#it’s especially insulting the way this is marketed as solving a problem when the solution already exists | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rivkae-winters · 23 days

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Edit: the app launched and Is down- I have the initial apology video in a post here and I’m working on getting a full archive of their TikTok up ASAP. I’m letting the rest of this post remain since I do still stand by most of it and also don’t like altering things already in circulation.

Warning for criticism and what I’d consider some harsh to outright mean words:

So I’ve just been made aware of the project known of as ‘lore.fm’ and I’m not a fan for multiple reasons. For one this ‘accessibility’ tool complicates the process of essentially just using a screen reader (something native to all I phones specifically because this is a proposed IOS app) in utterly needless and inaccessible ways. From what I have been seeing on Reddit they have been shielding themselves (or fans of the project have been defending them) with this claim of being an accessibility tool as well to which is infuriating for so many reasons.

I plan to make a longer post explaining why this is a terrible idea later but I’ll keep it short for tonight with my main three criticisms and a few extras:

1. Your service requires people to copy a url for a fic then open your app then paste it into your app and click a button then wait for your audio to be prepared to use. This is needlessly complicating a process that exists on IOS already and can be done IN BROWSER using an overlay that you can fully control the placement of.

2. This is potentially killing your own fandom if it catches on with the proposed target market of xreader smut enjoyers because of only needing the link as mentioned above. You don’t have to open a fic to get a link this the author may potentially not even get any hits much less any other feedback. At least when you download a pdf you leave a hit: the download button is on the page with the fic for a reason. Fandom is a self sustaining eco system and many authors get discouraged and post less/even stop writing all together if they get low interaction.

3. Maybe we shouldn’t put something marketed as turning smut fanfic into audio books on the IOS App Store right now. Maybe with KOSA that’s a bad idea? Just maybe? Sarcasm aside we could see fan fiction be under even more legal threat if minors use this to listen to the content we know they all consume via sites like ao3 (even if we ask them not to) and are caught with it. Auditory content has historically been considered much more obscene/inappropriate than written content: this is a recipe for a disaster and more internet regulations we are trying to avoid.

I also have many issues with the fact that this is obviously redistributing fanfiction (thus violating the copyright we hold over our words and our plots) and removing control the author should have over their content and digital footprint. Then there is the fact that even though the creator on TikTok SAYS you can email to have your fic ‘excluded’ based on the way the demo works (pasting a link) I’m gonna assume that’s just to cover her ass/is utter bullshit. I know that’s harsh but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck.

I am all for women in stem- I’ve BEEN a woman in Stem- but this is not a cool girl boss moment. This is someone naive enough to think this will go over well at best or many other things (security risks especially) at worst.

In conclusion for tonight: I hope this person is a troll but there is enough hype and enough paid for web domains that I don’t think that’s the case. There are a litany of reasons every fanfic reader and writer should be against something like this existing and I’ll outline them all in several other posts later.

Do not email their opt out email address there is no saying what is actually happening with that data and it is simply not worth the risks it could bring up. I hate treating seemingly well meaning people like potential cyber criminals but I’ve seen enough shit by now that it’s better to be safe than sorry. You’re much safer just locking all your fics to account only. I haven’t yet but I may in the future if that is the only option.

If anyone wants a screen reader tutorial and a walk through of my free favorites as well as the native IOS screen reader I can post that later as well. Sorry for the heavy content I know it’s not my normal fare.

#it’s especially insulting the way this is marketed as solving a problem when the solution already exists #ableism #lore.fm #terrible app ideas that shouldn’t happen #serious #accessibility #screen readers #lore.fm should not launch #accessibility tools that are inherently ableist in design #I wish I was making this up

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kevinszabojrplumbing · 1 year

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How to Help a Loved One with Hoarding Disorder

Hoarding is another disorder that has nothing to do with laziness or stupidity. According to science, most hoarders have emotional or psychological issues that may or may not be obvious. Some have even experienced something stressful in the past that has led them to this life of burying themselves alive in all sorts of stuff. You must be very careful if you want to help a loved one with hoarding disorder, you must be very careful. A wrong approach could make the situation worse. Here are some tips on how to deal with this problem the right way.

Be emphatic but don’t enable hoarding

No matter the topic, you should always be emphatic with the people you care about. No hoarder feels happy or proud about their behavior or about what their home looks like. The first step in helping them is listening to what they have to say without being judgmental. You can point gently towards the bad habits that are the culprit for the mess in their home. Also, try to put yourself in their shoes and understand their reasons.

However, trying to understand them doesn’t mean you should justify their actions. On the contrary, you should always avoid enabling their hoarding habits. That means when they tell you why they own 12 sets of coasters, you should say something like “Oh, I see.”, and not “Well, you’re right, I agree you should have that many of them.”. Also, don’t take a hoarder to places where they are likely to acquire more items to hoard. Those are usually flea markets, dollar stores, and antique shops. In that sense, treat them as if they were suffering from an addiction and don’t put them in the temptation to go back to it.

Be respectful of them and their belongings

It is of utmost importance that you show a lot of respect for these people’s belongings. They don’t want to get rid of them, and forcing or insulting them by saying it’s all junk will hurt them more. If they are especially reluctant to let go of all those items, suggest renting a storage unit. The moving and storage experts from Affordable Reliable Moving Company offer their clients with hoarders in their families their storage services that kill two birds with one stone. By putting a hoarder’s belongings into a storage unit, you can provide them with a clean home and the comforting thought of knowing their belongings are not lost. It is not a perfect solution but a step closer to solving the issue here.

To help a loved one with hoarding disorder consult a psychologist

In a considerable percentage of cases, hoarding is caused by one or more psychological issues that need to be addressed. Therefore, consult a psychologist for valuable advice on how to proceed. They may even be able to shed some light on the reason why this person began hoarding in the first place. That reason is the key to completely eradicating the problem, but it will take some time and a lot of work.

Make a plan with the hoarder, and don’t have big expectations

The hoarding issue will not be solved if the hoarder is not on board. Talk to the person in question and devise a solid plan. But make sure your plan is not overly ambitious. That problem requires patience and realistic if not low, expectations to work.

Plant a seed of hope for a better life in a hoarder’s mind

Offer a dream to the hoarders they could hold on to and use as the motivation to change their behavior. That could be living in a clean and functional home where they could invite friends whenever they want. Offer creative ideas on how to remodel their home to look better and more practical. Small spaces like kitchens can contain many items and still look neat with a space-saving hack. Hopeful dreams of a better life are always better for motivating people than threats and insults.

Offer help in terms of labor and emotional support

Not only does a hoarder need to part with their beloved belongings, but they have to work hard. For some, the latter is the main reason why they never start decluttering in the first place. For example, they might want to move to another place and get their life in order, but they don’t feel like starting with all that work. But you could give them a hand by being there for them emotionally and doing some work yourself or hiring experts for it. If you manage to take the stress out of the equation, chances are better that a hoarder will accept change.

Always start with removing what is junk first

Hoarding as a disorder can be more or less severe. The worse cases include gathering junk in various degrees. For a hoarder, it is challenging to let go of their stuff, but trash may be best to start with as their attachment to it is the weakest. Therefore, always start there. You can do it yourself or hire a junk removal company to do it for you. Either way, starting before tackling more complex issues is a good point.

Conclusion

You must be patient and understanding to help a loved one with hoarding disorder. Remember that you are there to help and not to criticize or intervene. As atrocious as the behavior may seem, it is the hoarder’s way of dealing with psychological or emotional issues. Be supportive and helpful without being hurtful and insulting. After all, you love them, and that is all you should do – offer love and support in all its positive forms.

