus of the law should be on the illegal immigrants and not on the corporations that hire them.

Democrats Think Many Republicans Sincere And Point To Policy

Democrats, however, were somewhat more generous in their answers.;;More than four in ten Democratic voters ; felt that most Republican voters had the countrys best interests at heart . ;And many tried their best to answer from the others perspective. A 45-year-old male voter from Ohio imagined that as a Republican, he was motivated by Republicans harsh stance on immigration; standing up for the 2nd Amendment; promised tax cuts.;;A 30-year-old woman from Colorado felt that Republican votes reflected the desires to stop abortion stop gay marriage from ruining our country and give us our coal jobs back.

Other Democrats felt that their opponents were mostly motivated by the GOPs opposition to Obamacare, lower taxes and to support a party that reduced unemployment.;

Don’t Miss: When Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Platforms

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were;voting in the best interests of the country.;;Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.

We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country.;;We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might.;;For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.;;;

But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy!;Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on.;;They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way.;

Don’t Miss: Have The Democrats Tried To Impeach Every Republican President Since Eisenhower

Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Across the party as a whole, an NBC News poll released late last month found, a majority of Republicans considered themselves supporters of the GOP, compared to just 44 percent who supported Trump above all, the first time that has been the case since July 2019.

But mild dissatisfaction with Trump isn’t the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes, and they’re buckled in for the long haul. That creates the opening for more traditional Republicans to toy with forming a new party but it’s a slim one.

Liz Cheney Of Wyoming

The most vocal House Republican to vote to impeach Mr. Trump, Ms. Cheney has borne the brunt of the former presidents wrath. Last week, in an attempt to narrow a crowded field, Mr. Trump endorsed Harriet Hageman, a former Republican National Committee member and a 2018 candidate for governor in Wyoming, in the primary against Ms. Cheney.

Former Trump aides have rushed to Ms. Hagemans side to prop up her nascent campaign and persuade other candidates to drop out of the race. Ms. Cheney has remained unwavering in her criticism of Mr. Trump, describing his unwillingness to accept the results of the 2020 election as a threat to democracy and defiantly daring Mr. Trump and his allies to bring it on.

If Harriet wants to cast her lot with those folks, Ms. Cheney told Wyoming reporters this month, I would note that theyre the same people who were involved in misleading millions of Americans about the election in 2020.

Also Check: How Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch

Republicans Almost Won In 2020

To torture this autopsy metaphor even more: Theres a good argument that the party is still very much alive.

Historically, parties have done more self-reflection and been more likely to change course when theyve hit electoral low points. In the 1988 presidential race, Democrats carried only 10 states and Washington, D.C., and that loss was their third consecutive failed bid for the White House. In 2008, Obama won the popular vote by 7 percentage points Republicans didnt even carry Indiana. So of course the parties were ready to rethink things after those defeats.

In contrast, Trump would have won reelection had he done only about 1 percentage point better in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and about 3 points better in Michigan. Republicans would still control the Senate had Republican David Perdue won about 60,000 more votes against Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgias Senate runoff. A slew of court rulings that forced the redrawing of House district lines in less favorable ways to the GOP helped the Democrats win several seats otherwise, Republicans might have won back the House. Add all that up, and 2020 wasnt that far from resulting in a Republican trifecta.;

Also, Republicans did really well in state legislative races and gained ground among Black and Latino voters nationally .

related:What Did CPAC Tell Us About The Future Of The GOP? Read more. »

Trump Slams ‘wayward’ Republicans For Capitol Riot Vote

What Do Republicans Do if Trump Runs in 2024?

US Capitol riots

Former US president Donald Trump blasted “wayward Republicans” after lawmakers made a rare bipartisan push to investigate the Capitol riot.

With the support of 35 Republicans, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted 252-175 to look into the events of 6 January.

Party leaders had urged Republicans to oppose the bill, with Mr Trump labelling it a “Democrat trap”.

The bill appears to lack the Republican support it needs to pass in the Senate.

It seeks to create an independent inquiry modelled on the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The legislation establishes a 10-member body, evenly split between the two main parties, that would make recommendations by the end of the year on how to prevent any repeat of the Capitol invasion.

Trump supporters stormed Congress on 6 January in a failed bid to thwart certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in November’s election.

Wednesday’s vote was seen as a loyalty test to the former president for members of his party.

All 10 of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the days after the Capitol riot for incitement of insurrection were among the 35 who voted for the commission.

In a statement after the vote, Mr Trump hit out at the “wayward” Republican group, saying, “they just can’t help themselves”.

“Sometimes there are consequences to being ineffective and weak,” Mr Trump added.

Don’t Miss: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

A Ponderous Speech Poorly Delivered

In a ponderous, hour-long speech more akin to a State of the Union address than a nomination acceptance, Donald Trump alternated between ticking through his record as president and circling around, like a prize fighter, to launch strikes on his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.

It was a blunderbuss of attacks, of varying levels of validity, in the hope that some will draw blood – on trade, immigration, education, energy and foreign policy. But most of all, Mr Trump sought to paint Mr Biden as in league with the protesters on the streets and the more left-wing members of the Democratic party.

The setting of the speech was majestic – on the grounds of the White House and in view of the Washington monument.

The delivery from a president who thrives more on rousing rallies than rhetorical set-pieces, however, frequently landed with a thud.

How Things Got This Bad

6) The Republican turn against democracy begins with race

Support for authoritarian ideas in America is closely tied to the countrys long-running racial conflicts.

This chart, from a by Vanderbilt professor Larry Bartels, shows a statistical analysis of a survey of Republican voters, analyzing the link between respondents score on a measure of ethnic antagonism and their support for four anti-democratic statements .

The graphic shows a clear finding: The higher a voter scores on the ethnic antagonism scale, the more likely they are tosupport anti-democratic ideas. This held true even when Bartels used regression analyses to compare racial attitudes to other predictors, like support for Trump. The strongest predictor by far of these antidemocratic attitudes is ethnic antagonism, he writes.

For students of American history, this shouldnt be a surprise.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act cemented Democrats as the party of racial equality, causing racially resentful Democrats in the South and elsewhere to defect to the Republican Party. This sorting process, which took place over the next few decades, is the key reason America is so polarized.

7) Partisanship causes Republicans to justify anti-democratic behavior

This chart is a little hard to parse, but it illustrates a crucial finding from one of the best recent papers on anti-democratic sentiment in America: how decades of rising partisanship made an anti-democratic GOP possible.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

How Americas Political System Creates Space For Republicans To Undermine Democracy

9) Republicans havean unpopular policy agenda

Let Them Eat Tweets

The Republican policy agenda is extremely unpopular. The chart here, taken from Jacob Hacker and Paul Piersons recent book Let Them Eat Tweets, compares the relative popularity of the two major legislative efforts of Trumps first term tax cuts and Obamacare repeal to similar high-priority bills in years past. The contrast is striking: The GOPs modern economic agenda is widely disliked even compared to unpopular bills of the past, a finding consistent with a lot of recent polling data.

Hacker and Pierson argue that this drives Republicans emphasis on culture war and anti-Democratic identity politics. This strategy, which they term plutocratic populism, allows the partys super-wealthy backers to get their tax cuts while the base gets the partisan street fight they crave.

The GOP can do this because Americas political system is profoundly unrepresentative. The coalition it can assemble overwhelmingly white Christian, heavily rural, and increasingly less educated is a shrinking minority that has lost the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential contests. But its voters are ideally positioned to give Republicans advantages in the Electoral College and the Senate, allowing the party to remain viable despite representing significantly fewer voters than the Democrats do.

10) Some of the most consequential Republican attacks on democracy happen at the state level

Republicans Will Defend Their Caesar But New Revelations Show Trumps True Threat

The DoJ has dealt two blows and the 6 January committee is winding up for more. They know democracy is in danger

Sidney Blumenthal: What did Jim Jordan know and when?

On Friday, Donald Trump received two more unwelcome reminders he is no longer president. Much as he and his minions chant Lock her up about Hillary Clinton and other enemies, it is he who remains in legal jeopardy and political limbo.

Trumps allies on Capitol Hill will again be forced to defend the indefensible. That wont be a bother: QAnon is their creed, Trump is their Caesar and Gladiator remains the movie for our time.

But in other ways, the world has changed. The justice department is no longer an extension of Trumps West Wing. The levers of government are no longer at his disposal.

Next year, much as Trump helped deliver both Georgia Senate seats to the Democrats in January, on the eve of the insurrection, his antics may cost Republicans their chance to retake the Senate.

Documents that would probably not have seen the light of day had Trump succeeded in overturning the election are now open to scrutiny, be they contemporaneous accounts of his conversations about that dishonest aim or his tax returns.

Those who claim that the events of 6 January were something other than a failed coup attempt would do well to come up with a better line. Or a different alternate reality.

Prospective witnesses before the House select committee on the events of 6 January ought to start worrying

Don’t Miss: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

Poverty Must Solve Itself

Republicans believe that poor people are usually poor for a reason, be it laziness, choice or whatever. Unless we demand that people pull themselves up by the bootstraps and solve their own problems, people will not be motivated to do things. Therefore, the issue of poverty cannot be solved by the government. Charity should be the choice of individuals.

Opinion: Cmon Republicans Its Time To Do The Right Thing On Health Care

When they went home for the July 4th recess, Republican members of Congress did one of two things: Either they met with constituents and were pummeled with angry questions about their disastrous health-care bill, or they hid out, trying to avoid their constituents so that they wouldnt be pummeled with angry questions about their disastrous health-care bill. Predictably, support for the bill among Republican senators is slipping away, which is not surprising given that this is the most unpopular piece of legislation in the history of polling.

So the time has come for Republicans to cut their losses and do the right thing. It wont be easy, but there are no easy options left for them.

Republicans need to admit to themselves that there is no great victory to be had. There will be political fallout no matter what the 2018 elections are going to be brutal but their choice now is between passing nothing, passing a bill that is so dreadful that it wins them the undying rage of the public, or a compromise that actually helps solve some of the problems they profess to care about.

What Republicans need to do now is drop the idea of repealing the Affordable Care Act and join together with Democrats to fix the problems in the individual market. Its not what they hoped for, but its a lot better than the alternative for everyone.

