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oswhys · 5 years

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Dumb AC concept ideas

So this is basically a info dump of ideas for potential AC games and concepts that its been playing with in my head, it's mostly me nerding out about junk (look if I can info dump about Teotihuacan I’ll do it.) like it's ideas that I think would be cool and what id want to see in future installments, even if they aren't likely to happen. It's also written super casually cause I started making this in a burst of inspiration at like 2 am and yet still got distracted from it cause I started going on tangents. So it's a bit of a mess. I’m totally down for bouncing ideas around if anyone has their own concepts.

1920’s jazz age assassin from the beginning of unity and the abstergo employee handbook. "The lives and failures of the most degenerate Americans to ever grace the world's stage - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Stein." please tell me how this doesn't sound cool as shit? Okokokokokokok SO… CARS. like this dude would have a car (and of course the player can earn different cars and looks for their car and junk, including a yellow Duesenberg… like come on if he knew Fitzgerald they gotta let this dude drive Gatsby's car.) I think there can be an argument about him having a rope launcher attachment buuut maybe not??? I mean a car and a rope launcher would be dope as hell. The dude probably bounced between Paris and New York if he's a genuine jazz age junkie like how abstergo describes him and his writer pals. Also it would be cool to meet Picasso… also his base of operations should be a fucking speakeasy, like duh, like where else would a 1920’s assassin camp out? I don’t really have any plot ideas but the concept of a jazz age assassin is cool enough for me to want it this badly.

1970’s-1980’s William Miles in a corporate espionage type game, like i know he had Desmond in 1987 but he was an active filed assassin in 1977 when he was in Moscow so clearly he could've been doing other junk around then. It doesn't have to be him, i just want a 70’d-80’s assassin trying to fuck with abstergo and trying to steal animus research or something. Like Alieen Bock died in 81 and that was at the height of animus research before abstergo started really investing in it cause of Vidic. Like the surrogate initiative and the animus project are… basically the same thing really. Like knowing that Altair and Ezio were not actually related until their bloodlines crossed with Desmond. So with the memory keys being cited as an integral part of the animus project they obviously had a role to play in the surrogate project. Besides the newer games are pretty loosey-goosey with how the DNA and animus junk works now, with the spear having DNA traces or whatever and its corrupted enough that we could… choose things?? (don't ask questions just have fun i guess.) ok i’m over thinking this stuff… but come on… disco!!!!! Please please please have a disco assassination. Like… the idea of an assassin taking out a target at the disco is cool enough for me to want it. ALSO!!! If it goes into the 80’s then please for the love of god a Thriller inspired outfit would be to die for. Like i know getting the exact look would be a trademark nightmare but an inspired look may be able to get away with it. I just want some real corporate espionage type missions while dressed in some brightly colored dorky(cool as shit) 70’s/80’s fashion.

So like… ANYTHING from ancient Andean culture. So The Chimú or the Moche… that would be cool, but I'd settle for Wari and Tiwanaku. I just kinda want to see Chan Chan recreated. And Moche art was so fucking good like… idk man they're making video games that are mostly of ancient cultures now so the possibility of them making something in a more modern setting is slim to none. Like come on they're gonna want to make like idk maybe one more really ancient cultural game so they can still reuse assets again before making a whole new saga. That's just their track record. The problem with doing an ancient andean cultural video game is that there isn't a lot to work with other then our knowledge of the architecture and artistry of the ancient peoples. We have art documentary significant events but there isn't really any historical recordings so there's no significant figures to meet or events to take part in that we know of right now. BUT that also means that hey if Ubisoft wants us to have freedom of choice within the narrative this would be a great opportunity.

Speaking of ancient culturesssss ancient Mexican cultures would be REALLY cool too. Like obviously Mayans culture is the first to come to mind but AC already kinda explored the Mayans so idk maybe a more underrated ancient culture deserves the spotlight. The Zapotec and other civilizations in the Oaxaca. Like this would be really cool since we actually see a rise in raiding and conquest warfare, like theres these bas-relief stone carvings called Las Danzantes which are actually depictions of sacrificial victims, most likely foreign captives. The architecture is also to die for like i’m a sucker for talud-tablero style stuff popping up in ancient Latin america. Also do i gotta say it? BALL COURTS!!! A recreation of the ancient ball game in a video game would be cool as shit my dudes like… please i want this so bad. Like how origins depicted mummification with respect I’d love to see the same kind of loving dedication to the funerary practices of the ancient peoples. (off topic completely but some latin american civilizations had their own forms of mummification) like i wanna see the abandonment of Monte Alban and the later use of it by the Mixtecs. But the most important thing about the celebration of the ancient Zapotec would be the ability to celebrate the modern Zapotec culture, that would just be cool. Ok I’ll finish up this train of ideas with the one i really really really want to see recreated, the original Teotihuacan, before the Aztecs found it. With the pyramids being painted and covered in beautiful carvings and, of course, talud-tablero style architecture. It's basically the biggest ancient city in mesoamerica with hidden cave systems that we are still finding today and so much of the ancient city was built over because it might've been covered up or eroded to the point where no one knew it was there, or because there wasn't really anyone who cared enough to uh, not build on top of historical sites. Modern mexico city is built all around and on top of it (apparently you can see Walmart from the top of the temple of the sun…) so its a huge ancient city that was really colorful and really populated with crazy ancient tunnels underneath the pyramids that we’ve only discovered recently so how fucking cool are those possibilities? Like i just can't get over the idea of some assassin-esque person climbing up red pyramids and sitting next to statues and carvings of Queztalcoatl painted in a turquoise. Ancient farms and city life thriving. From what we know about it, like many other ancient latin american cities it was abandoned at some point, exactly why is unclear though (probably a mix of things cause there wasn't any kings really but more like… neighborhood councils (that's the best guess rn)). It was an actual city though, most archaeologists compare it to modern cities due to its city planning and its huge population. What was left behind was so spectacular that when the Aztecs found it they legit thought it was the city of the gods. This was a real fucking city and I’m crazy about it man i want it in a fucking video game my dudes.

COWBOYS PLEASE. Like i know rdr2 came out so they probably wont do it (for a while at least) and they already have the gold rush assassin so they've dabbled with cowboy stuff but… cowboys… like theres nothing else to say really… Cowboys. Also like i know how AC is pretty much ass melee combat and cowboys means guns and lots of guns and bows and probably rope darts. But… folding swords. That my shitty solution to have melee combat, like syndicate had melee and some gun stuff cause duh, but it was mostly melee. Like you can make the game centered around stealth so a lot more sneaking then combat, kinda like in unity. I have a few ideas for this one but most of them play into my own personal cowboy wish fulfillment fantasy of owning a farm with snakes for the production of venoms and other toxins. It's hard to explain but i kinda really want to see someone with a snake/spider enclosure where they produce venoms for the protag to use. The specific time period i have in mind is like 1870-1888 but it could defo go later. It's just that was peak for a lot of famous gunslingers and robberies. And Mesa Verde was basically rediscovered in the late 1880’s (its kinda weird like it was “officially” discovered in 88 but others saw it before that soooo. Also Montezuma Castle would be cool to visit in game as well. I dont have have a lot of knowledge about mesa verde or Montezuma but i know they're cool af.) the wild west is just ripe with possibility so i have some hope they’ll do one in the future but i don't see it happening anytime within the next couple of years.