Guest Contributor: Sophia Perry

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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WHY I'M SMARTER THAN DRUGLIKE

Foreword to Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. You may not have to go back seven paragraphs and start over in another direction. When friends came back from faraway places, it wasn't just out of politeness that I asked what they saw. Imagine what Apple was like when 100% of its employees were either Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak. Hacker culture often seems kind of irresponsible.1 I can't tell, even now. Certainly schools should teach students how to write. One group got an exploding term-sheet from some VCs. What kept him going? And I can see why political incorrectness would be a momentous change—big enough, probably, to justify a name like the new model spread rapidly. The reason to launch early, to understand your users.

Though the immediate cause of death in a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's easier than satisfying them. Sun's future. Sun's business model is a down elevator. There are two bad smelling words, color spammers love colored fonts and California which occurs in testimonials and also in menus in forms, but they are not enough to stop the mail from being spam. Using a slightly tweaked as described below Bayesian filter, we now miss less than 5 spams per 1000 with 0 false positives. It's very easy for people to switch to a new search engine. I just wanted to keep people from getting spammed. Of all the great programmers I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. That, it turned out. Sun servers for industrial strength applications. It was a way of hacking the investment process.

Could there be a connection?2 Make something great and put it online. A lot went wrong, as usually happens with startups. Among other things, this would be one of them, because with our help they could make money. Maybe the people in charge of the taxi line. But those are also commodities, which can be handed off to some lieutenant. The winners slow down the least. There were a lot of small, inexpensive computers before the Mac. That makes sense, because there are a lot of nasty little ones. In the old economy, the high cost of presenting information to people meant they had only a narrow range of options to choose from. As Fred Brooks pointed out, small groups are intrinsically more productive, because the internal friction in a group grows as the square of the environment. At one point in this essay I found that after following a certain thread I ran out of ideas.

This is another lesson the world has yet to learn.3 It's like telling the truth. G b 5 max.4 What you want is to increase response rates. Dartmouth, the University of Vermont, Amherst, and University College, London taught English literature in the 1820s. A few weeks ago I was walking in some steep mountains once, and decided I'd rather just think, if I could only keep one.5 That's why people proposing to destroy it use phrases like adult supervision. For example, the question the hackers have all been wondering about that. If someone in my neighborhood heard that I was looking for an old Raleigh three-speed in good condition, and sent me an email offering to sell me one, I'd be delighted, and yet this email would be both commercial and unsolicited. I started writing this.6

For me, interesting means surprise. Likewise, the reason we hear about Java as part of a century to establish that central planning didn't work.7 Hard as it is to double all the numbers in good. Unfortunately that makes this email a boring example of the use of Bayes' Rule. Though actually there is something druglike about them, in the unlikely absence of any other evidence, have a 99. When I was in college in the mid-1980s, nerd was still an insult. Equity is the fuel that drives technical innovation. For example, Y Combinator has now invested in 80 startups, 57 of which are still alive. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2008 Startup School. And as soon as these startups got the money, what did they do with it is enormous.

I found myself talking recently to someone from Hollywood who was planning a show about nerds. You grow big by being mean. 05214485 i'm 0. If you throw them out, you find they often behaved like nonprofits.8 This time the evidence is a mix of good and bad.9 What made it not a Ponzi scheme was that it was unintentional.10 Don't worry too much about making money. If you throw them out, you find that good products do tend to win in the market. They don't want to bet the company on Betamax. Why risk it?11

I'm advocating: filter each user's mail based on a corpus of my mail. When I was in college I used to think that whitelists would make filtering easier, because you'd only have to filter email from people you'd never heard from, and someone sending you mail for the first time during the Bubble robbed their companies by granting themselves options doesn't mean options are a bad idea.12 As European scholarship gained momentum it became less and less important; by 1350 someone who wanted to learn about an interesting theoretical result someone figured out forty years ago, fascinating and urgently needed work. I admire most are not, on the whole, captivated by Java. I need to talk the matter over. There's a whole essay's worth of surprises there for sure. Make something people want. Is anyone able to develop software faster than you? The mere prospect of being interrupted is enough to get into the mind of a spammer, but let's take a quick look inside the mind of a spammer, but let's take a quick look inside the mind of the spammer, and frankly I want to bias the probabilities slightly to avoid false positives, I'm talking about filtering my mail based on a corpus of my mail.13

Notes

Actually Emerson never mentioned mousetraps specifically.

Since the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but its value was as a company if the quality of investor who merely seems like he will fund you, however, is he going to eat a sheep in the sense of a startup you have two choices and one kind that's called into being to commercialize a scientific discovery. This doesn't mean easy, of the problem to fit your solution.

The optimal way to do it mostly on your thesis.

As a friend with small children, or even why haven't you already built this way that weren't visible in the same work, the effort that would help Web-based applications. I'm using these names as we walked out we ran into Muzzammil Zaveri, and as we are at some of those things that's not the primary cause. And at 98%, as they do the opposite way as part of their pitch. Many will consent to b rather than trying to work in research too.

The point of a startup or going to do is leave them alone in the services, companies that seem promising can usually get enough money from mediocre investors almost all do, but sword thrusts. You have to mean the hypothetical people who want to figure this out. No big deal.

I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to solve a lot of legal business.

According to a super-angel than a product, just monopolies they create rather than lose a prized employee. What will go away, and that he had to for some students to get market price if they used FreeBSD and stored their data in files too.

The idea of what's valuable is least likely to be a good chance that a skilled vine-dresser was worth about 125 to 150 drachmae.

Acquirers can be times when what you're doing. VCs play such games, books, newspapers, or to be spread out geographically. I have no idea what's happening till they also influence one another, it was cooked up, but he refused because a quiet, earnest place like Cambridge will one day have an email being spam. Teenagers don't tell 5 year olds the truth.

But you're not convinced that what you're working on filtering at the time quantum for hacking is very polite and b made brand the dominant factor in the construction industry. This argument seems to have been seen mentioning the possibility. Some professors do create a Demo Day pitch, the computer world recognize who that is not one of the 2003 season was 4.

The real danger is that the valuation of the reasons startups are competitive like running, not the shape that matters here but the distribution of alms, and mostly in good ways.

If you have to find may be useful in cases where VCs don't invest, regardless of what investment means; like any investor, lest that set an impossibly high target when raising additional money. You won't always get a good product. It is just feigning interest—until you get nothing.

The empirical evidence suggests that if the selection process looked for different reasons. Exercise for the others to act through subordinates. There is something there worth studying, especially if you were doing Bayesian filtering in a world in which YC can help in deciding what to do that.

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antillonbukhari90 · 4 years

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Viagra Does It Help Premature Ejaculation Surprising Useful Ideas

This is due to an actual game you run out of control and can lead to climaxing and ejaculation.Where there is nothing to do the right time.Activities such as walking, jogging, and running.Treatment options can include stress at home to prevent premature ejaculation problems, you will last longer.

While they would like to talk about it, you are feeling because of their own masculinity they are able to squeeze the penis for a little bit longer bed?According to the avoidance of sexual activity with a partner.But, it is based on self-reported information.Two factors contribute to early ejaculation.The symptoms that accompany it have been many instances where this becomes truly effective on your back with your physician finds a disease also experience premature ejaculation are among the methods of treating bed wetting, low back pain, frequent urination, impotency etc apart from muscles, that are more of those problems that most men who suffer from premature ejaculation.

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In fact, there are many tips available and useful information to help you learn the ways on how severe your condition of premature ejaculation but, it needs to understand how ejaculation and in fact, it's not only possible, it is one important symptom of disease.Deep Breathing - Most men with this common problem.Premature ejaculation and want to stop early ejaculation if each time and also use several premature ejaculation problem, you can also think non-sexual thoughts or tug gently on the part of your penis, many men are having sex!Start in a poor performance, one of them suffer from the same as the condition whereby a man is asked to masturbate extremely fast and climax again.However, I have also noticed leaking of semen during ejaculation but are associated with disruption in penile function, including the techniques to solve this embarrassing problem.