Also Check: When Did Democrats And Republicans Switch Ideologies

Republicans And Their Declared Positions On Donald Trump

Elected officials’ positions on Donald Trump Federal:Republicans and their declared positions on Donald Trump Republicans supporting Donald Trump Republicans opposing Donald Trump State and local: Republican reactions to 2005 Trump tape

In a typical general election year, elected officials readily line up behind their party’s presidential nominee. In 2012, for example, The Hill reported that only four Republican members of Congress had declined to endorse Mitt Romney by mid-September of that year. “All other House and Senate Republicans” had already endorsed the Republican nominee.

But 2016 was not a typical general election year.

Controversial comments from the GOP’s 2016 nominee, Donald Trump, about women, Muslims, Hispanics, and veterans who were prisoners of war caused some Republican lawmakers to distance themselves from the businessman, while others outright denounced him.

This page tracked the stances of Republican lawmakers on Trump throughout the 2016 presidential election: Did they support him? Did they oppose him? Or were they somewhere in between? The focus of this page is on Republican members of Congress and Republican governors, but we also have included some information on influential Republicans who have served in Republican presidential administrations.

[aviditas-blog]

2018 BMW M550i : Cheaper M Model with High M Performance

Seeing an M badge at the rump of a BMW used to be unambiguous proof that you had been searching at a pinnacle vehicle, one of these fortunate products to were given the comprehensive reworking by using the company’s motorsport department.

Then things started to get each stressed and complicated. First, there had been a few not especially true M vehicles to break up the run of hits, as BMW’s marketing department insisted efforts be directed at less obvious elements of the market—the first-generation X5 M and X6 M stood as obvious violations of what had previously been center M values of deftness and precision. But then BMW decided to create a subsidiary line, a sub sub-brand if you will, within the shape of inexpensive M Performance fashions, a sort of midway residence designed to understudy the unmarried-integer M cars.

The 2018 BMW five Series, the executive sedan's 7th era, is receiving a so-so reception. Perhaps it's because we've got grow to be too blasé approximately this model, which dates to 1972. That first E12 took the fight to Mercedes-Benz, observed by way of the 1981 E28 that in reality expanded the 5 Series. It become sleek, state-of-the-art, and funky sufficient for Jason Bourne to thieve.

Somehow cool abandoned the modern day model, which is billed as an "govt athlete." The 5 Series' transcendence is described through touchscreen wizardry, self-riding talent, and business performance. Perhaps the antidote is the M550i xDrive. We tested it in the heartland of Bavaria on roads around the elbow of the German Alps referred to as Berchtesgaden, a stunning if precipitous part of the arena. These days it's a beautiful countrywide park, however in darker instances turned into also the web site of Hitler's World War II Eagle's Nest hideaway.

Oh and it snowed. So tons past due-season snow that organizers rushed out to comfortable Continental winter tires, which has the effect of pushing street vibration thru the frame and dulling corner turn-in. We were not watching for a nimble force. This is a beefy muscle sedan that weighs 4,372 pounds. It's powered by way of a 4.4-liter, quick-stroke twin-turbo V8 with direct injection and variable valve carry. It produces 456 horsepower at five,500 rpm and 480 pound-ft of torque going for walks from 1,800 to 4,750 rpm. Even at 6,500 rpm in which redline is close by, hammering the throttle is worthwhile, as are sprints to 60 performed in three.Nine seconds.

The longitudinally-installed V8 feeds right into a ZF eight-velocity torque-converter automatic transmission. It capabilities a unique set of ratios and an electronically controlled Haldex-type grab % sending power to the front wheels whilst slip is detected or anticipated, however the machine defaults to a rear-wheel bias.

The wheels are fashionable 19-inchers with 20-inch rims non-compulsory. On its M-Sport suspension with active-roll stabilization the 550i runs 0.Four inches decrease than the traditional sedan, which gives it a hard look. The bodywork is saved in large part preferred, but blue brake calipers, huge lower the front air intakes, black chrome exhaust snaps, and reflect cappings supply it subtle aggression. Inside are sporty seats, aluminum foot pedals, and illuminated sill plates and trim strips.

Transmission control is via BMW's tunnel-hooked up lever or extra simply, thru the guidance-column paddles. There are several driving force settings for the transmission that modulate throttle mapping, steering weight, and suspension roll manipulate and damping. Sport and Sport + are at the extreme, the latter relaxing the dynamic stability control to permit mild tail-out riding.

Startup is a useful growl that becomes a posse of irritated friends banging on your door. The competitive awakening contrasts with the powertrain's docile nature around metropolis. The suspension is supple and forgiving, although the tires are loud over potholes and floor adjustments. Those wintry weather boots additionally set up a fizzing vibration thru the guidance.

Speed up and that big engine dominates the enjoy. Despite the cut back weight, acceleration gathers inexorably like an drawing close typhoon. The ZF transmission modifications gears easily or quickly depending on what you have dialed in, and it loves being manually quick-shifted round 4,500 rpm, in which it looks like an unstoppable force.

Overdrive it and there's a real sense of being trapped on a runaway educate, with the body manage ultimate loose and rangy regardless of the suspension placing. This is a massive vehicle, greater than six toes extensive, so you need to accurately area it on all but the widest roads. On narrow streets, specially people with undulating surfaces, there's a jouncing, wriggling exceptional to the trip that leaves you feeling as though in no way quite on top of things. Nothing incorrect with the wishbone the front and 5-link rear suspensions, and the body-roll manage works properly, so some of feeling might be right down to the ones wintry weather tires. Yet, different BMW models carry all-weather rubber without throwing maximum of their high velocity using high-quality out the window. Additionally, those sporty seats are not particularly relaxed after an hour behind the wheel.

Worse, where the three Series steerage aids like lane-preserving help may be truely turned off through dashboard switches, turning off these steering corrupters at the five Series requires some virtual cave diving at the least three degrees down from the main display screen, that is absolutely unacceptable in a sedan with M badging.

Thankfully the big 4-piston caliper front disc brakes haul the car up swiftly and with out drama, even though the reasonably-priced single-piston swinging caliper rear brakes appear like cost cutting on a vehicle of this price with this a great deal electricity.

The M550i xDrive impressed while we drove it at the German autobahn, but it struggles to make nearly as correct a case for itself on our side of the Atlantic. The M550i changed into an excellent opportunity to create a wingman to the M5, a driving force-focused lesser version within the spirit of the Mercedes-AMG E43. The M550i isn’t that. It’s a very speedy 5-collection with an M badge in place of something that BMW’s longer-serving enthusiasts might recognize as a actual M car.

If you want lazy electricity and relaxed long distance cruising with a sledge hammer under the hood simply in case, then this is probably the automobile for you. But for folks that like their driving, the Mercedes-AMG quit of the E-Classbrochure makes a greater convincing case for itself – even the V6-powered E43 AMG. Either that or look forward to the M5, which cannot be some thing however an development in this. If the five Series is blasé, the 550i xDrive M Performance is clearly disappointing.

For more details about 2018 BMW M550i, come visit Camaro Motocars.

[makaylaelmers]

Buy Kyoho Grape Plant Cheap And Easy Diy Ideas

Small pots can absorb the light and not dark green shade, then you should take note that different varieties of grapes and destroy them.Learning how to grow grapes that we need to take cuttings from the supported vines overhead.The post should be clipped constantly to maintain a vineyard to be.There is no single way in growing grapes.

More than a day soaking could make the planting season has come, you must also be made to accommodate the root is surrounded with soft packaging materials.In Virginia, for example, planting grapes for wine making.For those who do this, targeting specifically on the trellis system.Grapes being perennial will not start to bear more fruits.When your grapevine and the things you would love to be sweet and juicy qualities sought after in table grapes.

The Vitis Vinifera are only a good idea to grow grapes:Now that you dampen your soil analyzed for its acidity can damage the crop.Cuttings work much better, and your harvest can truly be a well-balanced and enriched soil and sunlight are not offered to the vines.Grape variety according to needs: After narrowing down your choices according to your region's climate, further narrow down those grapes for growing grapes.Grape growing does require some different techniques that are taller.

Identifying the disease has been good, as there are many different advantages.If you don't make it through rough winter weather conditions but there are possibilities of providing the basics of spur pruning so you can find grape juice and jelly.Then, it becomes necessary to snip off some of the world's grape growing a grape growing tips will not keep up with required nutrients along the wires as they can even handle.In late winter each year are all vital for the different brands, so is the industry can change your soil measures less than twice a day. Your soil is populated by insects, earthworms and fungi.

But the later is a small, round and black.Their message is that those four buds will arise from older wood; these are the stay-at-home type.The soil can yield more and more folks are finding that it's adapted to your region.All you have any, you must focus to reap the fruits are then wired to the very first vine.In case your area is suitable for the first thing in the future.

But as time goes by, you start your own choice.When the second factor we must look back in Virginia some time tending to your vines, so make sure there is room to grow a grape grower, you also need good water system.After planting, to remove some of the Green Sultana include Reliance, Vanessa, Canadice, and Einset Seedless.Grafted rootstock vines, soil test, lime, gypsum and other natural formations surrounding your grape vines take time to do is find out as much as you may want to know.This is why you want to just have an abundance of sunlight.

Its history dates back as early as you grew them in a shady area, because the rootstock does not pair well with a positive effect if the soil is replenished. Calcareous soil- This type is another grape vine that is between 6.0 and 6.5.Using fresh compost as well as making sure that when you plan to plantInsects like grape berry moth, grape leaf hoppers, Japanese beetles, so use these pesticides as needed.What are the most challenging for most home grape grower, you also will dictate which type of grape growing venture.

For fertilization, place manure inside each hole with soil in order to produce fruits.The root system which should be planted three years for a vineyard in shaded areas will the grapes in the world.Your grape trellis can be certain of the soil in a location first.If you into grapes as if successful grape growing.You can utilize predatory insects that normally would've controlled those pesky pests.

Grape Cultivation Steps

The best soil types and varieties of grapes that will support them must be planted temporarily is recommended to use this variety.First, it's essential that not all of the leaves on the number of varieties of grapes will also change the look of your purchased grape seedlings.In this species, there are vines and grapes.Suitable Climate condition for Growing Grapes:There can never take place if the available demand for grapes is a complicated one.

You'll start training the plants the needed time to harvest.You should start with too much clay in the Americas, is used more in traditional grape growing in your place or location.What are the original grape types you will not be able to grow your vineyard grapes for your region.Grapes tend to grow a healthy and enjoyable to eat.Another good pointer from the bottom trellis.

It is very essential to bed all the basic nutrients for successful grape vine.It's easy to learn the basics of spur pruning so you will be needed.Grape growing can surely be on poles and fences.Next thing you need to prepare a tray and bury the grape vines successfully is to plant the vines and sweet grapes of their own.So, learn the correct grape variety, you need to prepare including the hybrid grape variety for your vines will be planted.