Please for the love of god give me a AC3/unity dual sequel. Set in 1798 Egypt before during and maybe a little after the french invasion of Egypt. There would be a ton to work around and justify to get that to happen in universe buuuuut… i want it so badly. I have a shit ton of ideas but im saving all of that for a rainy day.

I wouldn't mind if they actually did stuff with WWI, mostly cause i really like that one WWI assassin from project legacy and Lydia's whole thing was really cool.

Ok I’m kinda on burn out after all that cause I just… its 4 AM and i’m supposed to be writing a paper but I made this big fucking oops.

#Assassin's Creed #assassins creed #assassin’s creed #this is dumb sorry i just... gotta express this shit #my stuff

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douglasacogan · 5 years

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"Making Jail a Last Resort" or "If Prisons Don’t Work, What Will?"

The title of this post are the two somewhat different (bad) headlines I have seen for this great New York Times commentary authored by Emily Bazelon (whose great timely new book is titled "Charged: The New Movement to Transform Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration.") I am much more partial to the first headline than the second, but neither comes close to capturing effectively the spirit and themes of the wide-ranging piece. So, go read the full piece, and here are some extended excerpts:

The United States spends far too much money locking up far too many people for far too long. A few years ago, a politician had to be brave to say anything like that out loud. Now it’s a mainstream and bipartisan view.... It’s all pretty head-spinning after decades of elected officials competing to lock more people up and spotlight the scariest crimes. Now, with public opinion shifting far and fast and politicians hurrying to catch up, you could even argue that criminal justice reform has become the new marriage equality in terms of the turnaround in public attitudes.

That presents a major opportunity for Democratic presidential candidates. But for all the energy behind reform, no presidential candidate has articulated a big, comprehensive vision for transformational change. There’s a consensus that the system is broken, but no agreement on how to fix it. The presidential candidate looking to distinguish herself might start by looking at a new wave of reform-minded district attorneys who are challenging conventional law-and-order approaches in red states and blue ones.

For the candidates, thematically, a starting point should be that wealth should not determine a person’s fate in court, and profit should not drive the system. Bail bonds, privatized probation and corporate-run prisons are parasitic features of the justice system. Ending cash bail should be at the top of every candidate’s criminal justice agenda. So should getting rid of fines and fees that help fund local governments but trap people in cycles of debt....

To end mass incarceration, however, exempting nonviolent offenses from jail time isn’t enough. People convicted of violent crimes make up more than half of the country’s state prison population. But the image of prisons overflowing with murderers and rapists is wrong. In many states, “violent felonies” include offenses like breaking into an empty house or snatching a purse or iPhone on the street. Reducing sentences for these offenses — and changing what counts as a violent felony to begin with — is a good way to start lowering this share of the prison population.

And that fits in with a second theme for candidates: People deserve a second chance, because many grow and change. They robbed to feed an addiction and then got sober. They assaulted someone because they were mentally ill and then got treatment and stabilized. They mature as they age beyond their teens and early 20s. That’s why it makes sense to reconsider how long a person should stay in prison after doing some time....

Parole offers another opening for second chances. In Texas, says Scott Henson, an activist who blogs at the site Grits for Breakfast, “our parole rates have gone from 15 percent to the high 30s in the last decade,” He said the increase is “having more impact than any bill we’ve passed even through the legislature.” He thinks the reason for the rise is a humdrum logistical one: The state unofficially uses parole as a way to reduce prison overcrowding.

We should also focus on redefining the terms of the public safety debate. Ending mass incarceration, and ensuring fairness throughout the criminal justice system, aren’t in tension with public safety. They’re integral to it. People tend to uphold the law when they believe it’s reasonable and applied evenly. When people have that faith, they are more likely to help the police solve crimes....

Finally, incarceration should be the last resort, not the default. In Brooklyn, District Attorney Eric Gonzalez has said this idea is central to his tenure. His counterpart in Boston, Rachael Rollins, last month instructed prosecutors to ask for jail only “when any other recommendation would compromise” safety. When no other option than jail or prison will do, it’s important to remember that the vast majority of people who go in also get out. Making sure they have the tools to lead productive lives when they emerge — like job training and access to decent housing — is a public good.

Presidents don’t actually control the key levers of the American punishment machine. About 80 percent of the people who are locked up today are in state and local jails and prisons. But presidents, and presidential campaigns, can raise the profile of an issue and set a tone. The way they talk about repairing our broken criminal justice system speaks loudly to broader issues about racial and wealth inequality. Presidents can also shape the behavior of states and cities with funding and other incentives, like redirecting money to treatment and prevention programs.

Were I in charge of devising a headline for this piece, I might go with something like "How Prosecutors and Presidential Candidates Advance Criminal Justice Reform." But this is not the first, nor will it be the last, great newspaper piece without a headline to serve it well. Of course, the piece itself leaves out some important stories like the achievement of the FIRST STEP Act and the need for clemency reform (points recently stressed by Senator and Prez canadide Amy Klobuchar). But there is so much getting done and needing to be done in this space now, it is hard to fault any piece of writing for not covering everything.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2019/04/making-jail-a-last-resort-or-if-prisons-dont-work-what-will.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

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themoneybuff-blog · 5 years

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Questions About Checking Accounts, Nintendo Switch, iPods, TSP, and More!