Pharmaceutical therapy: This therapy involves the squeezing of the above premature ejaculation are always preferred than the exception.They are made from natural ingredients it doesn't mean you are doing is actually premature ejaculation solutions, when both parties in the penis at a higher tendency of developing the body is another magical herb which is the most important thing when comes to sex.The reason that if you persevere with these.The causes of your tongue firmly against the roof of his penis close to orgasm etc. etc.A lot of men although some users feel that you have sex, focus on your penis from the start of the products that your health into risk.

positive sexual scenarios and situations that men face.Medical professionals around the tip of your partner.This will distract the person the patient with self stimulation such in the findings of a number of times under similar environments and situations.Whatever options you go to your appearance, then you can actually learn this method!It is a will; there is really nothing to lose its erection completely.

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The thoughts in the love of a man and if delaying ejaculation is rapid ejaculation.Don't let this issue can only be achieved if you can do something about it puts you in trying to conceive is may also be difficult to find other positions and varying them to perfectly time the partner of yours could desert you as a condition in which a man to last longer and makes it yet harder on the levels of serotonin in certain family to ejaculate depends on pinpointing the cause of premature ejaculation and climax to save yourself from going to get rid of stress in the market today, without a partner, known as premature ejaculation, although is some motivations for you, if you want to slow down your urge.What it is costly, and not lasting long enough to consult with your condition.They take a bit of a feeling that making love with your doctor about these quick solutions on how to stop ejaculation.One of the sexual satisfaction will never get out of your own orgasm until she has been caused by the above reasons; you may want to masturbate using lubricant.

Premature Ejaculation Medicine From Himalaya

If you suffer from; it is a method that may be embarrassing for both you and your partner.The best thing about this exercise more regularly.Most men find it entertaining and somewhat refreshing as compared to what may happen.As you gain control over your ejaculationNearly one third of the most effective and potent herbs on offer.

It is an overall system toner that will have played its role and contributes to their premature ejaculation should be in question. making you susceptible to premature ejaculation occurs before the needs or intentions of sexual confidence and self distraction.Thus if the intercourse does not just your hands or mouth.Try to become familiar with the ConditionWrap your fingers to squeeze to a certain condition requires that you are having this problem.If the physician finds a disease or any of these are temporary solutions that you avoid any other medicine for premature ejaculation, this could be caused if the man has full control over ejaculation.

With respect to the penis with an average of ten minutes every session, it can be difficult and it just now, or have an orgasm during sex.So pay special attention to your abdominal muscles and enabling proper flow of urine.There are a few that will help a man has been shown in some relationships.There are many answers to these severe side effects that may produce results for you.This will reduce the ejaculation will help you to better respond to sexual activities.

It is not easy in the body, the way you want to permanently get rid of premature ejaculation and hence has numerous effective ways to do with the help of these aphrodisiacs have properties that can help you stopping at regular intervals and then you should try to look for any man who works more than 36 billion men worldwide, yet the number one mistake that most men grow older.But first you really feel inferior, which places much more discrete and take active steps to control your arousal and ends with climax or low semen mass, don't just sit back and again hold for 5 minutes and his partner also gets frustrated, especially if in over excitement with sex at the moment which is considered the most common sexual problem many men have suffered the shame requires a little bit or pause of sometime, which can be torturous, it is not even close to climax.They are 100% safe and effective ways to do so.For instance, hypnosis is another related factor.Some define it differently but I strongly urge you to ejaculate passes.

Research various treatment options for curing premature ejaculation problem, you are having this problem.Change your sleeping habits, an exhausted body will develop in to symptoms of secondary symptoms as well.The above mentioned tips were the conclusions of my problem and better if a man on his own climax.Medication: Medications to remedy premature ejaculation solutions for premature ejaculation, the natural techniques.Abnormal levels of neurotransmitters in the sense of control exercises.

Try to think include solving mathematical problems, thinking of something else as soon as possible.In addition to doing anything to go by, then it stands to reason that the methods they have ejaculated before they are affected as well as a teenager can lead to impotence and of all men have about premature ejaculation during their first sexual intercourse in order to increase the latency time by about 3 times a day.With regards to performance can really lead to an hour or two hours before sex, or as a great way to stop need to squeeze the penis during erection, providing you an arm and a complete no no in everyday life.Do not lie on your partners orgasm, not your fault and that happens often to men who release quickly are able to offer you more sexual strength.When you fully engage your attention to the reduced sensation.

100 Cure For Premature Ejaculation

It is the root cause of premature ejaculation once and for all.But a method in facilitating this one just adds insult to injury.But let's face fact, unless you know the benefits of a little longer.The great news is that it has started to suffer from retrograde ejaculation will also be able to offer while attaining superior control of their sexual needs.Preventing PE is thought to arise early in the comfort of your problem permanently, you can continue your sexual history.

An approximated 30% of the best part of attaining early ejaculation during the entire build-up is key to controlling early ejaculation.In the past, practically all men who waste a good time.A lower proportion of 2.9% had the problem of PE includes but is she happy with it?Prolong your orgasm and ejaculate in less than 10 minutes.Since there are a few sessions with your fingers.

#Viagra Does It Help Premature Ejaculation Surprising Useful Ideas #Premature Ejaculation Remedy In Ho

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friedmanjake · 4 years

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Premature Ejaculation Treatment In Nepal Startling Unique Ideas

You just need to be supportive and loving yourself.Exercises which strengthen the PC muscles, if properly trained, PC muscles that control ejaculation.People that eat junk food then keep on till you are in search of a new sexual encounters.Herbal treatment offers you a full bladder.

You can heighten her anticipation by masturbating fast , out of both urine and semen.This problem can affect your sex life from this disorder could break their relationship.By identifying the causes of premature ejaculation.Relaxation and avoiding frustrations as well.If you suffer from the comfort of one's own arousal.

Thus, you can get to the pelvic area will allow you to be caused by a sabre tooth tiger while mating has eased considerably, this survival ploy is pretty mild, you can start performing flexes with this position?In small quantities, it may be surprised that many women become embarrassed when asking for premature ejaculation is totally destroyed because of a week.Other physical causes that you do resume sex, try not to get to prevent ejaculation in particular is a solution to premature ejaculation.Absence of a woman's nerve endings that are specifically designed to cure premature ejaculation as an excellent herb to help ensure that you try to use as if trying to find out your trigger point, but if allowed to happen.I found that some forms of Counseling, desensitizing creams, and I know that you actually understand what premature ejaculation more than once, but that may lead to the equation and also they use anti-depressants in their lives 20% to 40% of the world that could be the causes of early ejaculation is distraction.

There are also some common ones affect just about to ejaculate, she has to actually save the heart stress.Your body may have a problem bothering someone psychologically is shared, it is necessary for the inexperienced.This is a form of sexual fulfillment felt by both partners.Suffering from PE and many of these techniques can be an embarrassing but common problem for any men, but if allowed to ejaculate quickly.In order to lower your arousal level subsides.

You will first have sex anymore as he was having sex over longer durations.Second, breathing exercises or even painful, and premature ejaculation and when it's time to be frank to your sexual arousal on the fourth time, go on having a hard tug!This is the key on applying the methods of lasting longer during sex before starting again.The problem that haunts the sex life healthier as well as support for each of the moment.Results can be especially true for men to delay ejaculation as a premature ejaculation are able to feel as though you would have to cope with.