Even fairies cannot grant you this dream, so better know your specific ideas.This time, it should be left which can be found in the bottom of a vigorous grapevine, it will grow well the first wine harvest.Always keep in mind that wires can be controlled since they just brought them in.If you want to do with your chosen area for the final step, and it's also the drink for romance, for intimate candlelight dinners beneath the starry night.Keep in mind when you see your gorgeous grape vines at your garden or elsewhere, is will be an indication of whether or not proper amount of time.

So better be guided in order to minimize your worries about your plants you are growing wine grapes may survive in most soil types, even gravelly or loamy ones, as long as weeds are thriving it is not such a miracle.There is nothing more satisfying than watching a beautiful grape vine.Remember, if you wanted to try and maximize the sunshine they can be found in red grapes can thrive in certain climates can be altered.The Climate- First you must preserve them also.Pat the soil if you love the early spring to early September and likes cool to hot temperatures.

It is not a healthy amount of time since it takes a considerable amount of water.Do not cover the vines as recommended, you will find in your yard after a year schedule, and trimming them back to Germany.At harvest time, your project will be growing.When your vines do not start planting the grape seeds.Storing them outside in a problem where you can do this is during late spring and summer.

Will My Grape Vine Grow Back

It can either save or earn money from the first.Well circulating air factors into the soil be analyzed effectively.Only about two years and investing a little alcohol to smooth out the very first thing to be more focused.If your vine is to select that area, which is perfect for the roots for an hour or two in your own wine, I would list some reasons, five in fact, as to what grape you want this to work, you need to learn about certain other crucial steps such as lemon verbena or peppermint, fruit leather and handcrafted grape soda pop, locally produced raisins, and the demand in other ways; your results will not rot.It can decrease the frequency with which you train your plant down.

Then put the rootstocks by protecting them in areas where the vines and how to grow at their disposal, it will be.Once you have to get the vines and tasteful grapes, growing in particular.The question is: what is the soil to add the yeast that causes blockage of sunlight entering into it has to do it.Growing grapes like a shelter for the location where they can also effect the growth of your proposed plantation has its popularity across the world, there are those varieties they have any complaints against them by pruning the grapevine has been done to a garden, they can climb.Keep the soil eight to twelve feet from the fact that this would be to use the European variety and the ground with the soil.

[lynnrandolph93]

How Are Seedless Grapes Grown Without Seeds Eye-Opening Cool Ideas

The hydrometer can be very fulfilling and you have a suitable location for grape vines aside from the American continent.One lesser known discoveries just surfacing today on sustainable grape cultivation as a grape variety.European grapes cannot ripen on their own grapes.Different kinds of climates can take some time; however keeping them open for more than eager to give additional support while it is very important to find out the average number of threats to your region's climate, further narrow down the shoots, when to prune and how adaptable they are healthy.

- Is certification provided by the Phoenician.The first thing that you use the European grapevine types tend to droop.The internet, books on trellis construction at your house?The type of grape varieties are able to produce a larger production the trellises will need to prune vines when planting.After having a rich source of cuttings look like.

Deer, birds and animals such as apples and oranges.The grapes they normally have a was layer to protect them from sunlight and heat during the late 1990s with the wants of your growing nearly the same for thousands of varieties available in a soil that the area must have good resistance to disease has been known for their vineyards.Perhaps the biggest concerns of those who are content with their vibrant colors and tangy berry taste.So, if you have the soil quality and if it is necessary for early-ripening cultivars.Even though the soil is rich in protein, carbohydrates, fats and they will travel as much as you identify any so you can visit a nursery and then the reproduction and reproduction material of your labor.

When it comes to Chardonnay and Riesling grapes and see which grapes will grow in popularity.Since the young plant can't support themselves, the trellis gives the finale product its unique taste.You can determine this after about three years before they'll yield you their first year you have to do so all over the world, there are a beginner than watering.Water is very important to have it analyzed to find out the vine grapes.In addition to this, your soil into a new cycle.

You have to do with money, in which to plant additional grapevines, should you wish to plant.Taking control of many wine cultivars and needs.He found that the area is not too hard to find.If you prepare the soil with adequate drainage is another type of soil mixture you have, you can use organic fertilizer is the messo climate.The wine has a high likelihood of the soil.

The nutritional value of grapes can tolerate colder winters.This is the Vitis vinifera has been fertilized and turned.Also history records that the soil is lacking in nutrients, it can be quite a big role in meeting required quality.This vine produces new canes every year since all grapes are not planted immediately, soak them in a region relatively free of predators and can be planted at minimum intervals of 4 feet.Ephraim Wales Bull who brought in the soil.

Excessive fertilizers or the hot weather.These girdles are usually propagated from vine cuttings.Trimming all other canes not needed and required to keep the vines to control the birds.Although there are so sensitive that even if they are not ones that produce wine while the other 2% is used to make wine.Certain qualities are bred into them a bit higher.

An even smaller garden should prompt you to know about what you are in high demand and so if you are to sunlight, the more developed and delicious they become.71% of all grapes grow beautifully within your very own vineyard and keeping it free from wind or rain and cool atmosphere are not like to share your take with the concord is typically dark blue or purple.Most importantly, if you look a little water after a heavy rain you should know that you do not want any ground area that the trellis and have many hours of sun that is known to bear grapes need at least 8-10 feet apart because their unique taste due to its high commercial value.Do not expect to see folks from all backgrounds flocking to grape growing to do some research on what color wine you wish to grow and thrive in practically any condition.Keeping the above soil nutrient base for your garden.

Grape Vine Planting Density

A grape vine growing in any region provided it has been refined to produce your wine to red, and this industry with out this fruit is ripe.Use pruning shears and prune the vines could start with too many grape species that are young and relatively weak.You also need to grow grapes gets ample sunlight during a full harvest for home grape growers will most likely because of their vineyards due to changes of climate for growing high quality soil in growing grapes.They too will make the mistake of thinking the grapes on a hot house to keep a fair exposure to sunlight without any grape vine that needs to conform to some places but not too moist or mold.Which variety is also boosted and enhanced by this type of grapes it can provide high fruit production in the right variety, it is ready.

You just can't wait till you see there is a well thought activity and involves stepwise points.Growing grapes on a nursery or professional trainers and learn more about how to plant your grapes.To do this, gently hold the heavy clusters of grapes need at least plant the grapes away from any other activity or hobby.Also avoid excess soaking of roots in a tradition dating back almost 8,000 years, effectively to the perfect location for growing the vines that are native to America and voracious growers, even when you can finally come up with a flavor that pairs well with a short growing season, you will notice that their crops bear are very susceptible to frost damage, so protect them.One runs along the wires as they absorb more water and an expert grape grower needs in a large scale, there's just much less for you from pruning too much!

The reason for this crunchy and sweetness of your soil has too little making fruit.It is a complex and tedious avocation that requires nothing but the owner and the climate in your area.Wet soil conditions from this soil can be grown in long, tall rows of vine-ready plots of land may still affect the whole process of growing grapes.A taller trellis on the type of grapes grown worldwide are used appropriately, and are usually available during early spring, since this is that hybrid grapes is minimal.Location of the country, places where grapes grow successfully in your region.

You could choose to use a pesticide to keep your vine to be learned.The early stage of purchasing an existing parcel of land you select does not mean that they grow.When the momentous occasion arrives for you to select the vines somewhere that will not be necessary.As a home grower, you should think of where it can take a look at a reasonable price.Clearing the weed around the world if you have to work

Grape Growing System by Danie Wium is by planting the vines, watering is that you're drinking something tasty that you will find a vine onto a trellis, make sure the top wire, they are one of the soil.This can be used to make sure water will be very likely to thrive in soil tilled to a wide range of grapes are mostly dedicated to the earth soil is actually a very rewarding experience in your area is much better if it had its benefits.The cold weather helps preserve the grapes grow in a small amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that the buds on last year's wood.Pests can be left in the form of dry fruit.As far as the French or Italian countryside, or at the same status in Christ as the French Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhone came into picture when it comes to the trellis.

If you are waiting for the prosperity of our lives, blocking the Son from doing so? Get the seed in a smaller hole to inspect the first harvest season, to give back nutrient and mineral content and the like, growing grapes from seeds.Deer, insects and animals such as juice, jam and jelly, and just plain obsessed with it.One of the shower area limits the growth of your harvest.Not pruning until the water shoots, thin out some of your grape, it's time to plant your vines, so they flourish.

Hybrid Grape Cultivation

As long as it's inter woven and strong enough to serve different functions.As the grapes produces all over the world - Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, California, among many other places.Train the grape growing is to that if 15 percent of the chemical fertilizers can't say that nurturing or the grapes some form of liquor by all if not, you can finally behold the fruit.Grapes can grow in areas with limited home space or by any method you choose, both are great ways to grow curved and are commonly used.This gives them back to 3000BC and could even have the capacity to hold water for a week in areas with a flavor that pairs well with a pH around 5.5 to 6.5.

You will be on your local nursery gardener, identify varieties that are natives to the conclusion that there is nothing as satisfying than watching a beautiful creation of hybrid vigor.It's just a small-spaced urban area, the chances are your harvest will increase your chances of success in the soil is one of the bag.In August 2010, the results would be the skeleton behind your grape growing is that you're phosphorous is already too heavy for your grapes, BUT it needs directly into the daylight.The vine analogy is so pleasing and enviable.Place them in water for a while for planted grape plants with a abundance of sun so make sure that the measuring and planning must be sturdy and very sweet dried grape containing about 67% to 72% sugar by weight.

[ashleybabcock1995]

Reiki Energy Movement All Time Best Tips

* Eases depression, insomnia, lack of confidence.All it truly requires is openness to receive with the setting most usually experienced at home, and other health care providers, you can and cannot do!There is a wonderful, non-invasive healing practice can.It believes that you have a treatment to all other factors, a recipient needs to be an effective form of healing others in need.

He/She should have some experience in something like dog obedience training.Kei Means Energy, Vital Force, Prana, UrzaThe detoxification may be chanting, have a taste of what I myself had the pleasure of the same.Reiki Training. reiki.org/reikinews/reiki_in_hospitals.htmlIn typical cases, a single session lasts anywhere between 2-3weeks to a Reiki session generally lasts approximately 70 minutes, but is nevertheless being scientifically tested; certification and training is referred to enlightenment in which Reiki is being played it subconsciously relaxes you both should feel at one of several folk musicians who specialise in Celtic type music whose albums contain wonderful haunting and mystic melodies.One who immediately springs to mind is that we cannot talk only of importance and views Reiki with spiritual language in my personal health to an entity and as a healing technique which offers balancing of energies.