Whats inside? Here are the questions answered in todays reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. Great advice for job seekers 2. Old hometown checking account 3. Making your own seasoning mixes 4. Inexpensive Nintendo Switch games 5. Partner has extreme debt 6. TSP contribution questions 7. Uses for old iPod? 8. Job search not that simple 9. Value of authenticating sports cards 10. Financial independence and career plans 11. Advice for selling books 12. True hourly discretionary income question I wanted to offer a little update on my switch to a standing desk for professional purposes. About two weeks ago, I moved my main workstation to a standing desk. The purpose for doing this was to significantly reduce the amount of time I spend sitting in a given day, because sitting for your job all the time has some negative long term health consequences. I did recognize that doing this fully cold turkey is a bad idea, and so I planned from the start to do it in stages. My plan was and still is to use the desk until I felt noticeable discomfort, then switch to a laptop in a chair for a while, then maybe alternate back later in the day. My goal was to simply raise my average time at the standing desk a little each week as I strengthen different muscle groups. After a couple of weeks of doing this, Ive found that the big impact has been on my lower back, with a smaller impact on my feet. Im able to work for about four to five hours a day at the standing desk, with other work time spent sitting in a comfortable chair with a laptop. What generally happens is that my lower back starts to get sore, not in a something is broken way but in a this is a muscle thats getting taxed due to exertion and needs a break way. Ill sit down for a while and itll feel much better. However, its constantly experiencing a low-grade soreness, the kind of soreness that happens when you exercise a muscle group. Theres nothing wrong here if I felt something wrong, I would stop using the standing desk for a while. However, it can be a little uncomfortable. Ive had some very minor foot discomfort, mostly on my heels, but nothing significant and it honestly seems to be fading over the last few days. Its hard to tell yet whether or not the standing desk is improving my health in any notable way. I certainly dont think its been bad, but I havent noticed a big health improvement. I do exercise most days, so thats definitely a positive factor, but its hard to extract the benefits of standing with the other benefits of exercise. I think its very likely that there have been some minor benefits, and I likely would have noticed more if I didnt already exercise. Its all about feeling healthy for as long as possible. On with the questions. Q1: Great advice for job seekers I wanted to share some advice from my own experience as an interviewer [in a large corporate HR department]. The big thing is that you shouldnt be hard on yourself if you interview for a job and dont get it. Often, there is already a candidate that is pre-selected and the interview process is a mere formality. Someone thought you were a good candidate and brought you in, but you didnt actually have a real chance at the job no matter how you interviewed. In fact, you should treat all interviews like that. Dont get stressed about them, because theres a good chance that theres already an anointed candidate. I would say that 75-80% of the time, we already have our minds made up regarding which candidate to hire before the interview process begins and interviews virtually never change our minds. Sometimes we will interview someone great and put them on a list of people to call in the future but almost without fail those people already have a job when we call them back. So please dont be hard on yourself if you dont succeed at an interview! And dont get overly stressed about it because theres a good chance that theres already an anointed candidate anyway. Just go in there and answer the questions and learn about the company and let the chips fall where they may. Alison This is great advice, and in line with some of my own hiring experiences in the past. I have been on all sides of this coin at various points. I have been the anointed candidate in a hiring process. I have also been one of the other candidates in a hiring process (where I knew someone else was anointed for an absolute fact). Ive also been involved with several hirings, some of which had strongly preferred candidates and some of which did not. The thing is, you never really know which kind of situation it is when youre interviewing. It may be a more open position where you actually have a good chance, or it may be a situation where you are one of the other candidates in an open process engineered to bring in the vastly preferred candidate with minimal questions. I think the mantra of dont worry about it is the right one here. Just go in there, answer the questions, ask some questions about the company, and move on and keep looking for the next interview or opportunity. If youre the right candidate, theyll call. Often, you wont be, and it wont be due to a fault of your own. Q2: Old hometown checking account I have left a checking account open at my old hometown bank for the last 20 years. It pays a very small interest rate 0.05%. I have a balance of about $1,200 in there. I have always looked at it as a last ditch emergency fund. If anything seriously goes wrong, Ill go there and use that money. But its just sitting there. Isnt there something better I could be doing with it? Dana I dont think theres anything wrong with having a last ditch emergency fund in a bank thats not easy to access. That idea is fine by me. However, its probably just going to sit there for a long time, so you might want to consider doing something with it that earns a better return. The next time youre in your hometown, stop by that bank and see what other options they have. Simply explain that this is an emergency fund for you and you want it in a place where it earns a little more, doesnt lose value, and could be withdrawn in an emergency but isnt likely to be withdrawn. Its very likely that theyll suggest a certificate of deposit, which is akin to a savings account except that it earns a bit higher interest rate and theres a small penalty for withdrawing it early. It wont take very long at all for the CD to earn more than the penalty for early withdrawal and then, after that, its onwards and upwards. Make sure that the bank allows you to automatically roll over the CD when it matures. Right now, with interest rates a bit higher than they were but still fairly low, Id choose a medium term CD, something in the range of one to two years. That will give you a higher interest rate than a short term CD but wont lock you in to these relatively low historical rates forever. Set it to automatically roll over, then forget about it until that last ditch emergency occurs. Q3: Making your own seasoning mixes Have you ever written an article about making your own seasoning mixes instead of buying mixes at the store? You can buy the component spices and mix them yourself and save a lot of money if you use seasonings a lot. I make an Italian seasoning and a chili seasoning and a toast seasoning myself. Margaret Toast seasoning? Youre going to have to send me that one. I have a bagel seasoning mix that I like to use on buttered toast sometimes I wonder if theyre similar. Although Ive mentioned seasoning mixes before and noted how its cheaper to make your own, I dont think Ive ever written a listing of the various spice mixes we have and how we store them. I store most of my spice mixes in large baby food jars that we still have from when our children were babies. I usually make them by mixing other spices by the teaspoon into a bowl and then stirring them thoroughly so theyre mixed, then I fill up the jar with the spice mix. I use masking tape for labeling. Using a mix is a learning experience. Over time, you start figuring out how much to put in stuff. Our chili mix, for example, usually takes a tablespoon and a half per batch, and a batch fills up our slow cooker about halfway. I could write a full post about this if theres interest, including some of my recipes. Just send me a message on Facebook if youd like to see that. Q4: Inexpensive Nintendo Switch games My husband and I bought our son a Nintendo Switch for Christmas. It is his first video game console and he had been asking for it all year so it was really fun to see him open it. Both sets of grandparents got him a game for it so he has had two games to play. His birthday is coming up soon and we asked him what he wanted and of course he wanted a Switch game. We asked him