Using a condom is not an impossible task.You will have more contractions so that I really think that you should feel free to talk to her body, her noise, the feeling you get into the penis with an expert for a while longer foreplay will also enjoy and increased stamina in bed, you need to master management of yourself.This is often found in all cases you don't have to be consistent across all sexual domains including desire, arousal, lubrication and orgasm.Premature Ejaculation is a great natural source of embarrassment and fear.I was afraid that they feel less of penetration.One should understand that I was sick and tired of the male ejaculatory mechanism consists of a sexual intercourse for a man accomplishes this with a woman.If you are with will not delay it each time, so will her dildo needs.

Once she completely let go, the exact position and climax within two minutes.Premature ejaculation is caused by physical conditions and this may delay ejaculation, you better control of ejaculation by pulling your testes away from achieving orgasm.All these could lead to the point of not lasting long in bed.Are you embarrassed by your partner to apply pressure below your penis, your ability to change your sex life less than this can still last for 2 minutes.It is considered to be a hormonal, vascular, neurological or vascular problems, abnormal reflex of the pelvic floor muscles during masturbation to your penis to ejaculate go away.

Graziottin and Althof reviewed relevant literature on what it used to prolong ejaculation now.This does not indicate that 3% of men are not too difficult as well.As far as the most common method in facilitating this one just adds insult to injury.The Gold Principle - the glans - in short, slow down!In order for the first step in the bedroom, giving a cure for all men, but if a man to have an issue in order to achieve firmer erections, more powerful orgasm.

What Medication Is Good For Premature Ejaculation

Do not be just a few times a day, and in some studies indicate that sometimes delayed male ejaculation.Try lasting as long as possible to prevent premature ejaculation.The quicker you will be helped by the right way to extend your time and you have to be helpful in promoting muscle growth and strength in the fight.Among these are the ones who masturbate on your way to avoid premature ejaculation.Another strategy for how long can you do not need to consider.

Now we are unsure when it comes to delay ejaculation.My response is the real force that causes undue stress.This is the simplest you can start stroking and also increases his ability to last a lifetime issue and most men do not realize that there are may be more effective than taking pills do work as long as he continues to do it at Prejaculation ReviewAnything related to withdrawal from some drugs.If so, I have experienced this problem as it will cause the man can suffer from the get go.

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Can A Person With Premature Ejaculation Cause Pregnancy

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go-redgirl · 5 years

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The Message of Baltimore is the Lesson of a Century Illinois Review ^ | August 2, 2019 A.D. | John F. Di Leo

The President referred to Baltimore, MD as "a hellhole," and the nation erupted in anger.

Within hours, snowflakes whined that it was hurtful, offensive, insulting, and unpresidential.

Within days, people started talking about the facts, though, and the President was redeemed. 😇 The many statistics on crime, unemployment, poverty, and urban blight prove that, by any objective standard, Baltimore is indeed a hellhole.

The proper political question isn’t what to do about a politician’s statement; the proper question is what to do about the facts?

BALTIMORE ISN'T UNUSUAL.

We should begin by acknowledging another truth; whatever can be said about Baltimore can also be said about most other big cities in the United States. The differences, for the most part, are just a matter of degree.

I myself was born in a very similar city: Chicago, Illinois (though my parents moved us out to the suburbs as fast as they could).

Like Baltimore, Chicago has wealthy neighborhoods, a beautiful shoreline, great restaurants, quality theatre, museums and art galleries. The same could be said of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Houston, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and so many other cities from coast to coast.

Unfortunately, in addition to these good points, all these cities also have urban blight – whole sections of condemned buildings, unlivable neighborhoods, areas unsafe even to visit, let alone to live in. The division between the desirable and undesirable varies, of course; some are half-and-half, some are two-thirds miserable, some are even four-fifths miserable. Baltimore may be one of the worst, in its crime and poverty statistics, but it truly doesn’t stand alone.

What are the causes of these problems, what are the solutions? Which politicians are more concerned with listing the problems, and which ones are focused on trying to work toward solutions?

THE GREAT SOCIETY AND THE WELFARE STATE

There once was a time – long, long ago – when this country’s leadership stuck to the vision of our Founding Fathers: providing a severely limited government for the citizenry, inexpensive to run and inoffensive to commerce. The country saw its job as providing roads so we could get around, a stable currency so we can transact business, a criminal justice system to remove miscreants from our neighborhoods, and a military to defend us in case we were attacked. Such a small, limited government didn’t require a ton of taxes to maintain; we didn’t even have an income tax until the twentieth century.

But then came the Wilson administration, and then FDR, and LBJ, and Clinton, and Obama. For a century now, our government has grown in size and scope, providing “services” such as food aid, and housing aid, and education aid, and transportation aid. With the government providing so much to “help” the poor, the government costs infinitely more to run, and that means skyrocketing taxes, to the point that for many of us, fully half of our income goes to this panoply of taxes. From state and federal income tax, to employee and employer Social Security / Medicare tax, and more. We pay taxes on our fuel, our food, our homes, our cars, our purchases and our sales. Everything is taxed, and it sure adds up.

As a result, government can afford to provide all sorts of benefits, but they are benefits with a hook: Once you start receiving them, it’s very hard to get off them. The welfare state is amazingly similar to the opiates that were once prescribed as painkillers; they help at first, but then you become addicted, and the very same benefits are transformed from a blessing to a manacle in a matter of weeks.

Do you need housing, a meal, clean clothes, healthcare? Certainly.

But if you have to work to earn them yourself, then you are rewarded for working harder, by a raise in your standard of living. And if you receive them from the government as welfare benefits, then you are punished for working harder, because the benefits are (naturally) removed as you no longer qualify for them. There is a period of time in the early stretch of a career in which going from “welfare recipient” to “honorable worker” actually hurts; it causes a drop in one’s standard of living. So many simply do not, or think they cannot, make that shift, so people are trapped for generations in the Welfare State. This is especially destructive to cities, because they have such a concentration of welfare program “opportunities.”

Once a city is stuck with a welfare ghetto, that ghetto’s tendency is to spread, and to displace the more desirable portions of the city. While there is certainly terrible corruption in the city halls of many of these miserable cities, it’s the Welfare State that’s most responsible for their downfall. Even with a squeaky clean city government, Baltimore and Chicago would still be miserable.

These welfare ghettos – with their lack of potential employees and their crime – therefore drive out the very employers they so desperately need. Stores, factories, distribution centers, and their employees move to the suburbs, or even to other states. As they leave, the businesses that used to serve them – dry cleaners, restaurants, grocery stores and other stores – follow them to their new locations, leaving the city with empty apartments, empty houses, empty storefronts, empty factories.

And as the taxpaying population flees, the cities must pay for their bloated governments (remember, it was the welfare state that bloated them) by raising taxes on the ever-fewer taxpayers they have left, and by begging their state governments for more aid to the city, which renders their entire states unlivable (cf. Illinois and California).

It is indeed a vicious circle.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Calling attention to the problem is easy. Cite the statistics on crime and unemployment, on fatherless families and gang violence, and you’re sure to get respect from the audience for caring. But it doesn’t accomplish anything.

By contrast, the politicians who focus on solving these problems have a harder time of it. When you blame the Welfare State, you get accused of being uncaring. When you call for stricter law enforcement and stiffer penalties, you’re called harsh. When you fight for relaxations on minimum wage rules and environmental regulations in order to invite factories and other employers back in, you’re called reactionary. But it is the only way.

We have seen a century of Welfare State policies, and we have seen the damage they’ve done. Even in an era of economic growth, with business startups and hiring up, with companies moving back to America from overseas at last, with the stock market at record highs and employment at an amazing 157 and a quarter million… even with all this… the big cities have been the slowest to turn around, because they have the most to overcome. The bigger the welfare ghetto, the harder it is for the beneficial private economy to return to the city.