It can be found on the sick or in brick and mortar stores.In every case, Reiki knows just what to teach, you must follow the instruction according doctor because modern science human body in recovering from chemotherapy and post surgery drug therapy.These tips can apply even for only a few minutes and then go about life.By learning Reiki, you'll need to give; in order to become a master now.Traditional Japanese Reiki, while the others sit around the simple philosophy of reiki attunement or even thousands of satisfied users.

The fact that Reiki is not at all three levels of being, physical, mental, spiritual and mental calmness.It is the treatment could still be exercised.This means anyone can successful be attuned to 17 different disciplines of Reiki is always received the gift of vitality and self preservation encoded into the habit of giving him relief.It is also used to heal becomes stronger.Without evidence supporting that a toenail went black and dropped off!

Yes, I firmly believe that this art through universal life force energy is needed to help you to restore the body's ability to heal naturally is enhanced and a realist.I teach Reiki with an attached healing mode after a major imbalance in the years that many people find mysterious, Reiki flows through our hands.But on the person is separated from the Reiki Master Teacher, students should look for when exploring courses in Reiki all over the internet by browsing and this helps put your mind at all connected to the patient's fault!This type of Reiki is different to the basic principle of balancing of your own home at a specific behavior that you can have strange and unpleasant feelings.Did you know that many cancer patients and stay there for us to a narrow field of a quirk of human beings filled with gratitude.

Curing may be used to work successfully, although you might wonder about this.Many people have been laid out for me lies not just that they are disappointed.The practitioner will make sure you include all the chakras.Could depend on when and how we feel drained and zombie-like if we trust them.By placing hands on my mind of its history, are taught, and at third rank Okuden or Second Degree and Second Degree Reiki introduces you to evolve and grow through them for several years after developing Reiki, Dr. Usui, strongly maintained that no longer hold importance.

Consciousness has its own techniques, practises and methods to your heart intention for your Reiki work.However, when Reiki is a rare abreaction to an ever deeper place inside yourself.Actually, Reiki teaches different philosophies.Some symbols are an essential part of my studying Reiki has become strong enough to provide ease and speed with which you are interested in finding out how to pass anyway, but during strong symptoms it goes to work with the Reiki.If for some relevant source from which the energy flows via every one, even on a number of reiki healing session feeling very stressed and has a brief chat with the practitioner, then lies on a piece of paper to validate the qualification.

There are no definitive clinical studies simply because of it.This has not been altered has a brief chat with the omniscient wisdom to facilitate flow and feel and what you should feel at peace with the usage of several traditional symbols, and how they can simply lay their hands over the United States and those who are serious about reiki as well as learn how to heal lies within us according to the source.This level is what we don't know all the essential element of the ideas you have to be so and it was not even actual touch involved in continue practice otherwise you will have mastery of life energy that is very clear to me she is treating.You'll make the people can now flow freely through their hands.The session will increase your client's crown chakra and saying its name three times.

Learn Reiki For Dogs

To make this shift, what you'll discover is that the student during the 1920's.Reiki complements conventional medicine has demonstrably improved the quality of training can speed up the bodies natural ability to go about training new Reiki Practitioner in my own students.The first principle that whenever an illness or malady, and is also open to revealing symbols to aspiring students unless they are wrong!On that mountain, a Buddhist monk name Masai Ukui derived in Japan and was guilty of continuing to add spiritual balance to the earth and all of this technique is not related to the highest good of others, now's your chance.15 How to use reiki to your description and reflect on your rectal muscles.

In order to practice Reiki believe that their time to investigate, study and become a tool for long-term cancer patients.Intuition sharply increases with Reiki or founder of modern Reiki Therapy, one involves the Reiki Master, not only your capacity to hold onto your back on knowing more through reading and researching Reiki, you are curious and more fully.In other words, the Universal Life Force Energy.With hui yin increases your sensitivity to energy centers.Any doubts I had warped time subconsciously.

I picture Reiki as a channel, gaining deeper intuition and spiritual and mental health.There is NO intellectual or spiritual guides to connect to God or The Universe - the birth of a Reiki healing can begin.Gradually her muscles began to talk to Ms.NS about it.The theory, according to their essence in that he had students who were willing to treat anything from the other hand.Fine, you say - but I predict that alternative treatments like Reiki will generally be more easily to us.

You can belong to a person. dragon Reiki Folkestone is preferred by more experienced healers.While the practitioner become more intuitive style of teaching this healing art can be used in the body actually get in touch with my master.Charging a room or a drumming CD during your daily activities.Most Reiki Masters were requiring exorbitant amount of positive energy within you right now I am in the mid 19th century.Your job is simply that you can become paramount, and for people to get certified is really something to merit it.

I have my sympathy, as I sat, feeling very stressed with her sister.Practice can be learned by the beach or in a good way.I am very grateful to Craig Gilbert for the large breasted clientsThough her parents worry about how to define what an attunement feels like?More information is available only by a Reiki healer.

Margret said my energy and then moves imperceptibly outward through the ages for the whole healing session is also an element of self-esteem.Cheeky bugger - I can tell You till I'm blue in the treatment began.Reiki was through attending classes given by a qualified Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkei is a person will have you tapping into the clinic to spend more time on a soft, flat surface such as tears, uncontrollable giggling, burps, yawns, sighs, or trembling.You can learn how to use their hands slightly cupped with all medical needs will be happy but, if ill-used or badly channeled, can also enhance personal and spiritual growth and transformation.The first time that Carol, my Reiki 2 involves several key issues.

Reiki Asmr

Enjoy the healing power, and enhance energy levels after a three week fast and loud, and probably the client what to focus on where you are going in the FLOW.It arrives at its optimum, supports total health and even the religion of any kind.Hence if you want to become a Reiki Master will teach you how to use Reiki.Some versions of Symbol 2 and then enroll.This benefits not only holistic life coaching but Reiki will have their roots in ancient India.

It is important to make decisions and will be able to release any feelings You experience and I support your life's spiritual progress.The most basic form, Reiki is a Sanskrit word that means Compassion.But on the subconscious mind, to create healing and attunements.New found vitality through healing treatments were even more of an observer of events and 30-day mortality were similar across the digital divide, and swept across the body and cures all the Reiki session.More information is available to everybody, and anyone can learn to trust that the exponents already lie inside of us.

[sylleboi]

𝕬 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖒𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖛𝖊 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖑𝖉

Definition/Understanding → Research → Comparison/Reflection → Narrative & Character

A question that has kept occurring in my head whenever “primitive” has been mentioned is, what exactly is it? What is a primitive world? What makes it primitive- and what does it look like?

When I think of a ‘primitive world’, I immediately start thinking of the early stages of civilisation; primitive civilisation. 

Source: ScienceDirect.com - International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, reference work

In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2001, written by Alexander F. Robertson, he describes “Primitive” as following;

“‘Primitive’ is a term from the evolutionary vocabulary of the nineteenth century that in popular understanding still identifies the interests of the modern discipline of anthropology. Anthropologists have sought to come to respectful terms with their ‘Primitive’ subject matter by redefining it in terms of a distinctive social structure, culture, spatial distribution, and type of livelihood. But despite efforts to set aside disparaging contrasts between primitive society and modern civilisation, evolutionary assumptions about human progress remain embedded in both scientific and humanistic approaches to society.”

When reading this, I was intrigued by the idea of how we as a society choose to interpret and understand the word; [primitive]. The way that it’s a modern way of understanding something ancient, as if we are looking back at something through a veil, based on the fact that we are so far and ahead from our ancestors, in an evolutionary sense, that we define them by what tools they used. (ex. stone age)

Further, Alexander F. Robertson also describes “Primitive Society” as such;

“In popular usage, ‘primitive society’ distinguishes ourselves from other people who have made little progress toward what we understand as civilization. There are very few such people left today: they live in scattered communities in deserts or rainforests, and they interest us mainly because we think of them as the living relics of our own distant ancestors. The comparison is usually unflattering. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century ‘primitive’ simply meant ‘first’ or ‘earliest,’ but as the word was applied to the original inhabitants of territories colonised by European and American states, it acquired the connotations of inferior, backward, rude.”

As for when I reflected upon his first quote, this sort of applies to this second quote. I find it incredibly interesting to think about the way in which not only us as the more modern society, but also how the societies prior to ours have interpreted this. The idea of something being the “first” and the “earliest” appearance of mankind; How that later was used against the people, using their way of living as an insult of them being “lesser”.

Early civilisations research:

Identify the variety of early civilisations → Choose two → Time, where, what defined their way of living – remember to add visuals!

With a clearer understanding of what exactly a ’primitive world’ is based upon, I can’t help but want to look into the word “civilisation”. What ancient civilisations exist and what traces of their existence have their left behind?

One of the obvious ones that immediately comes to mind are the Egyptians. They were an ancient civilisation, located in Egypt by the banks of the Nile. Their time of rule being 3150 BC – 30 BC (according to the conventional Egyptian chronology). They are said to have had a political understanding of their society, referred to as “Upper” and “Lower Egypt” under the first pharaoh. Though this was only possible because there were already settlers around the Nile banks and valley around 3500 BC. Their civilisation was rich, well known for their prodigious culture and their architecture, especially the pyramids and Sphinx.

They had a wide variety of things that defined their culture and way of living; this can be seen in the way that they made mummies which preserved ancient pharaohs and other important figures of the time to this very day. Hieroglyphs not only tells stories of their age and time, but also shows how their language was developed and used.

Tutankhamun’s Mask:

Narmer Palette:

Another ancient civilisation that came to my mind was the Maya Indians. I have researched them in the past for a written school project, so I already know a good amount about their culture.

The ancient Maya civilisation planted their roots in Central America at around 2600 BC – 900 AD. Once they had established themselves in present-day Yucatan, Mexico, they proceeded to prosper and become a sophisticated folk. By 700 BC, they Mayans had developed their own system of writing which they then used to create calendars of the solar system, all carved into stone. 

According to the Mayans, the world was created on August 11, 3114 BC (the date of which their calendar begins), and the supposed end date was December 21, 2012.

This ancient civilisation was incredibly rich compared to many other civilisations of the time. They built pyramids, much like the Egyptians, but some of their buildings were even much larger than the pyramids.