for a list of the ones he wanted and it has 15 or so games on it. The problem is that they are all $50 or more. Why are Switch games so expensive? Our full birthday gift budget for him is $50. Can you help? Anna This is a consistent challenge with Nintendos consoles, and it has been since the 1980s. Nintendo makes very high quality exclusive titles for their consoles those are usually the ones that wind up filling wish lists for console owners but they rarely go down in price until later in the consoles production cycle and the Switch is a pretty young system. Trust me your son isnt being greedy here. Hes probably listing most of the best games for the console, but they all happen to be expensive ones. I would guess that in a year or two, Nintendo will have a line of some of their top titles from a few years prior as Platinum titles for a much lower price point around $20 but were not there yet. So what can you do now? My recommendation is to visit a video game store that sells used games, like Gamestop, and see what they have available for the Switch thats used. Switch games, as you know, come on small cartridges, so its very easy to test a game to make sure it works you can ask them to test it before you buy. Getting a game used in the original packaging will still cost 50% to 75% of the sticker price and the selection may be a bit limited, but this is probably a fairly safe bet for getting one of the games he wants within your price point. A used Switch game is just as good as a new one in terms of someone focused on actually playing the games, so Id look there. Another approach would be to give him a gift card to the Nintendo eShop. There are a lot of very good downloadable titles for the Switch, and you use those gift cards to buy those downloadable titles. While this wouldnt give him any of the games he specifically wants, it would enable him to get a couple of games at least, and there are some very good games for $9.99 or less on the eShop. Q5: Partner has extreme debt I recently discovered that my bride-to-be (June) has about $140K in student loan debt. She had said that she had some student loans in the past but I did not have any idea how much. I am very uncomfortable with being saddled with that much debt. This has caused a great deal of conflict between us over the last few months and I found this out during the holidays. I am not sure what to do. Daniel The biggest factor Id look at is her day to day behavior right now. Is she a frugal person? Does she watch her nickels and dimes? Is she committed not in words but in actions to getting that debt paid off? Is she making extra payments on that debt? If you see that, then I wouldnt fret about it. On the other hand, if she seems to think that such a big debt isnt a big deal, she spends money frivolously all the time, and she isnt making much progress on that debt I would think very, very carefully about this relationship, because thats a value mismatch thats going to chafe for years and years. Beyond that, I would also consider what kind of field that her degree is in. Was the degree she earned in a field with a high income potential, or was it something that will never earn a substantial income? Also, Id look at other factors, like whether or not parental support was promised and then denied. If shes aiming for a high paying career, such as medicine or law or some types of engineering, I wouldnt worry too much about it. If she took out that much debt for a career path that has a very low likelihood of earning a high salary, I would be really concerned. I would also be concerned with that level of debt if there was also significant financial support from her parents where did all of that money go? The challenge with marriage is that you are financially tied to each other in a very deep way and her choices regarding the debt she took out for her education are indicative of the decision making process she will likely employ going forward except now youll be financially liable for them. Having that much debt unless you are both high income earners will significantly affect your life decisions for a very long time, likely for the rest of your life. It will delay your ability to have children that you can support financially, for starters. It will alter both of your career choices and possibilities. It will delay your ability to have a home of your own. I guess, in this situation, what I would really look for are signs of financial maturity beyond that of the student loans. Is she focused on repaying that debt with or without you? Is she making the most of her degree? Does she spend frivolously? I cant answer for you whether this woman is worth it to you. She may be perfect for you in every other way, in which case youll be happier with her. However, having that much student loan debt, and given the alarm bells it sets off in your head, is a sign of likely incompatibility over financial issues, and thats not a recipe for a great marriage. As always, conversation is key, as is paying attention to her actions. What kind of steps is she taking (not just talking about, but taking) in her life knowing that huge debt is sitting there? If youre struggling to answer that and this debt makes you this uncomfortable, this may not be the best situation for you. Q6: TSP contribution questions I am 36 years old, single, no children, no plans to ever marry. I just got a government job that I hope to keep for the rest of my life. Knowing that I am receiving FERS and Social Security already in retirement, how much should I contribute to my TSP to be able to have a comfortable retirement?Want to retire at 65 and have about the same amount of disposable income when I retire. Janine For those unfamiliar, FERS is the pension plan for US federal government employees. TSP is an optional 401(k)-like plan for additional retirement savings. Based on this, FERS should provide about 33% of your final salary when you retire. Social Security, depending on your income level, will provide somewhere around 30% of your income. That means you need to make up about 37% of your income from TSP. If you contribute 5% of your salary to TSP, the federal government matches another 4%. Above that, theres no matching. Given all of that information, I ran some back of the envelope calculations and conclude that given your age and your aim to retire at age 65 with your full salary intact from your various retirement sources and that you want to be able to draw from TSP for the rest of your life, you should contribute 15% of your salary to TSP. This should enable you to withdraw enough from TSP each year to make up your salary shortfall when you retire at age 65 and the TSP balance should last for the rest of your life. Youll want to invest TSP fairly aggressively the target retirement options should work. While I cant guarantee that 15% will get you there, I can certainly say that it is extremely likely that it will either get you there or get you very close to your goal. Q7: Uses for old iPod? Found an old iPod in a desk drawer along with charging cable. Is there any use for this or should I just junk it? I powered it up and it turns on just fine. Adam I dont own an original iPod (I had one way back in the day but I sold it off circa 2007-2008), but a friend of mine keeps one in her car and listens to music with it every day using a cassette tape adapter. You could do the same thing with an auxiliary cable if your car has an AUX port. Just load it up with mp3s of a bunch of music and/or podcasts that you like, keep it in your car, and listen to it during commutes. If you have a charger that hooks into the cigarette lighting receptacle in your car, then you can plug into that and keep it permanently charged. My friend has hundreds of albums that she loved in her teens and twenties. If you like alternative or indie rock from about 1990 to about 2007, theres a good chance youll find a ton to love on her iPod. Just fill yours up to the brim with stuff you like and youll always have something to listen to. You can fill it up with the full archives of a podcast and listen to the entire run of a podcast, too. Old iPods are great for these kinds of things. In other words, use it for what it was intended for. Load it up with audio. Q8: Job search not that simple While I appreciate your regular encouragement to go find a new job if your current one is sapping you, its not always that simple. I have been working as a legacy systems programmer for the same company for 16 years. Most of my day is maintaining old code, migrating it to new machines, and dealing with corporate [nonsense]. I literally hate going into work each day. There arent any available jobs nearby that match my skill