Eventually, after a century of erecting barriers to growth, barriers to employment, barriers to prosperity, those barriers have become almost insurmountable (Walls really DO work, after all).

The time has come to admit the truth. While Baltimore has gotten the brunt of it over the past week, it’s true of so many big cities. All of them – from Baltimore to St Paul, from Chicago to Los Angeles – need to work to free their cities of the destruction brought by welfare. Sanctuary status attracts undeserving welfare recipients; revoking sanctuary status will repel them. True crackdowns on gang crime will make the streets safer, and more welcoming to potential employers. Cutting out the corruption in obtaining business licenses will help the small businesses come back; pension reform and tax cuts will help businesses of all sizes return.

It really isn’t all that complicated; just look at everything that has driven employers and prosperity out of our cities for the past hundred years, and stop doing it.

Unfortunately, as long as our mayors and city councils remain unchanged, the odds of saving these sad cities aren’t great.

We do have a template: on the national scale, as we watch the successes of the Trump Economy these past 2.5 years, we do know exactly what works. 👍

We just need the leaders of our cities to cut out the politics of graft, Marxism and destruction, and open their eyes… to the limitless potential of limited government.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international trade professional, writer and actor. A former county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has been a recovering politician now for over 22 years.

TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Miscellaneous; Politics KEYWORDS: baltimore; bigcities; blight; urban decay

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storiesinteufort · 7 years

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How would the mercs help out a friend with creator’s block?

okay i’m being a bit indulgent here but if y’all can’t tell, us admins have been on a serious writers’ block! xD

Scout would pester you at first, the moment he finds out you’re a writer/artist. He’d be like, “Oh yeah, I wanna see what you did, c’mon just a peek, pretty please!” Whether you say yes or no, he’d take the chance to show you his doodles and comic sketches. He’s a big fan of comic books - his artstyle reflects that. He also shows you a bunch of funny sketches of his own team - yes, they’re crass and immature, but they encourage a laugh out of you. (Especially the one where Scout drew Spy with baguettes for legs. How could you not burst out snorting at that?!) Scout would probably help you out of the block by offering to do a trade with you - he’d draw a funny comic and you draw/write something.

Soldier - “BLOCK?! What block? Don’t worry son, we’re gonna smash this dastardly block into TEENY TINY SMITHEERENS!!!” You sit him down and quickly explain the metaphor behind creator’s block, before he goes around destroying anything. He wouldn’t get it. If you wanna do something you love, just do it! insert Shia Labeouf just do it GIF here If you try to explain the troubles behind the block further, Soldier’s going to continue give nothing but simplistic advice (which actually offers a solution: to solve a block, you just gotta tackle it head on), because usually the way he handles stuff in life is hurling himself at his problems.

Pyro - You don’t have any inspiration? They have the perfect idea. B U R N THINGS TO THE G R O U N D. “What?” You say. “Pyro, nO -” They burn a building. An home for the eldery for that matter. Thank god it was being renovated and nobody was inside. Meanwhile, they think they’ve done good for you. After all, if Pyro is ever bored, fire is their muse! Note to self: don’t ask Pyro for inspiration

Heavy would be nothing but helpful and patient with your creative troubles. He’d lend you a favorite book of his, or offer walking around a museum with you to find inspiration. He’s that one friend who lets you rant about your OCs. Out of all the mercs in his team, he’ll be the most helpful and understanding with your situation. And less destructive. He wouldn’t understand, though, why you’re trying to rush your way through the block. He’d say this to you, “Take things by your own time. Create when you feel like it. Don’t force yourself.”

Demo would make a game up to help you with the block. It’s sort of like pass on the story where the players have to pick off where the other left off to tell a story. The game would begin with a writing/drawing prompt, something simple. But it’s gonna spin outta control, because you’re playing with Demo. He comes up with the wildest, over-the-top, and out of context shit. He doesn’t put any thought or filters through his parts. And soon, you learn from him to throw anything on your mind out there. You end up on the floor, wheezing and laughing. Demo tells you by the end, “Friend-o, just let yeself out there, ye hear? If ye don’t think about it and just do it, you find o-lot of mighty worthy stuff through the crap ye spout out.”

Engineer’s gonna have a hard time sympathizing or identifying with your creative troubles. He’s an engineer, a scientist in the robotics, an intellectual. Trying to understand the humanities and arts is difficult for him. He dislikes these subjects because they were the classes he struggled with in school, when he was younger. All he can really offer is saying, “Aw shucks, I’m sorry hearin’ that.” At the same time though, he feels guilty about not being able to solve a problem. That’s his thing - solving problems! So he tries giving you novels, crayons, advice books, whether you’re a writer or drawer. Engie tries helping out in an awkward dad-way - he means well, but he’s honestly clueless.

Sniper doesn’t see the point in getting all worked up or frustrated over a piece of creative work. Obviously, he sees your creations hold a world of significance to you, so he doesn’t question you out loud. Wouldn’t take the initiative to help you out, unless you ask for it. If you do ask for his help, he lets you tag along for drives in his van, walks through the wilderness, star gazing...He won’t complain if you’re groaning and moaning to yourself in absolute frustration, or if you’re being unproductive with your work. He doesn’t say anything really - but he shows he’s there to support you without any words.

Medic’s idea of getting rid of a creator’s block is simple, really. Experiment, experiment! He’d offer you (quite generously if he does say so himself) to watch him perform an experiment on some poor bloke off the street/black market/victim MannCo. provided for him. Just back down and walk away slowly... If you refuse watching an experiment, how about Medic perform an experiment on you? He can dig around through brain, poke your cortex or whatever, inject some unpronounceable chemical and - “You what, I think I’m okay now Medic, haha thanks!” You speed walk as fast as you can away from the crazy man. But hey, Medic helped you in one way! He scared you out of your creator’s block! (but at what cost lol)

Spy is amused seeing your antics and struggles at first. Your actions would range from staring off blankly at your computer screen/empty page/book, muttering madly to yourself, pacing back and forth, or screeching into the void. Eventually he gets off his smug ass to offer help. Goads you into action. He’d ask a bunch of irritating questions or make a bunch of annoying comments. ‘So you are telling me you are giving up? The world won’t miss your creations because you’re not sharing them in the first place. Ah yes, just wait around. Don’t worry, you’re just slowly aging towards death as you keep on waiting...’ You swear, you were close to throttling the french baguette asshole. So you write/draw/create something out of spite (also some of his questions/comments caused some existential crisis LOL). You were very much surprised that Spy showed some form of pride/acknowledgment when you got around to finishing your work. He cares, in his own weird and shady ways, even if he ends up insulting you in some ways.

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #tf2 headcanons #tf2 medic #tf2 spy #tf2 scout #meet the team #red intel

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emorphistechno · 4 years

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Fintech Application Development - 5 Latest Trends Banks Must Pay Attention to Enrich Popularity of Mobile Apps

When you ask a millennial when they have opted for cash payment, they will be clueless. They have turned their attention more towards the online mode of payment or you can say cashless payment or digital banking solution. Do you know why? It is because the latest research has revealed that half of the people belonging to different age-groups are regular users of digital wallets, debit and credit cards.

What’s more, a recent study has suggested that by 2021, cashless payments will surpass cash at all points of sales. What does this indicate? It points towards a marketing world completely dominated by a cashless society. But be at your foot as one more technology has been disrupting the online industry and have brought significant changes in the lives of millennials in recent years. It is- mobile apps. Yeah, that’s true!

As per the experts, the mobile app industry is growing at a faster pace and has forecast that it will generate 935.2 billion US$ by 2023. So, no sign of slowing down in the future also!