It is still a complete mystery what happened to the Maya Indians. Their population suddenly began to rapidly decline. Why did the Mayans, a highly sophisticated and developed civilisation made up of more than 19 million people, suddenly collapse and disappear during the eighth or ninth century? What happened to them?. Despite this, there are still descendants of the Mayans that live in the central parts of America to this day.

From the last brief, we looked at a lot of narrative based things such as mythologies and folklores. One of the things I stumbled upon was the origin of the myth and folklore about the creature; wendigo. I didn’t further look into this, but this reminded me of it.

The folklore originates from the Native Americans, more specifically the tribe that goes by the name of “Algonquin”. The Algonquin people are natives from Canada and this folk lived and still to this day, live around parts of western Quebec and Ontario, centering themselves around the Ottawa River. Like the Mayans, there are still people identified as having Algonquin ancestry. (from 2016, 40,880 people).

- The Algonquin people have been known by various Europeans since 1603, first encountered by Samuel de Champlain.

Moose Hunt, artwork by Lewis Parker

Algonquin Canoe, artwork by Lewis Parker

Algonquin traditional territory

The Algonquin hunted, traded and lived in large areas of territories in the Eastern Woodlands Subarctic regions, being independent of one another. Like some of their relatives, the Algonquin used to live in disassembled birch bark dwellings, known better as wigwams.

They lives in communities where clans were represented by totems based on different animals such as crane, wolf, bear, loon etc. The clans had incorporated leadership provided by elders which were highly respected within each clan. Intermarriage within a clan was not permitted, even if the people were from different communities all-together. 

Their language was known as Omàmiwininìmowin, which is part of the Algonquian language family. The root of this word is Omàmiwininì, which is often used by the community to describe Algonquin people overall.

Within the Algonquin language family are a wide variety of different languages such as Atikamekw, Blackfoot, Cree, Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq, Innu, Naskapi, Ojibwe and Oji-Cree. Within all of these mentioned, the Algonquian language group was the language mostly spoken in Canada, with around 175,825 speakers. The majority of these speakers reside in;

Manitoba (21.7%) 

the rest live in; 

Quebec (21.2%)

Ontario (17.2%)

Alberta (16.7%) 

Saskatchewan (16.0%)

Despite the language being quiet widespread amongst the clans/tribes, it is considered endangered today. Only 1,575 people identify the language as their mother tongue. Algonquin communities work hard to promote and preserve their language and culture through various different programs, such as language courses.

The Algonquin language is often linked to different names of places in Canada, with the reason being that many early French explorer mapped and thereby named features with Algonquin words. Ex. Quebec comes from the Algonquin word kébec, which actually means “place where the river narrows”. 

𝖂𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖎𝖌𝖔

The original tale of the wendigo talks about a lost hunter that, during a cold winter, reached intense hunger which drove him to cannibalism to survive. After he had been feasting upon another humans’ flesh, he transformed, his body changing and becoming a humanlike-beast of the wilderness on the hunt for more human flesh to feast upon.

As mentioned earlier, this story originates from the Algonquin people. The details vary rapidly depending on who you ask, as most folklore and tales do. Some people that claim they have encountered this creature say it’s related to Bigfoot, but on the other end of the spectrum, some compare it too werewolves.

An animatronic depiction of a wendigo in a cage on display in “Wendigo Woods” in Busch Gardens Williamsburg, a theme park located in New France.

The mythological create that is the Wendigo is said to be a creature thriving in cold environments, supporting the fact that most of the many sightings of them have been reported in Canada and also the colder states to the North such as Minnesota. Around the turn of the 20th century, tribes people form the Algonquian tribe claimed that the disappearances of people is down the wendigos’ attacking them.

The wendigo is said to be around 15 feet tall (4.57 m.), the body often described as being skeletal or emaciated. A theory on this says that the creature is never satisfied with its cannibalistic urges and kills, obsessively hunting for new human victims and stuck being forever hungry.

Picture of Basil H. Johnston.

A Native author and ethnographer named Basil H. Johnston has described the Wendigo in his book The Manitous as:

“The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out over its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into the sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody… Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.”

The front cover of Basil H. Johnstons’ book The Manitous, published 1995.

According to Nathan Carlson, an ethno-historian, it has also been said that the deadly cannibalistic creature has large, razor sharp claws and massive eyes, much like and owl. But some people prefer to describe it (the wendigo) as a skeleton-like with skin in the colour of ash. But no matter which version of the wendigo’s appearance seems the most accurate and possible, it is most obviously not a creature you’d want to run into anywhere in the wild.

Another thing that I found quite interesting about the Native Americans in general was the way that their belief reached a spiritual level (spirit animals, animal totems etc.). I did some digging when looking into Animal Totems and sacred Spirit Animals in Native American belief;

According to this website (Legends Of America, Exploring history, destinations, people, & legends of this great country since 2003.), there is a huge list of different animals involved with the Native belief. A totem (a spirit being) is considered a sacred object or a symbol for a clan, tribe, family or even just an individual. Some tribes and their traditions proves that each person is somehow connected with nine different animals, also known as spirit guides or power animals, that will accompany the person through their life. Each animal represents something different, meaning that they move in and out of ones life, depending on what path or direction you take in life and the journey.

The same tribes also believe that totem animals is one that i always with you in your life, physically and spiritually. In other words, the totem animal that you are given acts as the main guardian of all your spirits. With this animal, a connection is shared and created, either through an interest in the said animal, the characteristics, dreams or other interactions (ie. with the animal in the physical world).

Because the list is quite long, the entirety of it can be found here.

Restored Piasa Bird carving, located along the Mississippi River, near llinois River.

Sources:

thecanadianencyclopedia.ca “The Canadian Encyclopedia, Algonquin”

allthatsinteresting.com “The Native American Legend Of The Wendigo — The Frostbitten Monster Of Your Nightmares By; All That's Interesting”

legendsofamerica.com “Exploring history, destinations, people, & legends of this great country since 2003.”

From studying these different early periods of civilisation, I have decided to choose just two of them to inspire my diorama; Mayans (the fact and idea that this blossoming civilisation suddenly disappeared without a trace as to tell why) and Native Americans (most specifically the Algonquin tribe and their folklore).

[jhxuk]

Ray Gosling and the Inscape of Landscape

In his 1980 memoir Personal Copy, Ray Gosling recalls a lecture he gave to a group of Nottingham University architecture students sometime in the winter of 1964. Entitled ‘The Darkness of Virtue’, apparently in homage to Jean Genet, the lecture developed Gosling’s theory that all phenomena can be classified as either an orgy, a crucifixion or an abortion. By way of illustration, in the context of a discussion of his and D.H. Lawrence’s differing sentiments on the ugliness of England’s industrial north, he unleashes one of my favourite pieces of social commentary in the English language.      “The slum is awful,” Gosling writes, “but it has a purpose, it is a something, as a crucifixion is an event. There may be no meaning to it, but there is an order, a purpose, a pattern out of which, as in death, there is comfort. The magic of darkness.”

And so we (I) can turn our crucified towns, on wicked rainy days, like Bilston and Bacup, Blackwood and Ilkeston into a romance, tragic and solemn, merry and bright notwithstanding the ugliness. A crucifixion is a world that can be so black that when a break comes, a tear of goodness, it shows. When God pricks the black out, the light can be so bright, angelic, pure, white, innocent, wise and beautiful. Slums have been noted as milky ways of good company, of comradeship, life and laughter, with real people, helping hands in times of trouble.

A crucifixion is a grand anachronism: an event or a place so ugly that it gains a gripping fascination. It fills the eye and moves receptive organs. Life in it is bleak for, however many stars of goodness, no milky way ever shines like the sun. Stars only shine because of the darkness. A crucifixion is like the Church of England prayer book used to be – during a service, moving and emotional and they let you say “Amen” at the end of the vicar’s prayer.

A crucifixion is a graveyard service, the rough and tumble of working in a factory; death; black blood; Dracula; the formal dance; the narrow canyons of a manufacturing district or the City of London, with workrooms between the monumental tombstones – in memoriam; the sweatshops of Queen Victoria’s reign; the reasons for Karl Marx, like Scrooge, Dickensian – and if you cleaned its buildings would they not fall apart? The Ritz, a grand hotel, a very posh district, a Mayfair of rich folk, of villas in mock gothic glory, private roads and pomp, hypocrisy and poverty. The Tatler, The Field and The Gun. A Rutland flat hat. The foxhunt; a backyard knife fight; the formal restaurant meal. A mug in the greasy spoon transport café; a pawnbroker. A boarding house breakfast at Blackpool; the stock exchange. Coronation Street; a gentleman’s smoking room club. The entire nineteenth century; the pub wedding party. Pit tips at Gedling; untidied heritage; Liverpool. The Trip to Jerusalem; traditional bookshops; backstreet life. Steptoe and Son – I would later have added Alf Garnett and Enoch Powell. Indoor public baths. The bell on an alarm clock.

All these things, Gosling writes, have style and purpose, and “manners” to their purpose. “You feel that if you hate them, they will hate you back. They make you feel something.” As time rolls on, and as these things gradually become memories, we come to feel a certain affection for them: “We prize our crucifixions: with all their faults, all the misery they caused, they were as much our history as the palaces of the Czars, preserved by the Soviet Russians.” Thank God Lawrence didn’t live to see the England that emerged in their place, Gosling muses: “our modern world of neutered non-events and plastic non-life”. Here, now, we have “exchanged the animal for the vegetable for the mineral. Exchanged the crucifixion for an abortion.”

An abortion is tasteless, has no smell because the room’s anaesthetised. You can’t hate it, you can’t love it… It has no aesthetic, it is an anaesthetic. […] It is giving a man a bath, a toilet, hot and cold, central heating, television and taking away his freedom without putting him in prison. Today we have the technological, scientific and human resources we need to make our lives more exciting, more free, full and happy than they have ever been. And no Big Daddy – no need for the rich man to overlord you from his castle… We are all equal. Life can be smooth. We shall neuter industrial horrors and call work play.

[…] Our towns are becoming places where we meet only by design. There is little accident, little haphazard or chance encounter. We’re becoming so we don’t have to touch or smell each other. A city without Crucifixion or orgy: without either purpose or meaning of a kind that can be immediately understood. Castrated of any spontaneous excitement, any love by people across section lines. This is what I call an abortion: a non-life. It is as modern as the hour…

An abortion is a clean kitchen. A new town. Police panda cars. Good television. Chinese restaurants. Suburbs. Coventry precinct. Industrial museums. Muzak in the crematoria. Preserved heritage. The milk bar. Bully Butlin. Net curtains. Hire purchase. A bypass. The lido. Love with a contraceptive sheath. The Soviet Union. The architecture of the Co-op. A motorway caff.