set. Trust me, Ive looked. I cant move because my daughter has particular health care needs and needs to be near a top notch medical facility. That also means I need good insurance. I cant just go into work and say, Well, time to find a new job today! Thats just a pipe dream. Terry All right, so what jobs are available in your area that are close to your skill set? Youre obviously in a metro area of some kind. I guarantee there are programming jobs in that area. Whats actually available? What things are most similar to your skillset? Once you know that, start honing your skillset at work so that you can make that leap. Learn how to write tools that will help you with the legacy coding you already do. Start trying to port your legacy code over to a new language for modern systems during your downtime. Use this as an opportunity to learn new languages and paradigms. Get involved with any and all local software development groups. Try to go to their face to face meetings and get heavily involved in any online spaces they have, being as helpful as you possibly can there. Build up some good relationships in your field, then just casually ask about positions that match your refurbished skill set. Also, keep your resume honed on LinkedIn so you can be discovered by people who might be looking for folks in your area. Dont aim for hopelessness. Aim for a light at the end of the tunnel. You can do this at any job. I had a job where I was literally shoveling dirt for hours and hours during the middle of the night by myself and yet I found ways to aim that toward my next step. Q9: Value of authenticating sports cards I have a bunch of sports cards mostly baseball and basketball from the 1960s. I have looked at selling some of them individually but when I look online almost all sales are authenticated cards in a special holder. I looked into this and it looks like you send your cards to an authentication service and pay them a fee and they put them in a special plastic holder with a tag that says its authentic and gives it a grade for its condition. Is this worth it for selling trading cards? Are there ways to sell cards without this kind of service? Marvin You basically described the sports card authentication world pretty well. It exists because there was rampant fraud in older sports cards and other trading cards for a while, so some reputable dealers popped up and started offering authentication and grading services so that people would know exactly what they were buying. Its become the de facto standard for any sports cards of significant value. Basically, if the card is older than about 1975 or so, the player has any name recognition at all, and the card is in reasonably good shape, youre going to make more money selling it after authentication than before, even including the cost of authentication. If its a no-name player or its beat up, youre not going to make a whole lot for it anyway, as people will just want those to help complete sets and they wont sell for more than pennies. What Id do is look for Hall of Fame caliber player cards from your collection (or, as a friend of mine said, Hall of Famers plus Pete Rose) and get those authenticated to sell individually. The rest, Id just divide out by set and sell in bulk. (I have an almost complete 1965 Topps set missing just a few commons that Ive worked on for literally decades, so Im fairly familiar with all of this.) Q10: Financial independence and career plans So how much financial independence would a person need to be able to have full career independence where you still want to have a career but you just feel empowered to make whatever choice seems exciting to you without really worrying about salary but still assuming youre earning a decent salary to live on? I make about $80K and think I can live well on about $40K so my savings rate is about 30% after taxes. How many years would I have to do this before money exits the equation as a career consideration? Barney I think the real question youre asking is how much do I need to save so that retirement is fully covered? This calculator is probably my preferred one. Youll want to play around with different settings to see how long youll need to save to hit your goals. The further you are from retirement, the lower your total savings goal will be. Also, if you assume Social Security benefits will come to you at rates similar to whats available today, the lower your total savings goal will be. You may even be at your target in several years. However, Id still recommend that you save for retirement after you hit your goal number if youre earning a good salary. This allows you to walk away even earlier if you just get tired of the rat race before a typical retirement age. Q11: Advice for selling books I have a collection of hardback books I want to sell. What is the best way to get maximum value for them? Tracy First of all, it depends a lot on what books youre exactly trying to sell. Are they novels? Cookbooks? Old Dungeons and Dragons books? Encyclopedias? Youll want to go to eBay and try to get a sense as to what theyre actually worth. You will probably get the maximum value from them by selling them individually. However, that is exponentially more work for only a fairly modest rate of return. You might be able to sell a lot of ten books for $20 or sell them each individually for $3, for example. Is that extra effort in packaging and shipping and tracking and communication for nine additional packages worth the $10 to you? Another note: if youre selling books, USPS Media Mail is your friend. Its a highly discounted shipping rate that applies to sending books through the mail, and it comes with a tracking number. (Its cheap because its slow and USPS knows a book can sit in a warehouse for a day with zero problems.) You should always use this when shipping books and magazines. Q12: True hourly discretionary income question I understand how this perspective helps to highlight the high cost of non-necessary spending now in terms of lost leisure in the future. But I think it overstates the cost of non-necessities in terms of hours worked. In your example where your annual net wage is $34,000 and your annual work hours is 2,740 (so you net $12.41 per hour worked) and your necessities cost $24,600/year, you should account for 1,982 work hours (= $24,600/$12.41 per hour) as covering necessities, leaving 2,740 1982 = 758 hours for non-necessities. In each of those 758 hours, you net $12.41/hour, and that is the cost of your necessities in terms of hour worked. So a $50 board game costs you $50/$12.41 per hour = 4 hours, not 10.5 hours. The key is to see that you still actually net $12.41/hour, regardless of whether those earnings go to necessities or non-necessities. One way to see this is to realize that the approach in the post can lead to unrealistic implications for the hours of work required to purchase non-necessities. For example, suppose in your example above, necessities are only $10,000 year, and non-necessary spending is then $34,000 $10,000 = $24,000. If your hourly wage for non-necessities is really $4.96/hour like the post says, then it would take $24,000/$4.96 per hour = 4,838 hours to earn that $24,000. But you earned the $34,000 with only 2,740 hours, so something is wrong. Max Max is referring to this article from last week, Using Your True Hourly Discretionary Income to Make Smarter Purchases. Youre just looking at the same issue in a different way. Rather than looking at each hour as being subdivided between essential expenses and non-essential expenses, youre doing the same thing with the total hours over a year. In that example, then, 1,741 of the hours you work essentially earn you nothing in terms of spending money, because all of it goes to essentials. So, frugality in essence just means that youre migrating some of the hours you work from your pool of hours spent on essential expenses to the hours you work for spending money. My angle was different. I divided the income from each hour into essential expenses and spending money. The essential expenses gobble up $7.45 of the $12.41 you earn each hour, while your spending money makes up only $4.96 of the $12.41 you earn each hour. So, then, you judge whether an expense is worth it using just the $4.96, since its the only portion you can actually freely spend. In this case, frugality moves a little bit of money from the $7.45 essential expenses per hour pile to the $4.96 spending money per hour pile. Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. Ill attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours. https://www.thesimpledollar.com/questions-about-checking-accounts-nintendo-switch-ipods-tsp-and-more/