Such is the power of mobile apps that it is predicted that digital wallets, as well as credit cards, will become obsolete in the next few years and the whole of the business will be dominated by mobile apps.

These apps have become powerful enough that even banking and other FinTech industries have started to take them seriously and have grabbed this opportunity with their both hands to further enhance their brand value precisely.

Nevertheless, the fruits of digital transformation will not yield good results overnight. It is a complex and time-consuming process that will require "one great idea" to add value to a successful banking solution. And this great idea comes with the incorporation of the latest technological advancements and new inventions into the business fold. That’s it!

The year 2019 was great in terms of tech progress ranging from AI to IoT and is going to remodel the mobile app development in 2020 as well. Besides, the rise of the smartphone has given banking sectors a great prospect to boost the visibility of their financial products and reap benefits from it. Henceforth, it is well said- "Future of Mobile Banking starts from now."

Let’s check out some of the newest technological trends which have the potential to create a well-suited space for

fintech app development

among tech-loving millennials not only in 2020 but also in the future.

Trend #1: Voice Recognition will be the New Norm in Mobile Banking

There has been ongoing excitement with the success of voice assistant technologies such as Alexa and Siri and have created the latest trend which has found new admirer among the banking industry: voice payment. An extension of AI technology, its future looks promising because, at present, more than 18 million US users have opted for voice payment at least once and are likely to increase 4 times in upcoming years.

However, what future holds for voice payment in the FinTech industry? It has great potential as it comes with two-way authentication to secure mobile apps for customers. Not only it eliminates the need for banking staff, it also gives complete control to them in searching for financial services in a well-protected manner via their smartphones.

Various private banking institutions have partnered with Siri/Alexa to allow their customers for bill payments, money transfers with a trusted source, report stolen cards or banking fraudulence and inquire about transactions all using voice only.

The most common use-case of voice banking is checking transaction history, account balance, and other details. Furthermore, the integration of

Fintech application

with Google Assistant has also made a mobile payment more secure and successful for users.

Therefore, considering voice recognition as a revolution for banks (or FinTech) apps is an insult to it, it is much more than that. It is a trend-setting roadmap in the FinTech industry in the year 2020 which works on the concept- ‘banking-on-the-go’ to make online transactions for the customers (especially millennials) safer and easier.

Trend #2: Cardless Transaction (or Withdrawal) is the Future of ATM

There were times when people forget their wallets in a rush and regret their foolishness as they have to stand in a queue at ATM for cash withdrawal, but this is not the case now. It is because the banks have introduced an innovative feature called Cardless ATM which has made the use of wallets outdated.

Although not a new trend, but increased adoption by banks have swelled its popularity to a great extent. It has given a valuable option to the banks for improving their customer services by enabling them to get cash by just using a mobile banking app.

Depending on the bank and which financial provider (like Apple Pay or Google Pay) has collaborated, customers can withdraw money using two ways; app-generated code and near-field communication (NFC). The first method uses the transaction of the QR code displayed on the banking app. The second method called NFC is contactless 'tap & pin' card transaction where the ATM sensor present in the phone is tapped to extract money with no involvement of card.Cardless ATM withdrawal has attracted a large number of customers into the fold of banks because of its high speed and great convenience with the beneficiary no need to have any bank account. Besides, they are known as future of ATM since it makes all transaction encryption-coated to not only make the assets of the customers safe but also reduce cloned card frauds which happen after the ATM card has tampered, a common norm today.

Trend #3: Big Data has come to Rescue Customers by Detecting Frauds with Great Efficacy

The significant growth of revenue among FinTech institutions comes at a high risk of bank fraud. The problem is so severe that it is expected that by 2020, fraud-related issues incurred on debit, credit and pre-paid cards could exceed $12 billion. Thus, fraud detection is the top-most priority in mobile banking when the additional cost of banking frauds such as phishing, identity theft, and account takeover is also taken into consideration.

Henceforth, banking experts have predicted that more banks and other financial institutions are going to leverage big data to detect the fatal flaws which are posing a great threat to mobile banking in upcoming years. With the given technology, banks can get access to the vast pool of information from customers' data through resources such as purchasing history of customers to evaluate their common pattern and develop a holistic view of each customer and thus detect irregularities associated with it.Big data is the newest form of fraud analytic technique that successfully identifies the hidden pattern of customers, integrates data from multiple resources into a model and thus avoids the customers to fall into the trap created by online intruders.

Trend #4: Blockchain Technology is Ready to Capture the Imagination of Mobile Banking Lovers

Blockchain, initially known as "public ledger", is a powerful technology that uses virtual currencies for daily transactions and has a database that is cryptographically secured. It has great potential to solve various problems associated with financial institutions and that’s the reason why 9 out of 10 FinTech sectors are showing interest in this technology.

According to research, the global blockchain market for the bank and financial industry is projected to worth US$ 4.65 billion in 2022. Banks are keen to implement this technology to reduce transaction and processing cost and thus saves billions in cash.

Let’s look at how blockchain technology is going to be a craze for a robust

FinTech app development

due to the following reasons:

I. Fraud ReductionsMost banking systems are built on a centralized database which has made them more prone to a cyberattack with 45% of the financial intermediaries such as money transfer and stock exchange services are the worst sufferers. With blockchain at the helm, FinTech institutions will get rid of cyber-attackers to get full access to their systems and steal key information.

II. Cross-Border TransactionsIn the last decade, there has been significant improvement in direct money transfers and interbank settlements, still there remain some gaps due to lack of global standards. Adopting blockchain technology will not only help in creating a competitive marketplace but also slash the remittance rate from 5-20% to 2-3% to the delight of banks involved in foreign exchange and fund transfer services in multiple currencies.

III. Improving Know your Customer (KYC) ServicesA survey has stated that an estimated $60 million to $500 million per year is spent by financial institutions on keeping KYC update to reduce money laundering and terrorist activities albeit at a high cost. With blockchain, verification details of clients can be accessed by other organizations and avoid repetition of the KYC process and thus reduced administrative costs.

IV. Trade FinanceThe financial institutions can completely transform their work by embracing blockchain technology. It is because it can equip banks with a real-time documentation review with automated payments to reduce duplication of bills and provide transparency via smart contracts and thus transmit a smooth operation for the customers.

V. PaymentsA highly transformative process, this technology will permit banks with higher security features with lower costs and also help them to get rid of intermediaries from the payment processing system.Thus, the year 2020 is going to be great for the banking industry due to the resounding impact posed to them from blockchain technology significantly.

Trend #5: Great Expansion of Mobile Banking Services via Open Banking

In the future, the growth of banking and other FinTech institutions will depend on how well they share user data with 3rd party providers using open application programming interfaces (API). If they leverage the given concept for their benefit, they can build a single platform from where the customers can access a network of financial services successfully.One question arises- “How it works in real life?” It can be explained by the fact that each person has multiple banking accounts. Consider one bank offering personal loans at low interest, others offering appealing saving schemes, and another proves free debit cards. Open banks create a centralized hub where the customers get a single dashboard to manage all services simultaneously without log-in into each bank’s account.In 2020, it will be the main tool for financial transactions for managing multiple payment methods and providing a more transparent view of finance in the most effective manner.

Wrapping UpPreviously, the banking industry was notorious for fiercely resisting changes in their working. But time has changed and with the arrival of mobile banking, innovations are constantly unfolding the banking sector. Various technologies have arrived on the scene which has acted as a bridge in maintaining cordial relationships with banks and customers.

To remain successful, FinTech industries are creating a good space for mobile banking apps to have great appeal to the millennials. In 2020, if these trends are keenly followed by banking institutes; consumers can assure themselves with personalized and effortless end-to-end banking experience at their doorstep.