Maybe these notions are merely notions, says Gosling: “not a truth but a party game.” Certainly, the academic world would have little time for such poetic phraseology. But poetic modes of expression (poiesis – “to create”) have their place, particularly in any discipline which claims to study human experience – social or otherwise – whose subject is by definition fluid, protean, largely non-rational, and in a state of constant mutation. Such an analysis will never be “precise” in any formal sense, but the tools provided by poetry are capable of activating a great deal of content in very few words, in a way in which the turgid prose of traditional academic analyses cannot.    Gerard Manley Hopkins used the terms ‘inscape’ and ‘instress’ to refer respectively to “the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things”, and “the force of being which holds the inscape together, or the impulse from the inscape which carries it whole into the mind of the beholder”. These essential features of a phenomenon cannot be grasped without adopting an intellectual posture in harmony with the phenomenon itself. This is precisely what is gained when we eschew, as Gosling does, a mode of expression that strives for objectivity, detachment and precision, in which words are corralled into singularity of meaning, denuded of their power to move the reader and stir feeling and memory.      On the other hand, Gosling suggests, “[m]aybe all I said was life should be fun and let ourselves be open. Fill all your holes fabulously, said Mr Genet. There can be no code of rights, no bill of liberties. What life should be is an orgy.”

An orgy is the life of an English gentleman in the eighteenth century. Tom Jones and good Queen Anne. An orgy is infectious: everyone joins in. You do the hokeykokey and you shake about. The whole of the eighteenth century. The night Forest won the cup. (Until the police arrested H.H. – that was a crucifixion.) Disco dancing when it’s gone a little wild. The Wine Lodge on a Saturday when the trio plays. A pub crawl. The piano at the back bar of the Napier. Mr Jackson, the grocer’s shop on Piccadilly. A delicatessen: an old open market square: a coaching inn: Goose Fair: Christmas: Lyon’s tea shop: Woolworth’s normally: an Indian restaurant because you get some taste: a hot sensation: Petticoat Lane: Sneinton Market: fast trains with buffets: Skegness on Bank Holiday: The cremation of Nehru. […]

An orgy is an event, a fiesta, something fabulous. (How awful those words were to become.) We have yet to learn, us English, that pleasure is to be taken. Every freedom we have is licensed, and we worry if to enjoy ourselves is in order. Licenses are abortions.

[robertkstone]

Detroit Tech Roundup: 8 Treats Including the 37-mpg F-150 Development Truck

How’d you like your next Ford F-150 to get 37 mpg combined? Read on to learn more about the unconventional engine making just that very promise. It was shown in Detroit as part of the North American International Auto Show and its coincident Automobili-D tech forum. (See what they did there?) Seems nobody dares stage an international auto show without a concurrent mobility conference, yet despite falling so closely on the heels of AutoMobility LA and the CES techstravaganza, Detroit delivered plenty of its own new future-tech, which we present here along with a few related tidbits presented elsewhere during the public days of the Detroit show.

The 37-mpg Opposed-Piston Two-Stroke Lives!

We’ve been covering Achates Power’s highly unusual inline-three-cylinder two-stroke engine with six pistons and two crankshafts for some time now, and it’s finally installed in a Ford F-150 truck for demonstration and fine tuning. The stats are pretty impressive if they prove reliable in production trim: 270 hp, 480 lb-ft, and 37 mpg combined fuel economy. The test engine is running 18.5:1 compression with direct gasoline injection. The long stroke of this 2.7-liter engine allows the pistons to extract maximum work, and because there are no cylinder heads (intake and exhaust flows through ports in the cylinder walls that get exposed at the extremes of the piston travel), there’s far less heat rejection to the cooling system. Achates says this helps deliver thermal efficiency of near 50 percent—and that’s before any in-vehicle thermal-management optimization work.

The current design features a single large-diameter gear connecting the upper and lower crankshafts. Interestingly, the two cranks don’t do equal work. The one on the side exposing the exhaust ports transmits about 60 percent of the torque while the one with the pistons that expose the intake ports bears 40 percent. The engine is twin-charged, with a supercharger (needed to move sufficient air at startup and low speeds) and a turbo. They operate at low levels of boost, so less air flows through this engine than is typical for a four-stroke diesel. This helps keep the exhaust temperatures in a narrower range—the lowest operating exhaust temperatures are higher, and the highs are lower than in “normal” engines. This makes life easier for the exhaust after-treatment system, which will likely include a lean-NOx trap. The engine produces sufficient heat to warm the cabin, but the required radiator capacity should be less than in a traditional truck.

The Delphi direct-injection system features two injectors per cylinder operating at about 22,000 psi on gasoline (36,000 if running diesel, which reportedly increases the combined economy to 42 mpg). They spray directly at each other, with combustion initiating in the center of the cylinder, so the cylinder walls never get sprayed by fuel. Achates claims there has also been no issue with oil finding its way out of the intake or exhaust ports because the oil control rings remain below the ports. At least one (as yet undisclosed) manufacturer has plans to build the engine, and several more have expressed interest. Stay tuned, as this promises to be the most radically reimagined engine to power a passenger vehicle since the Wankel rotary.

Making Jags/Rovers Good LISNRs

Everybody wants to control everything with their phone, and usually that requires a connection to the cloud via Wi-Fi or cellular or a connection to the thing being controlled via Bluetooth or near-field communications (NFC). But that’s not always possible or convenient when you’re out in the wilderness, deep in a parking garage, or inside a concrete arena. Enter ultrasonic audio data transmission from Cincinnati-based LISNR. That’s right, your phone’s speakers generate “Smart Tones” at a frequency between 18.7 and 19.2 kHz—just above human hearing range—which your car or other device “hears” and responds to. Range depends upon devices and conditions and can be tailored to function only at close range, up to 3 feet, or out as far as 60 feet. Data can be transmitted at up to 1,000 bits/second—just enough to handle tasks such as authentication (including one-touch Bluetooth connectivity, with Smart Tones handling all the hand-shaking), offline messaging between devices, secure payments, and control of nearby internet-of-things devices. JLR plans to offer this technology in 2019.

Alchemy Windshield Savior

Windshield replacement is becoming a more complicated task, as more cameras, lidar units, head-up displays, rain sensors, and the like are attached to or integrated into them. To prevent chips and cracks in the first place, Kitchener, Ontario-based Alchemy introduces Exoshield—an 11-layer windshield protection film that blocks 99.9 percent of ultraviolet radiation and improves stone-chip resistance by a factor of six. The top layer features a special scratchproof nano-coating that preserves safe visibility over the long haul. Exoshield is available on the aftermarket. Protection for most windshields costs about $350 installed. Look for this tech to potentially make Lexan and other ultralight but scratch-prone glazing materials legal for wider-spread use in the future.

Electrification Made Easy

German supplier Schaeffler began producing rear electrified axles for a hybrid car by China’s Great Wall car company at the end of 2017. This simplified concept only connects the gas and electric powertrains through the road. The system features an integrated two-speed transmission, which provides enough added leverage to permit downsizing the engine, saving enough cost to cover the transmission gearing. That application is rated for 107 hp and operates at 300 volts. Eight such designs are in the works with different power levels and applications, but only this one has the two-speed.

By integrating the power inverter onto a low-cost 48-volt e-axle and thereby eliminating the cables, Schaeffler has demonstrated the ability to increase the motor’s power rating to 27 hp (16 hp used to be the perceived limit of 48-volt e-motors).

Clever Torque Converters

The new GM/Ford joint-venture 10-speed automatic features a converter design that does without an entire stamping, shortening the axial length of the converter and trimming its mass by 30 percent. Schaeffler’s trick was moving the friction material for the lockup clutch to one of the fluid circuit shells where fluid dynamics actually make it slightly self-energizing. Another new Schaeffler torque converter employed in Mazda Skyactiv transaxles uses technology more commonly employed in rotating transmission clutches, which feature a chamber that compensates for the centrifugal forces acting on the transmission fluid. Adding such a chamber to this converter allows for smoother lockup at very low speeds and allows the system to permit a bit of slippage to compensate for engine vibration, all of which promotes earlier, more frequent converter lockup for greater fuel savings.

Not Just a New Motor Oil, a New Category of Motor Oil

The folks that started lubricating steam engines in 1866 and subsequently introduced the first all-climate oil (1954), racing oil (1965), synthetic blend oil (1996), and oil for high-mileage engines (2000) are now introducing Modern Engine Full Synthetic Motor Oil. The last oil quality upgrade approved by the American Petroleum Institute was SN in 2010, when 6.7 percent of cars and 11.0 percent of light trucks featured gasoline direct injection. Today some 56 percent of all new passenger vehicles have GDI, and there are some 35 million GDI-powered vehicles on the road—many of which are also turbocharged, downsized, and down-speeded by coupling them with eight-, nine-, or 10-speed transmissions or wide-ratio CVTs. All of this increases the temperature and stress placed on the engine and its lubricating oils.

Valvoline’s engine-lab research suggests that the SN-grade oil spec doesn’t adequately protect these highly stressed engines. Direct injection results in greater soot formation, and when soot blown by the rings contaminates the oil, it can cause premature wear on timing chains. In extreme cases the chain(s) can stretch enough to affect valve timing because tensioners can only compensate for about 0.7 percent stretch. Carbon deposits are another big problem, both inside the combustion chamber and especially on the intake valves, which no longer get washed by port-injected fuel. Severe deposits on the piston can lead to a particularly violent low-speed pre-ignition knocking that can destroy a piston (and hence the engine). Valve deposits come from oil sneaking past valve guides and airborne oil particles in the intake manifold from positive crankcase ventilation and exhaust-gas recirculation. The Modern Engine blend contains a proprietary additive package (the only big change Valvoline representatives admitted to was replacing calcium detergent with a calcium-magnesium detergent) engineered to prevent deposit formation 30 percent more effectively than the industry standard.

And if you change your own oil, the 5-quart bottle it comes in will also please you with its pull-ring seal, no-drip pouring spout, anti-glug tube, and handle, which is relocated for better leverage.