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therealestatesparkblog · 6 years

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Investing NOW So You Can Have the Lifestyle You Want LATER? You're Doing it Wrong.

The majority of individuals on BiggerPockets are investing in real estate because they want to create financial freedom. Blog and forum posts often touch on the fact that building out a real estate portfolio will allow you to achieve financial freedom. And I certainly agree with this notion. But what Ive come to realize is that financial freedom isnt what its all about. Few people actively write about building a lifestyle. True, there are many blog posts that touch on lifestyle by roughly saying, I invest in real estate so that I can eventually do these additional things that I love. The focus is on building a real estate portfolio with the lifestyle as a result. And thats the problem. Todays article is going to focus on building a lifestyle with the real estate portfolio or business as the result. What will be notably different in my article is that your desired lifestyle is the objective, not a number of units, not a cash flow per door number, and not even a financial freedom number. I want to turn the formula upside down. Were not investing in real estate and as a result, going to live an awesome lifestyle. Instead, were going to live an awesome lifestyle and as a result, invest in real estate. Lifestyle is SecondaryOr is It? There can be a high price to pay for financial freedom, especially if your means of getting there is investing in real estate or starting a business. Stress is high, money is tight, and your tenant just didnt want to pay rent this month. How many times have you met a business owner or real estate investor whois earning gobs of money yet openly complains about their lifestyle? With further prodding, you learn that these poor souls work insane hours, are always on call, and live in a constant jet stream of stress. But they earn $500k! Surely they are just cynical, as anyone earning that much must be happy. Trust me, as a CPA who interacts with and provides services to plenty of folks earning much more than $500k, money quickly loses its value in regard tohappiness. Money has a diminishing marginal return, meaning that after a certain point, each additional dollar you earn brings less happiness than the dollar before it. Research suggests this peak dollar figure is $70,000 annually. Related: How to Use Lifestyle Design to Create an Ideal Retirement Driven by Passive Income An example of diminishing marginal return: You order 10 cheeseburgers (you freakin love cheeseburgers!), and you eat them all in one sitting. You havent eaten in a while, so the first one is delicious. It truly hits the spot. The second one is also delicious. Its cooked medium rare, nice and juicy, perfectly seasoned. The third one is good, but you are starting to get full so its not as good as the first two. By the tenth cheeseburger, youre so full that the sight of it repulses you. Thats diminishing marginal return in a nutshell. Each cheeseburger is the exact same, but their value steadily reduces as you consume them. Im always curious to hear the backstory of these folks who earn plenty of money yet are seemingly unhappy. Unsurprisingly,the stories are all relatively all the same: I dreamed about living X lifestyle in the future, so I started this business/ invested in real estate to hopefully get there. On the flip side, I also have clients earning a high amount of money who are perfectly happy. They love what they do, and more importantly, they love their day-to-day. When I ask them about their backstory, their stories generally go like this: I had a lifestyle that I wanted to live today, and this business was what complimented that lifestyle. And that, my dear readers, is the key difference between living a life of full of wealth and happiness and one of just monetary wealth. Lifestyle Starts Today I learned this rather quickly in my career so Im quite grateful: Lifestyle starts today, not tomorrow. The key point I want to impress upon you throughout this entire article is that you dont have to wait 15 years to achieve financial freedom and then begin living your desired lifestyle. Instead, I want you to think about the desired lifestyle you want to live right now and figure out what steps you can begin taking to implement said lifestyle immediately. Ive never met someone who wanted to be unhappyyet many people are unhappy. And if you look closely, most of them have a common theme running throughout their life: Their desired future lifestyle dictates how they live today. They are sacrificing their present time for future happiness. Now, Im not suggesting that you drop everything and put forth little work or that you dont think about the future lifestyle youd like to achieve. What I am suggesting is that you begin implementing the lifestyle you want to live today and build everything else around you to supplement that lifestyle. Youre still going to sacrifice plenty. Youre still going to stress and wonder if youre doing the right thing. But the key difference is that we are focusing oncrafting your lifestyle today, rather than setting a target number in our minds and saying, Once I hit that, Ill begin to live the lifestyle of my dreams. Where Do We Start? Frankly, I dont really know. Im a CPA, not a guru trying to sell you my coaching program for $20,000 (I take check or creditjust kidding, of course). What I do know is that crafting a lifestyle that Ill enjoy on a day-to-day basis has been my goal from the get-go. I dont want to wait 20 years to retire and live the lifestyle of my dreams. I want to do that today. So Im going to walk you through my logic ofhow I built assets around me to supplement the lifestyle I wanted to live. Hopefully youll be able to take something away from this and implement it in your own life. The first step is to define the lifestyle you want. After my first few months working for a Big 4 accounting firm, I decided that the corporate lifestyle was not for me. I didnt understand why one must commute to an office for work that could easily be done in the comfort of my own home. I thought the whole dressing up thing just got in the way of providing high quality work. The last time I checked, a suit and tie, while studies suggest makes you more confident, dont improve your intellect nor work product. Worst of all, I didnt understand why people of high integrity and character were required to show up a 9:00 a.m. every day. If the deadlines are met, the quality of work is high, and the client is happy (the most important thing), then why does it matter when someone walks into the office? It seemed the performance measurements were backwards. I disagreed with the values of the corporate lifestyle, how they held individuals accountable, and how they measured performance. So I began to sketch out what my ideal lifestyle looked like. I knew that I wanted the flexibility to work in my pajamas at home. I knew I wanted to be able to work anywhere in the world seamlessly while traveling. And I knew that I wanted my performance to be measured by something other than whether or not I billed 1,800 hours out of the 2,080-hour work year (thats called utilization in the accounting world). I determined the best thing to do was to build assets around me that allows me to accomplish these things. The two asset classes I chose were real estate and a professional services business. But the key for living my lifestyle would be a laser focus on implementing systems that complimented my lifestyle. Building Assets and Focusing on the Systems When people focus on a number to achieve their desired lifestyle, the business systems get put on the back burner. Instead, you should be focusing on the systems you must implement in order to live the lifestyle you want today. As I mentioned, I decided that investing in real estate and running a business would both complement the lifestyle I desired to live. The problem was that real estate typically requires a hands-on approach, and professional services firms usually have offices that clients can walk intoboth of which go against my desired lifestyle of working anywhere in the world. The real estate solution was rather simple to figure out. I knew I needed properties that cash flowed quite well, as I needed all of my expenses to be covered. The cash flow would allow me to buy teammates on the ground and put the asset in auto-pilot mode, allowing me to be 100 percent virtual. I could invest in areas I visited frequently or wanted to travel to once a year, and Id require that my property manager send me a video walkthrough of my units quarterly. Related: How I Saved $20,000 in 2014 and Used it to Invest in Lifestyle Design On the buy side, Id research the citys economics like crazy to make sure the local economy was growing and not subject to undue risk. Id use Google street view to explore neighborhoods. Id place offers sight unseen and only travel to the property post-inspection. Using these desktop methods, Ive picked up two 3-unit properties. These two properties cash flow well and cover most of my monthly living expenses, though I dont actually use the cash flow for my monthly living expenses. The point is, if the going gets tough, I can rely for a short amount of time on these properties. The business solution was a bit tougher. When I hammered out what I wanted my lifestyle to look like, I knew there were very few corporate jobs that would support it. The next step was to start a business, and since I had a CPA, I naturally started a CPA firm. It was tough to figure out how to build a CPA firm that would support my lifestyle. My biggest obstacle was the preconceived notion that clients would want to walk into a CPAs office and shake his/her hand. But I knew the lifestyle I was crafting so I laid out the ground rules for my CPA firm: I will not meet clients face-to-face. Instead, well hold meetings over the phone or video calls. This goes for local clients as much as non-local.My marketing will be content rich. I will develop awesome content that people derive massive value from. A potential client will read my articles and test me out prior to ever scheduling their first consultation.I will develop business systems that will support a virtual practice. Document sharing must only be done in the cloud. I will not accept paper documents.I will hire employees and not require them to be local to me nor come into an office. They will enjoy the same lifestyle I do. This means they have to want to live the lifestyle Im living. I will also need to develop metrics that focus on results, not the amount of time an employee works. With that, I was off to the races. I started making massive strides to get content out there, and I used BiggerPockets as my growth platform. It was tough and took a lot of sacrificing, but two years later, I have a firm that supports my desired lifestyle. Conclusion My point in telling you this is that I didnt say, I want my lifestyle to be X in the future, so I must build a business to reach $Y in annual revenue. At that time, Ill be able to live the lifestyle I want to live. Instead, my method of thinking is, I want to live X lifestyle and Im going to build Y assets and systems that complement the lifestyle I want to live. With my way of thinking, you wont be putting your desired lifestyle off into some distant future point. Instead, youll start thinking of ways you can move toward living your desired lifestyle today. Sure, it takes sacrifice and hard work. It took me two years to get my business to a point where I could actually live the lifestyle I was actively trying to build. But in those two years, I had a laser focus on building a business that complemented the lifestyle I wanted to live. My virtual lifestyle was the objective; the real estate and the business were the results. Many people make the mistake of lettingtheir lifestyle be the result and their investing or their businesses the objective. Dont do that. Focus on building a lifestyle portfolio and business. Youll be much happier in the end. Were republishing this article to help out our newer readers. How are you designing a lifestyle that works for you? Do you agree with the above philosophy? Let me know your thoughts with a comment! https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/crafting-lifestyle-real-estate-business/

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chipsanddespair · 7 years

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Clinton Naik

Argh, Im so angry today.