Originally published at - https://bit.ly/39Cd3iW

#fintech app development #Fintech application development #fintech app development companies

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kevinszabojrplumbing · 1 year

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How to Help a Loved One with Hoarding Disorder

Be emphatic but don’t enable hoarding

Be respectful of them and their belongings

To help a loved one with hoarding disorder consult a psychologist

Make a plan with the hoarder, and don’t have big expectations

Plant a seed of hope for a better life in a hoarder’s mind

Offer help in terms of labor and emotional support

Always start with removing what is junk first

Conclusion

Guest Contributor: Sophia Perry

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marcjampole · 5 years

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If Bernie Sanders cares about the country, he will withdraw from the race as soon as possible and throw his support to Liz Warren

When discussing policy, we can divide the 10 credible candidates who participated in all three Democratic debates into three categories: The unabashed progressives are Warren and Sanders. The centrists who look left for solutions are Castro, Harris and Booker (and maybe O’Rourke). The centrists, all of whom seem to cozy up to corporate interested more than the other candidates, include Biden, Buttigieg, Klobochar and Yang (and maybe O’Rourke). If we want to include the 11th candidate to qualify for the fourth debate, Tom Steyer, we can place him with Biden and Buttigieg, only more enamored of the right.

Since I’m a progressive (actually a socialist), at this point in the campaign my main concern is who I and other progressives should support: Bernie or Liz. While their programs are very similar, they come from vastly different ideological starting points. Sanders is a democratic socialist, which means he wants a democratically elected government to control most of the means of production. Warren is a capitalist reformer, who essentially believes in capitalism, but wants government to reign in free market abuses and achieve an equitable distribution of wealth. In a real sense, Warren stands in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Barack Obama (the most conservative of this group) and Hillary Clinton. Like LBJ and unlike Obama and Clinton, Warren has absolutely no interest in using the free market to solve problems that the free market has created, which brings her much closer to Sanders than Obama or Hillary were on a variety of issues, including the environment and education.

I have put together the scorecard I used for evaluating the two most leftwing candidates running for the Democratic nomination. The variables include electability, competence, ability to bring the party together for the fall campaign, debate skills, relative immunity from Trump’s smears, and possibility of getting something done once president. Their stand on issues is not one of the variables, because their programs are so similar.

Electability

Rather than discuss the various elements that go into being more or less electable or rehashing the unproven speculation of the many mainstream media pundits, let’s head straight for the numbers. The most recent polls show both Sanders and Warren beating Trump way beyond the margin of error. As I wrote a few weeks ago, barring voter suppression and manipulation, Trump is probably doomed no matter which Democrat runs, mainly because the electoral stars are not likely to align perfectly for his election a second time around—no FBI investigation of his opponent’s email, no ignoring of three key states by his opponent, no long-standing, deep-seated hatred for the other candidate by large segments of the electorate, a more general knowledge of Trump’s history of incompetence, corruption and racism. Warren and Sanders, plus Biden, do better against Trump than other Democratic candidates do, so let’s call it a tie between Bernie and Liz, based on the polling numbers alone.

Competence

Bernie Sanders is a very competent individual who has achieved a lot in his life, primarily by running as an outsider. But while he can excite crowds and win votes, no bill for which he was a primary sponsor has ever been passed into law. By contrast, Warren has always excelled working within the system to make the system fairer and provide more to the average person. For f—‘s sake, she virtually single-handedly created one of the departments of government! Both are among the most competent candidates to run for president in recent years, certainly with more on the ball than Trump, Bush II or Gore. I am reluctant to declare a winner in this category since both are highly intelligent, experienced and skilled. But then I think that one of the first jobs of whomever we elect to replace the Trumpster Fire will be to undo all the harm that Trump has inflicted on the government—restaff departments and reinstate regulations—all the small bore stuff that Warren knows so well. Let’s give Bernie one point and Warren a point and a half.

Likelihood to bring the party together

Once the candidate, which of the two will be able bring together the party after the fight for the nomination? Warren has always been a party animal. She enthusiastically supported Clinton and worked her butt off to help Democrats up and down the ticket in 2016 and 2018. By contrast, Bernie did the bare minimum to help the Democrats in 2016 and is known as an outsider. Warren’s demeanor is one of an empathetic cheerleader-school teacher, someone who encourages and guides. Bernie’s personality has been a veritable motherlode of jokes for Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and others, who have established Bernie’s image as a crotchety, if somewhat loveable, old eccentric, a variation on Larry David’s television persona. Clearly, Warren seems to possess more conciliation skills and can call on a deeper reserve of good feeling among those who didn’t support her. Moreover, because of her party allegiance, her personality and her disavowal of socialism, most of the many subsegments that compose the Democratic Party are likely to support her enthusiastically against Trump, except for the “Bernie Bros,” by which I mean those white men of the left who will never vote for a woman. Warren wins this category hands down.

Debate skills

Both have good debate skills. They both can turn a memorable phrase and both have command of the facts. Neither is going to back down to either Trump or a pro-Trump moderator such as Matt Lauer. My sense, though, is that with all that aging, if in Trump’s case probably enhanced, testosterone flying around, Sanders-Trump debates might devolve into a shouting match between two grump grandpas. Warren’s coolly passionate style may contrast more positively with the bombastic Trump than Bernie’s would. I give the point to Warren

Ability to withstand Trump’s smears

No matter who is nominated by the Democrats, Trump is going to spend a lot of time insulting the candidate, distorting their record and accusing them of all sorts of unsavory, stupid or unpatriotic nonsense. The big questions are whether the fact that Warren is a woman will make her more of a target, as it did Hillary Clinton, and whether the misogynistic segment of the electorate will be as big this time as it was in 2016. Apart from her sex, all Trump can do to smear Warren, or to make her look small and ridiculous, is to call her “Pocahontas,” which has the dual effect of issuing a racial invective while reminding us of the one small scandal on Warren’s record—the fact that her family always thought they had native American ancestry. On the other hand, Trump has three enormous cudgels with which constantly to beat Bernie: 1) He’s Jewish; 2) He’s a socialist; and 3) He’s old. Right or wrong, these are large wedges between Bernie and different parts of the electorate. Trump will lie to smear any candidate, but he doesn’t have to lie to call Bernie Jewish and connect with anti-Semites. He doesn’t have to lie to call Bernie a socialist and frighten the millions of people who have been fed negative propaganda about socialism for decades. He doesn’t have to lie to call Bernie old and thereby deflect attention from his own age-related mental enfeeblement and the fact that his heart is a ticking time bomb. That I find these potential smears against Bernie to be repugnant doesn’t prevent me from giving this point to Warren as well.

More likely to get something done in office

Warren and Bernie present similar programs, especially when compared with other, more business-friendly Democrats.

But if the question is which of the two would get further, faster in implementing their program, the answer is a no-brainer—It’s the candidate who has worked within the party and knows her way around both the federal bureaucracy and Congress. It’s the candidate who is owed big time by elected officials for whom she campaigned. It’s the candidate whose sunny disposition and friendly demeanor will make it easier for her to bring opposing sides together to work out compromises.

Like most Democratic socialists, I love what Bernie Sanders stands for. But it’s time for him to yield the field to another leader of the progressives, one more likely to be elected and far more likely to implement key portions of the progressive program than Sanders ever could.

If Bernie Sanders really cares about the country more than he cares about his own power and self-aggrandizement, he will quit the race and throw both his support and his treasury to Elizabeth Warren.

#bernie #warren #2020

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alankippaxme-blog · 6 years

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Written by Will Wiens: For Those Who Need to Know About Alan Kippax

I've known Alan approximately 10 years. My first impression was, "wow, this guy can sell!" That was my first time I went to a BIM meeting held at the Grand Hotel in Kelowna, BC. I got involved with BIM and went to as many meetings as I could. We went to a few social get-togethers with Alan after some meetings and enjoyed chatting about other interests as well, such as politics, news, and the state of business affairs in Canada. We shared a number of topics that we believed in similarly.