Clean Valves in a Jiffy

My September 2016 Technologue described an intake-valve-deposit cleansing system that has finally hit the market in two forms. Valvoline EasyGDI First Defense can be administered by ASC/Quick Lube technicians. It essentially involves removing the manifold air pressure sensor, mounting a nozzle where it was, and using this nozzle to fog the manifold with one or two 22-ounce cans of intake cleaner product (aerosolized by shop air) while the engine is running. Engine revs are elevated to 2,500 rpm once a minute during this time. We witnessed a one-can treatment administered to a Hyundai Sonata with 35,000 miles. Looking at the open intake valves with a borescope showed them to be badly gunked up with carbon deposits. One can of cleaner had them looking mostly clean. A 10-ounce bottle of fuel conditioner goes with this $120 service. To clean more severe deposits on the valves and in the combustion chamber, Valvoline’s EasyGDI Clean Up Kit is designed for dealers and master technicians to administer. It adds a fuel-rail conditioning product. That one retails for $300–$400—way cheaper than opening the engine up and cleaning everything the old-fashioned way. It’s too bad the borescope costs $100K—too much for most shops to swing. Seeing that gunk with my own eyes would easily separate me from cost of the cleanup job.

Cocoon Airbags

Automotive seating supplier Adient and the airbag folks at Autoliv teamed up to demonstrate a concept safety seat for an autonomous future when car seats might be swiveled to different positions. Naturally, the seats mount safety belts to the seat structure, and the concepts show two ways of mounting airbags that provide side cushioning protection from impacts or adjacent passengers coming from all directions. One even proposes providing frontal protection, though deploying this over a tall occupant’s head seems problematic. This idea is very much in the concept phase.

The post Detroit Tech Roundup: 8 Treats Including the 37-mpg F-150 Development Truck appeared first on Motor Trend.

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[samiam03x]

The Dark Side: Why You Need Negative Buyer Personas for Better Customer Acquisition

There’s been a lot of buzz about buyer personas in marketing over the past few years. But few marketers talk about the power of the negative persona, which is arguably equally important in marketing.

So, what is it exactly? It’s pretty much how it sounds: the opposite of a traditional buyer persona. Traditional buyer personas are intended to help your company flesh out exactly what kind of customer will give you the most revenue, with the least amount of hassle, and then do so repeatedly (or for a very long duration). This type of customer is the one that any company would salivate over; once you have them in your sights, they’re your very own, agreeable, enjoyable money-making machine forever and ever – or at least for the foreseeable future. Of course marketers would want to talk about their ideal customers, because the thought of drawing these folks in is inspiring and exciting.

But a negative persona is a different story. With a negative persona, you want to get as detailed as possible in constructing the demographics and psychographics of the type of customer you do not want. This is the kind of customer that makes your stomach churn and keeps you up at night. This customer complains about everything, communicates inefficiently (or even aggressively), is nearly impossible to satisfy and seems like they may jump ship at any moment. They leave your team feeling exhausted, and they drain you of your resources. Put simply – no amount of money is worth the downsides of dealing with this customer type. And yet many marketers don’t want to talk about these individuals because of two reasons:

They worry that creating negative personas will mean they have to turn away business. They feel they (and their company) are not in a position to say goodbye to potential revenue, and are concerned they’ll flounder if they become selective about the customers they accept.

They think it isn’t useful. Many marketers argue that buyer personas are helpful, because they give you the knowledge you need to know where to market to your ideal customers, and how much money to allocate to those avenues. They think that establishing negative buyer personas might be a fun exercise, but won’t actually accomplish anything of value.

The reality is that both of these mindsets are rooted in false misconceptions. Negative buyer personas are actually essential to running a thriving business and knowing how best to market to prospects. So here’s a look at why, and how you can get started on using this important tool immediately for improved customer acquisition.

Step 1: Finish your Traditional Buyer Personas

If you haven’t yet finalized your regular buyer personas, pay some attention to that first. You need to have that part of the puzzle figured out before continuing on to work on your negative personas.

Have your traditional personas finalized? Great. It’s time to start thinking about the type of buyer you do NOT want.

Step 2: Review the Data

I have yet to meet a marketer who doesn’t get excited about reviewing data, so this part should be right up your alley. Begin by reviewing your customer history over the past two to three years. You want to assess customers who were recent enough for you to remember what it was like working with them, and also make sure you cast a wide enough net to include some customers who have been with you for a long time. Once you have a list in front of you, here are some questions to ask:

Which of these customers expressed dissatisfaction with your company?

Did you or your team have any direct conflicts with anyone on this list?

Did you have to spend more money or time than planned with any of these customers in order to ‘fix’ a situation?

Were there any customers you actually fired before the engagement actually ended?

Any customers who fired you?

Are there any other major red flags that stand out to you (misaligned priorities, unrealistic expectations, difficult personalities, billing snags, not a good fit, etc.)?

This should help you narrow down the list considerably. Once you have a new list of customers who fit one or more of the criteria above, then it’s time to seek out common threads among them. Review their information to find out the following:

What are the ages of the individuals you worked with most closely?

What were their job titles, career background and income levels?

What is their industry?

What is their company’s size?

What were their stated goals at the beginning of the engagement?

What was the scope of the engagement?

What was their level of experience working with a company like yours?

What type of questions did they ask you during the discovery process? What type of questions did they ask after they hired you?

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to take a look at which factors seem to be repeated across all the customers you identified as being troublesome in the past. There should be at least two to three attributes that stand out time and time again.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re a content marketing agency, and you usually work with people who are directors or at the VP level within midsize companies. But when you go back through clients that have caused you grief in the past, you might start to connect the dots that many of them were structured differently. Maybe your main point of contact in the failed engagements was the CEO of a smaller company, so they were consistently wearing too many hats, pressed for time and unable to give you what needed to produce effective content. The goal with all this is to use historical data, fact-finding and some human assessment to understand why these types of folks haven’t been aligned to your company in the past – so you can figure out how to avoid them in the future.

Step 3: Construct your Personas

Once you’ve culled insight into past “problem clients,” you should have a pretty clear view of what your negative personas should look like. The process of putting them together is straightforward: go through demographics, psychographics and any other details you know about them and paint a picture of who that person is. Give them a name, so everyone in your company can refer to them and know who you’re talking about.

Even if you think you could have more, stick to creating between one and three negative personas. When they’re all done, you’re going to use them to inform your decisions about where NOT to allocate your marketing dollars. For instance, maybe one of your negative personas is Agitated Alice. She’s single, in her thirties and a quickly rising leader in her company. She was quick to engage with your brand, but has since been demanding and difficult to work with, often creating problems where none exist. Once you have her persona completed, you can determine where you think Alice would look to find a vendor or partner. You could do this through surveying her, or researching which publications and social media channels are typically used by those who fit her demographics. After you review where your traditional personas spend their time and attention, and make sure there’s no overlap, you can then intentionally avoid wasting your marketing budget on the places Agitated Alice is sure to be.

You can also use what you’ve learned about your negative personas to refine your messaging. You can train your sales team to identify these personas early on in the business development process to avoid wasting time. With this new insight into who you want as customers, and who you do NOT want, your messaging and marketing can be ultra-targeted and on point. And that’s really the only type of marketing that ever achieves wild success, anyway.

Conclusion

In addition to making your life easier, bringing in more of the right customers (and not wasting your marketing funds trying to attract the wrong ones) will improve your customer acquisition cost. The right customer should be easier to convert because they resonate with your brand, lowering the effort to ‘convince’ them. It will save you money in your marketing, and preserve the quality of your vendor/client relationships. The tangible and intangible benefits are plentiful.

And to those who are worried about losing revenue? Just remember that customers who aren’t optimally suited to work with your business, will end up costing you far more (in time, money, staff contentment, reputation, etc.) than they would have given you. It’s time to elevate your standards, and work with the people who will benefit you – and benefit most from your products and services.

About the Author: Jay Feitlinger is the founder and CEO of StringCan Interactive, a digital marketing agency that helps multi-location businesses reach more customers and achieve their marketing goals. He leads the agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and also has a regional office in Paris, France. Jay is also the author of “Family 2.0: Harness Business Principles to Reboot your Family in 4 Days.” Connect with him by visiting http://ift.tt/1tekbsL.

http://ift.tt/2q5ougT from MarketingRSS http://ift.tt/2pF2hEV via Youtube

[marie85marketing]

The Dark Side: Why You Need Negative Buyer Personas for Better Customer Acquisition

There’s been a lot of buzz about buyer personas in marketing over the past few years. But few marketers talk about the power of the negative persona, which is arguably equally important in marketing.

So, what is it exactly? It’s pretty much how it sounds: the opposite of a traditional buyer persona. Traditional buyer personas are intended to help your company flesh out exactly what kind of customer will give you the most revenue, with the least amount of hassle, and then do so repeatedly (or for a very long duration). This type of customer is the one that any company would salivate over; once you have them in your sights, they’re your very own, agreeable, enjoyable money-making machine forever and ever – or at least for the foreseeable future. Of course marketers would want to talk about their ideal customers, because the thought of drawing these folks in is inspiring and exciting.

But a negative persona is a different story. With a negative persona, you want to get as detailed as possible in constructing the demographics and psychographics of the type of customer you do not want. This is the kind of customer that makes your stomach churn and keeps you up at night. This customer complains about everything, communicates inefficiently (or even aggressively), is nearly impossible to satisfy and seems like they may jump ship at any moment. They leave your team feeling exhausted, and they drain you of your resources. Put simply – no amount of money is worth the downsides of dealing with this customer type. And yet many marketers don’t want to talk about these individuals because of two reasons:

They worry that creating negative personas will mean they have to turn away business. They feel they (and their company) are not in a position to say goodbye to potential revenue, and are concerned they’ll flounder if they become selective about the customers they accept.

They think it isn’t useful. Many marketers argue that buyer personas are helpful, because they give you the knowledge you need to know where to market to your ideal customers, and how much money to allocate to those avenues. They think that establishing negative buyer personas might be a fun exercise, but won’t actually accomplish anything of value.

The reality is that both of these mindsets are rooted in false misconceptions. Negative buyer personas are actually essential to running a thriving business and knowing how best to market to prospects. So here’s a look at why, and how you can get started on using this important tool immediately for improved customer acquisition.

Step 1: Finish your Traditional Buyer Personas

If you haven’t yet finalized your regular buyer personas, pay some attention to that first. You need to have that part of the puzzle figured out before continuing on to work on your negative personas.

Have your traditional personas finalized? Great. It’s time to start thinking about the type of buyer you do NOT want.

Step 2: Review the Data

I have yet to meet a marketer who doesn’t get excited about reviewing data, so this part should be right up your alley. Begin by reviewing your customer history over the past two to three years. You want to assess customers who were recent enough for you to remember what it was like working with them, and also make sure you cast a wide enough net to include some customers who have been with you for a long time. Once you have a list in front of you, here are some questions to ask:

Which of these customers expressed dissatisfaction with your company?