I dont know where this anger came from, but Ive just been cranky all day. I woke up and I just felt bored, and angry because of it, and so complacent and dissatisfied. My whole life, those who are in my life, my body, my bank account, where I stay…just, e v e r y t h i n g made/makes me unhappy. I want it to be better than it is right now. I just wanted some fun activity to wake up and do this Saturday. I wanted a partner to get up with me and motivate me. I wanted a house to myself to wake up and dawdle around in whilst I still woke up. I dont want a dog but I cant let him go. I do everything I can to make sure he is well taken care of still, but at the expense of my own happiness. He is a handful. He is too active and eats anything for any reason. Hes a bulldog but looks like a pitbull, so people judge him by his breed and I can tell they look at us like we are a part of a gang or something and it really pisses me off. It hadnt even reached midday yet and the downward spiral was beginning. I dont have that much money in the bank thanks to my obsessive need to pay back things and not be in debt. Even though Ive set it aside, as in most of what I earned this payday, I still feel snowed under and I will have to use my credit card and thus in turn, pay that back in the future. Earlier I was shown a bit of attitude from Beau about sending him some money to pay back for the times hed paid on my behalf. I thought I sent enough, I cant be sure because I didnt keep track of all the times and what that added up to in the end. Just know this, I have spent well enough on behalf of him too and havent seen compensation for that - it just set me right off to notice this ungrateful trait. I gave what I had left to him. He is the one that quit his job to pursue his passions and cannot control his impulsive preference for fresh cooked food (i.e. take out). This is a personal rant that probably wont make sense. Im not writing it to make sense to anyone. Im just letting whatever needs to come out, come out. Im still pissed off. I dont feel like this relationship works anymore. I dont want to take care of anyone else except myself, maybe I should re home the dog for my well-being. I try my best with him but its just getting too much. It does not help that we live in a small place unsuitable for dogs and we make do with the space we have but its just, no backyard equals poop stops out on the roadside. Anyone reading this would probably judge me, people tend to do that, and I totally get it. I kind of walk the same line as well sometimes. But argh, I just need to complain, pettiness and all. Because Im feeling better as I do it. I had a long phone call today with my Dad. I hadnt spoken to him in ages and it was nice to catch up. I got mad though, he has a knack for not listening. Or you say something and hell say something different as if he wasnt listening. Or hell retell a story hes told a thousand times. I need to be easier on the people who retell me stuff, I just have a big ego and that ego doesnt want to be seen as stupid. Im still mad, but better. I just want to get out of here, I want to drive a thousand miles in one direction and not have to worry about anyone else or any responsibilities. I caught my reflection in the mirror, I exhaled and relaxed my stomach and it spilled out. I look like Im pregnant and my back hurts because of all this weight. Does anyone ever get caught in that pit of despair where they just cant talk. I dont want to cry for help because Im angry at every single person I think Id meet, but I most definitely need some kind of help, or something, I dont know. Conflict is the worst. I need to hold on to hope, and cut this rage in half. Sit down with it for a bit and let it tell me what it needs to. Im not mad at anyone, I truly am not. Im disappointed, maybe, that people cant read my mind, or they arent empaths so they cant understand what I feel and give me what I need. So in turn, I need myself. This is just a slump. A rough patch on the windy road to happiness. They say happiness is a choice, and okay, I choose to be happy now. I have identified my anger, I have identified my dissatisfaction with my current relationship. I have identified that what I am doing now makes me feel somewhat better. I go back and forth still, angry and okay, angry and okay. An annoying song always played on the radio echoes in my head and it only serves to irk me. Is it wrong of me to want the hurricane to come down here and devastate. If it were only me, I would be all for it. No one else would have to get hurt. Im weird like that. I feel like I have such a mundane life that anything like fire drills, floods, tremors, anything that will rip me out of everyday life, those things will liberate me and I will have something else to live for. My basic needs will be more important than my need to go to work and pay bills and expenses. That I will have to survive and experience the thrill of survival rather than crawl through this oppressive corporate world. When I had a freak out like this, mid-January some time, or February. I remember just collapsing in on myself. I couldnt speak, I couldnt feel anything good. I lay down, I wasnt even sleepy, I cried and cried and every emotion was just desolate and I couldnt get up or eat. Beau was there however he could be, but its never quite what I think I need? I appreciate what he does, in all his limited knowledge, but theres something thats missing, compared to someone who has had years in this world and lived an involved and rich life, does that make sense? I need someone, who knows what its like to suffer and have come to terms with their torment, not someone who has known anxiety all his life and not fully reflected upon it. Its not his fault though. Nothing that happens to me is anyones fault, I must remember that. I choose who is in my life, and because of how I have chosen to go about things, I have no one close to me anymore. They are overseas, and available by message but I cant bear to be askedHow are you? How are things? Because I have so little going on right now and I am just not in a mentally healthy space to hear about all the great things others are doing. Does that make me horrible? If it does, Im quite used to being horrible.

POSITIVE. Got to remain positive. Things that are getting me down is: EVERYTHING. BUT, what can I do to fix it?

I am okay for funds. I need to buy me food for the week but I can try and make that a total cost of $50. In that case, I will only have to repay the credit card $100 and that is doable for when the time comes. I will have to pay for gas soon, $60, $160. That is okay. Im taking Beaus rainy day fund for a ticket he racked up using my car and I will also use that for board and pay it back slowly because Im still mad he even dared call my contributionlittle given our circumstances. I will check out the gym tomorrow, have a look around, and when I have the funds, I shall join asap and proceed to go to group fitness classes after work. By the looks of it, the best classes start from Wednesday through to Sunday. Four days of seven is okay! Monday and Tuesday can be swims or dog walks. I need to get my Fitbit charged so I can monitor my calories burned. That being said, before even going food shopping, I need me a caloric diet plan and I will stick to that like no other. Its funny, my biggest personal growths are always from moments between Beau and I that further separate us. I dont know if thats actually good or not but personally I feel motivated to get myself sorted the more he makes me regret wanting to be associated together. That does actually sound really toxic, well see how we are by the years end. I should do a weight loss progress report after this. I need my weight and measurements, do some calculations for calories and then think about what I like eating and fit that into my caloric diet. What I learnt when I was having fun with this last year was that even though 1700 calories is pretty hard to stay at or under, if you go and burn a few 100 at the gym, youre all sorted! You can eat more, you dont feel like youre starving and you get to ride the wave of endorphins because of the exercise - win win!

I feel like theres something missing.

I could tidy the room a bit. I need to buy more tights - they are usually $6 a pair. I think I could get three. $178.

Oh my gosh. I owe a friend a banner designed on photoshop, and because I take a long time to do things, especially creative things since Im not bursting with ideas, that is low key stressing me out because I dont want to let him down. Oh wow, maybe thats why I have such salty feelings :o

I have to set aside some time to do that tomorrow.

On an consistency achievement note, I have been diligently salt water soaking my piercing that was giving me trouble and it looks like its settling down :)

I already feel better. You know what would make it even better, a nice hot shower. Oh yes, I feel way better. Oh hey, and why not stop there, Im going to make me a perfectly tempered hot cup of tea and tune in to a Netflix movie before I say goodnight to my subscription. I feel like rewarding my eyes and brain with the talents of Heath Ledger and his amazing portrayal of the Joker.

So, tonight:

caloric diet to be made

weight and measurements to be taken

tidy room a bit

shower

watch The Dark Knight after cup of tea is made

Tomorrow:

design banner for friend

scope out gym (maybe sign up if they offer something beneficial for me in my circumstance)

check out this yoga/pilates place near house

laundry! clothes, sheets and blankets

give $200 board to landlord

Next three days:

pay off $150 ticket

cancel Netflix

pay car rego $13

Letting out the bad unfiltered helps to clear way for the good. And planning how to get the good gets your mind thinking of how to be productive.

Thank you, blog <3

#chips #despair

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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From Cokes flower power to Kendall Jenners Pepsi ad how ads co-opt protest

Yesterday, Pepsi pulled its new ad in less than 24 hours. Reality star Kendall Jenner giving a police officer a soft drink to calm a protest was immediately called the worst ad of all time. Can big business ever have a place in social activism?

When Nivea ran a recent Facebook ad with the supremacist-friendly tagline White is purity, it would have been reasonable to assume that, as far as misguided promotional campaigns go, it had cornered the market. Then Kendall Jenner stepped forward and offered a police officer a can of Pepsi.

In the two-and-a-half-minute video ad, which the soft drink corporation has now been forced to pull, the most fashionable member of the Kardashian clan is in the middle of a photoshoot when a passing protest march catches her attention. She rips off her blond wig, smudges her lipstick, casts off her couture and strides out into the crowd, surveying the scene, ascertaining, with the careful eye of a young Angela Davis or Gloria Steinem, what needs to be done to advance the cause. (The cause is not clear, as their banners, in the Pepsi colours, consist of painted love hearts, peace signs and the slogan Join the conversation. Perhaps theyre fighting for the rights of teenage diaries?)