Did you or your team have any direct conflicts with anyone on this list?

Did you have to spend more money or time than planned with any of these customers in order to ‘fix’ a situation?

Were there any customers you actually fired before the engagement actually ended?

Any customers who fired you?

Are there any other major red flags that stand out to you (misaligned priorities, unrealistic expectations, difficult personalities, billing snags, not a good fit, etc.)?

This should help you narrow down the list considerably. Once you have a new list of customers who fit one or more of the criteria above, then it’s time to seek out common threads among them. Review their information to find out the following:

What are the ages of the individuals you worked with most closely?

What were their job titles, career background and income levels?

What is their industry?

What is their company’s size?

What were their stated goals at the beginning of the engagement?

What was the scope of the engagement?

What was their level of experience working with a company like yours?

What type of questions did they ask you during the discovery process? What type of questions did they ask after they hired you?

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to take a look at which factors seem to be repeated across all the customers you identified as being troublesome in the past. There should be at least two to three attributes that stand out time and time again.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re a content marketing agency, and you usually work with people who are directors or at the VP level within midsize companies. But when you go back through clients that have caused you grief in the past, you might start to connect the dots that many of them were structured differently. Maybe your main point of contact in the failed engagements was the CEO of a smaller company, so they were consistently wearing too many hats, pressed for time and unable to give you what needed to produce effective content. The goal with all this is to use historical data, fact-finding and some human assessment to understand why these types of folks haven’t been aligned to your company in the past – so you can figure out how to avoid them in the future.

Step 3: Construct your Personas

Once you’ve culled insight into past “problem clients,” you should have a pretty clear view of what your negative personas should look like. The process of putting them together is straightforward: go through demographics, psychographics and any other details you know about them and paint a picture of who that person is. Give them a name, so everyone in your company can refer to them and know who you’re talking about.

Even if you think you could have more, stick to creating between one and three negative personas. When they’re all done, you’re going to use them to inform your decisions about where NOT to allocate your marketing dollars. For instance, maybe one of your negative personas is Agitated Alice. She’s single, in her thirties and a quickly rising leader in her company. She was quick to engage with your brand, but has since been demanding and difficult to work with, often creating problems where none exist. Once you have her persona completed, you can determine where you think Alice would look to find a vendor or partner. You could do this through surveying her, or researching which publications and social media channels are typically used by those who fit her demographics. After you review where your traditional personas spend their time and attention, and make sure there’s no overlap, you can then intentionally avoid wasting your marketing budget on the places Agitated Alice is sure to be.

You can also use what you’ve learned about your negative personas to refine your messaging. You can train your sales team to identify these personas early on in the business development process to avoid wasting time. With this new insight into who you want as customers, and who you do NOT want, your messaging and marketing can be ultra-targeted and on point. And that’s really the only type of marketing that ever achieves wild success, anyway.

Conclusion

In addition to making your life easier, bringing in more of the right customers (and not wasting your marketing funds trying to attract the wrong ones) will improve your customer acquisition cost. The right customer should be easier to convert because they resonate with your brand, lowering the effort to ‘convince’ them. It will save you money in your marketing, and preserve the quality of your vendor/client relationships. The tangible and intangible benefits are plentiful.

And to those who are worried about losing revenue? Just remember that customers who aren’t optimally suited to work with your business, will end up costing you far more (in time, money, staff contentment, reputation, etc.) than they would have given you. It’s time to elevate your standards, and work with the people who will benefit you – and benefit most from your products and services.

About the Author: Jay Feitlinger is the founder and CEO of StringCan Interactive, a digital marketing agency that helps multi-location businesses reach more customers and achieve their marketing goals. He leads the agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and also has a regional office in Paris, France. Jay is also the author of “Family 2.0: Harness Business Principles to Reboot your Family in 4 Days.” Connect with him by visiting www.stringcaninteractive.com.

[ericsburden-blog]

The Dark Side: Why You Need Negative Buyer Personas for Better Customer Acquisition

There’s been a lot of buzz about buyer personas in marketing over the past few years. But few marketers talk about the power of the negative persona, which is arguably equally important in marketing.

So, what is it exactly? It’s pretty much how it sounds: the opposite of a traditional buyer persona. Traditional buyer personas are intended to help your company flesh out exactly what kind of customer will give you the most revenue, with the least amount of hassle, and then do so repeatedly (or for a very long duration). This type of customer is the one that any company would salivate over; once you have them in your sights, they’re your very own, agreeable, enjoyable money-making machine forever and ever – or at least for the foreseeable future. Of course marketers would want to talk about their ideal customers, because the thought of drawing these folks in is inspiring and exciting.

But a negative persona is a different story. With a negative persona, you want to get as detailed as possible in constructing the demographics and psychographics of the type of customer you do not want. This is the kind of customer that makes your stomach churn and keeps you up at night. This customer complains about everything, communicates inefficiently (or even aggressively), is nearly impossible to satisfy and seems like they may jump ship at any moment. They leave your team feeling exhausted, and they drain you of your resources. Put simply – no amount of money is worth the downsides of dealing with this customer type. And yet many marketers don’t want to talk about these individuals because of two reasons:

They worry that creating negative personas will mean they have to turn away business. They feel they (and their company) are not in a position to say goodbye to potential revenue, and are concerned they’ll flounder if they become selective about the customers they accept.

They think it isn’t useful. Many marketers argue that buyer personas are helpful, because they give you the knowledge you need to know where to market to your ideal customers, and how much money to allocate to those avenues. They think that establishing negative buyer personas might be a fun exercise, but won’t actually accomplish anything of value.

The reality is that both of these mindsets are rooted in false misconceptions. Negative buyer personas are actually essential to running a thriving business and knowing how best to market to prospects. So here’s a look at why, and how you can get started on using this important tool immediately for improved customer acquisition.

Step 1: Finish your Traditional Buyer Personas

If you haven’t yet finalized your regular buyer personas, pay some attention to that first. You need to have that part of the puzzle figured out before continuing on to work on your negative personas.

Have your traditional personas finalized? Great. It’s time to start thinking about the type of buyer you do NOT want.

Step 2: Review the Data

I have yet to meet a marketer who doesn’t get excited about reviewing data, so this part should be right up your alley. Begin by reviewing your customer history over the past two to three years. You want to assess customers who were recent enough for you to remember what it was like working with them, and also make sure you cast a wide enough net to include some customers who have been with you for a long time. Once you have a list in front of you, here are some questions to ask:

Which of these customers expressed dissatisfaction with your company?

Did you or your team have any direct conflicts with anyone on this list?

Did you have to spend more money or time than planned with any of these customers in order to ‘fix’ a situation?

Were there any customers you actually fired before the engagement actually ended?

Any customers who fired you?

Are there any other major red flags that stand out to you (misaligned priorities, unrealistic expectations, difficult personalities, billing snags, not a good fit, etc.)?

This should help you narrow down the list considerably. Once you have a new list of customers who fit one or more of the criteria above, then it’s time to seek out common threads among them. Review their information to find out the following:

What are the ages of the individuals you worked with most closely?

What were their job titles, career background and income levels?

What is their industry?

What is their company’s size?

What were their stated goals at the beginning of the engagement?

What was the scope of the engagement?

What was their level of experience working with a company like yours?

What type of questions did they ask you during the discovery process? What type of questions did they ask after they hired you?

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to take a look at which factors seem to be repeated across all the customers you identified as being troublesome in the past. There should be at least two to three attributes that stand out time and time again.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re a content marketing agency, and you usually work with people who are directors or at the VP level within midsize companies. But when you go back through clients that have caused you grief in the past, you might start to connect the dots that many of them were structured differently. Maybe your main point of contact in the failed engagements was the CEO of a smaller company, so they were consistently wearing too many hats, pressed for time and unable to give you what needed to produce effective content. The goal with all this is to use historical data, fact-finding and some human assessment to understand why these types of folks haven’t been aligned to your company in the past – so you can figure out how to avoid them in the future.

Step 3: Construct your Personas

Once you’ve culled insight into past “problem clients,” you should have a pretty clear view of what your negative personas should look like. The process of putting them together is straightforward: go through demographics, psychographics and any other details you know about them and paint a picture of who that person is. Give them a name, so everyone in your company can refer to them and know who you’re talking about.

Even if you think you could have more, stick to creating between one and three negative personas. When they’re all done, you’re going to use them to inform your decisions about where NOT to allocate your marketing dollars. For instance, maybe one of your negative personas is Agitated Alice. She’s single, in her thirties and a quickly rising leader in her company. She was quick to engage with your brand, but has since been demanding and difficult to work with, often creating problems where none exist. Once you have her persona completed, you can determine where you think Alice would look to find a vendor or partner. You could do this through surveying her, or researching which publications and social media channels are typically used by those who fit her demographics. After you review where your traditional personas spend their time and attention, and make sure there’s no overlap, you can then intentionally avoid wasting your marketing budget on the places Agitated Alice is sure to be.

You can also use what you’ve learned about your negative personas to refine your messaging. You can train your sales team to identify these personas early on in the business development process to avoid wasting time. With this new insight into who you want as customers, and who you do NOT want, your messaging and marketing can be ultra-targeted and on point. And that’s really the only type of marketing that ever achieves wild success, anyway.

Conclusion

In addition to making your life easier, bringing in more of the right customers (and not wasting your marketing funds trying to attract the wrong ones) will improve your customer acquisition cost. The right customer should be easier to convert because they resonate with your brand, lowering the effort to ‘convince’ them. It will save you money in your marketing, and preserve the quality of your vendor/client relationships. The tangible and intangible benefits are plentiful.

And to those who are worried about losing revenue? Just remember that customers who aren’t optimally suited to work with your business, will end up costing you far more (in time, money, staff contentment, reputation, etc.) than they would have given you. It’s time to elevate your standards, and work with the people who will benefit you – and benefit most from your products and services.

About the Author: Jay Feitlinger is the founder and CEO of StringCan Interactive, a digital marketing agency that helps multi-location businesses reach more customers and achieve their marketing goals. He leads the agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and also has a regional office in Paris, France. Jay is also the author of “Family 2.0: Harness Business Principles to Reboot your Family in 4 Days.” Connect with him by visiting http://ift.tt/1tekbsL.

The Dark Side: Why You Need Negative Buyer Personas for Better Customer Acquisition