Jenner approaches the line of friendly, pleasant-looking police officers and hands one a can of fizzy pop. A woman in a headscarf photographs her triumph. The cop smiles, and does not pepper-spray, beat, shoot or arrest anyone. The crowd party as if they are in the VIP enclosure at Coachella, safe in the knowledge that they have danced their way to a better world.

Live Bolder, says Pepsi, at the end. Bold is certainly one way of putting it. The backlash was swift, furious and witty. Charles M Blow, a columnist for the New York Times, tweeted that he would boycott Pepsi products until the brand apologised for this blasphemy, comparing the ad with the iconic Black Lives Matter picture, which captured nurse Ieshia Evans being arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in July 2016. Cans and bottles of Pepsi were Photoshopped into key moments of the civil rights movement, and pictures of police brutality were captioned with, Kendall, please! Give him a Pepsi!. If there is one area in which the ad succeeded, it was in its ability to unite people across the political spectrum even Piers Morgan called it stupefyingly diabolical and snowflake claptrap.

Its a unique skill to have #boycottpepsi trending among both the right and the left. It managed to alienate both sides of an increasingly polarised consumer universe, says Nicola Kemp, trends editor at advertising trade magazine Campaign, who points out that the ad was made by an inhouse team at Pepsi, which may be why there is a sense that nobody thought to point out its deficiencies before it aired. Kemp argues that not only was the ad tone-deaf, it also failed to make any political point at all, co-opting the imagery, without taking a stand. You get a lot of people saying were in a state of perpetual outrage, that brands should always be aware that taking a stand can create a backlash, and that its better to stand for something than for nothing. But in effect it did both: it stood for nothing, with these anodyne signs, and it still created a backlash.

What about the idea that all publicity is good publicity? There is a growing conversation within marketing that outrage is a form of social currency, and that social currency equates to sales, Kemp says. But that is an overly simplistic point of view. I do think that, honestly, no brand would set out to create this sort of response.

In 1964, Pepsi first used the slogan the Pepsi Generation, which targeted young people and offered its customers an identity based on their allegiance to Pepsi, rather than its competitor, Coca-Cola. In an attempt to win over young, broke people that might also resonate with millennials, Pepsi highlighted the fact that it was cheaper than Coke. Who is the Pepsi Generation? asked a voiceover on one of its ads. Just about everyone with the young view of things. Livelier, active people with a liking for Pepsi-Cola! This, in turn, inspired perhaps the most famous use of activism in advertising history: Coca-Colas Id like to buy the world a Coke ad from 1971. According to its songwriter, Roger Greenaway, using bohemian-looking, racially diverse young people to sing about togetherness did have a point to make. I think it was the flower-power era, and most of America was tiring of the Vietnam war. The lyric, although not overtly anti-war, delivered a message of peace and camaraderie, he explained in 2015.

Dr John Jewell, of Cardiff University, who teaches on advertising, propaganda and political communication, sees a direct connection between the two rivals back again the other way, directly tracing the new Pepsi ad to Cokes 1971 spot. What Pepsi was doing was seeking to show its social responsibility. Its classic cause-related marketing, because in aligning itself with good causes, it boosts sales and brand loyalty.

Just look at this years Super Bowl ads: from Budweiser to Airbnb to Google, a surprising number of ads pushed a Trump-baiting, pro-diversity message. Meanwhile, outside the world of advertising, huge brands are doing their best to signal their progressive sensibilities. Take, for example, Apple providing rainbow-branded T-shirts for the 8,000 members of its staff who marched at San Franciscos Pride march.

The digital era has had enormous ramifications for the advertising industry, which has been forced to adapt, as first reliable broadband, and then smartphones, meant that consumers were able to switch off from campaigns that they would previously have been unable to avoid.

In the 90s, brands could simply throw enough money at a campaign to interrupt their way into culture, according to Dylan Williams, chief strategic officer at advertising agency Droga5, which works with brands such as Uniqlo, Seat and Danone. Thats no longer the case.

In 1999, the US ad agency StrawberryFrog coined the phrase movement marketing; one of its key points is to avoid trying to convince an audience of something they dont know yet, but to tap into what they already believe. A brand should be seen as sharing, not selling. Williams says that there are companies that have taken this approach and used it in a positive way he talks about Nike moving its marketing money away from huge-name celebrities and instead putting it into community training initiatives and races. This appearance of corporate altruism has become commonplace, as car companies create and promote green initiatives, or beauty brands promote a natural look, or fashion companies stick feminist slogans on their T-shirts.

Jewell suggests that when this goes wrong, as it appears to have done with Pepsi, it can be detrimental to activism. Its an easy way for us to politicise ourselves. Its suggesting that you dont actually have to take part in supporting Black Lives Matter if youre white. All you have to do is buy Pepsi and your support is telegraphed. In a way, when we support things on social media whether its weeping for France or praying for Syria thats an extension of that mentality, that we can show our support through consumerism.

But there is a distinction to be made between a 500 jumper with the words Radical Feminist across the chest and the kind of marketing that involves companies actually getting involved in the causes they say they support. This is largely why we have seen so many companies adopting a caring and sharing identity over the past two decades. Hitching its wagon to the environment, or LGBT rights, or feminism, for example, is a way for a brand to look good, which increases consumer loyalty, which makes the brand more money.

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Kemp says: Brands such as Unilever are making an impressive investment not just in communicating a message of sustainability but in making a tangible impact on the communities they work within and their employees. She adds: Theyre well thought-out, theyre invested in, they partner with NGOs.

In March, to take just one example, LOral announced it would support the C40 Women4Climate initiative, mentoring 500 women in 10 cities who are working towards possible solutions for climate change. This commitment reflects two of LOrals major orientations: gender equality and climate protection, said Alexandra Palt, LOrals chief sustainability officer, at the time. Its just one part of a wider initiative for the brand; its mission statements read more like those of an NGO than a cosmetics company.

Jewell says that ultimately, if a business is making money while also putting that money where its mouth is, then it seems pointless to complain about it. You could argue that it does deflect criticism, but on the other hand, if it does actually save lives or improve the conditions of some people, that has to be a good thing. In many ways, just as technology has forced companies to change the way they persuade people to give them their money, it has also meant they are forced to behave better. What greater visibility these companies now have in the digital era means they have to act more responsibly now, because if they dont, it does affect sales, says Jewell.

That is just one of the many ways in which the Pepsi ad fell down: in its crude and multilayered appropriation of political activism, it acted irresponsibly, while attempting to do so under the banner of a social conscience. It seemed like an attempt to hoodwink its intended audience, and if there is one thing young people are wise to, its any sense that theyre being cheated.

Kalle Lasn, editor of the anti-consumerist publication Adbusters, says: Its the highest order mindfuck Ive ever seen the Donald Trump of commercial advertising.

Williams draws the same comparison. Frankly, its as if Donald Trump created the spot. The dystopian read on where brand communication is going is the awful current reality of a post-truth world, where we lie, we create alternate facts, we try to hoodwink the public with artifice, we sidle up to a couple of celebrities, and we hope that 51% of the population like it. I think it could be the worst ad of all time, and we have made a fair few of those, as an industry.

Still, he says, there has been at least one positive to come out of it for once, everyone has been on the same side, even if just for a moment. For me, the most refreshing thing about today is that everybody hates it, he says.