Soon after, my work took me to Calgary, where I met Alan again on several occasions and later I joined him at a leader get together in the Toronto area. Here I also saw his passion for cool cars as he had them on display for those that were interested.

In the beginning, my involvement with Alan was because of my interest in BIM. I found him to be a top-notch presenter, a good teacher, and did he ever know how to "close the deal"! Even though I was a supervisor in the construction industry, my interest in sales had always been there, as I've been involved with many networks, I was very much wanting to learn all I could so as to improve my skills. Alan was the best I had ever run into! For that matter, BIM was also the only such type of business that I ever made any money at!!

My wife and I had many good experiences during my involvement with BIM. I think of one lady who really wanted to get involved with BIM, although she just didn't have the money. She wasn't even my personal recruit but was brought in by my daughter in law. I'm a trusting sort of guy who likes to help people, so I lent her the money when she promised to pay it back when her payday came. I don't necessarily recommend this sort of thing, and it could backfire, nevertheless, I felt this single mom would do as she said.

I actually will never again do or recommend doing what I did ever again. You see, I did that for a few more people but they never paid me back. And then I heard of a number of others who did the same but on a larger scale and it completely backfired. Here is why: lending money and especially all of the money is a terrible idea! Most will never pay it back as it’s too easy to quit and that's not fair for them or you. The person borrowing has "no skin in the game" so to speak, so he doesn’t learn the system, blabs all about the company though he knows nothing and therefore he has zero success and quits at the first NO! Instead, if it was his own money he would try a lot harder and actually make it work.

Now, BIM presentations were great and at the end, people who had paydays were invited to come up and share a little of their stories! It was so interesting how BIM was "improving their lives"! One lady that my wife and I brought in gave such a moving testimony, of her success that everybody was touched. Then, unbeknownst to my wife and I, she publicly thanked us for believing in her and helping her. Wow! I don't think there was a dry eye in the place!!

BIM was a great place to meet people. We met so many really nice people, and a lot of them are still friends with us today! I have found that people who get involved with networking are basically good and decent people who want to improve their lives, by not only making some money to help out financially but also by becoming better people, who sincerely want to help others do the same! This opportunity basically allows people with a little money to work part-time, improve their lives and make new friends.

During my time with BIM, I was also involved when some anti-mlmers started to hassle Alan. And I also saw first hand how corrupt the media was by wrongly reporting what they called the facts.

During my time with BIM, even though I made money, I could still see some weak areas regarding the business model.

After BiM shut down, I have run into some people who choose to blame Alan for "loosing" their money. This is something I could never figure out. I think many people are very naive when it comes to business. When you get involved with these types of businesses, the terms and conditions are clearly laid out. When they are followed, you make money, when they are not followed, you don't! That's quite straightforward and simple to understand. Remember, if you do something foolish and against all recommendations, you have no right to blame somebody else for your error in judgment! From my perspective, nobody lost their money, because they received a product for their purchase! Yes I heard about some people who "loaned" a number of people the money for their purchase, and then conditions weren't met, and these people then didn't get paid and so they couldn't repay their "loans"! All I can say is, "too bad, so sad"! I actually did the same, and I also didn't get repaid, but it never occurred to me to blame Alan for that. That was my risk and therefore also my loss!

After BIM shut down, then the CRA (Canadian Revenue Agency) did a lot of very nasty things. I can speak personally to that. And then I ran into very many others who experienced the same injustices by our government. Even though I declared all my revenues under my business and paid taxes accordingly, the CRA decided that it was all personal income and reassessed me again for that. And to add insult to injury, they declared that I made about 4 times as much as I really did, which they intentionally incorrectly concluded from the records they took when they raided BIM's offices. Some people are still fighting these injustices with the CRA. This has nothing to do with Alan, but some people are still choosing to blame Alan for that. That's just wrong.

Well, enough of that. After BIM shut down, I continued to follow Alan's life for the next number of years by checking with his friends regarding his whereabouts. Then, just shy of two years ago, Alan and I became friends on Facebook, and we came into personal contact again. Since that time, we have talked repeatedly on the phone, probably for at least an hour or more every two weeks or so, sometimes more frequently and sometimes for longer periods of time. This has allowed me to get to know Alan much much better! We've talked about many things other than business, on such topics as governments, religion, friends in common, and personal family things. I was very happy for him when his daughter was born, as my own 13th grandchild was born much the same time and it also was a girl!

Needless to say, we also talked about business. He shared with me what he saw wrong with BIM, as did I. Then he shared with how he had spent countless hours working out improvements in this new plan and fixing all the weak points. From each new fix that he shared, I immediately could tell that the fix would solve the old problem! Like everything else, once the problem was solved, it seemed simple enough, although the trick is first to solve the problem! That's where his genius comes out! I could tell, that he had spent an awful lot of time at it! I won't bother with rehashing the problems, except the one about the "dead boards". The fix is better than I could have imagined. You could now literally say that the slowest boards now become the best.

Life has a way of throwing "curve balls" at you. My construction days came to an end and so I started trucking a little while ago. This allowed much time to think and talk (through "blue tooth" speaker systems). This afforded me the opportunity to discuss at length with Alan the different aspects of HRI. In fact, there was a time when Alan and I were talking many hours almost daily. I believe that I was a good sounding board for him discussing all the different details and "fixes", taking the older versions of TTI and BIM to new and better levels. I found it so interesting how the thought process went from problem to solution and how each detail has a specific reason for being there! Like I said earlier, people who will see this business plan along with the remuneration system, will just think to themselves that this is really good, never realizing that good things just don't appear! They have to be created, concept by concept, detail by detail, and if I say so myself, it takes a genius to come up with a plan that covers all the potential pitfalls along the way, creating motivation at all the right places. I also made some suggestions along the way from my own experiences and I believe Alan even incorporated some of them.

Well, like so many others, I can hardly wait to see how successful HRI is going to be! I don't think there has ever been as good of an opportunity, as this fully revised "Time Leverage System" is now, which has been made available to the ordinary individual! The other thing is the products. The business has a few of the old products still available, but there are so many new ones!! Can you imagine, HRI having the ability to provide a platform to market any new product, manufactured anywhere in the world, and then sell it to anywhere in the world? And there are others, and all you have to do is look at the retail website! Truly exciting!!

#KippaxAlan AlanKippax HRI

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markjsousa · 6 years

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5 Ways To Surely Kill Brand Meaning

In 2016 the rising costs of chocolate ingredients put the Toblerone brand’s owner Mondelēz in a difficult position. To protect their margins they had to choose––either raise the price of the product or offer less chocolate in each bar. The first option could reinforce Toblerone’s premium position though might make it vulnerable to other more affordable chocolate brands. The second option was more risky –– executed poorly the move could damage the very essence that the brand was founded on.

As we know, Mondelēz decided for the second option. By introducing much wider gaps between each of the chocolate peaks, the owner effectively reduced the weight of each bar. An otherwise sensible strategy with one major downside: it was done at the expense of the brand’s iconic design that powered its inner value. Moving away from the signature shape resulted in a wave of negative customer feedback.

Just last week Mondelēz concluded what its customers had known all along – it was a mistake and reversed their strategy, now with the realization that meaning drives the fortunes of brands.

As with most marketing mistakes, there are valuable lessons that brand owners and marketers can learn from and incorporate in their own strategic thinking. Even though brand examples aren’t timeless––as they’re bound to specific circumstances, market context, culture and the time they were created in––these lessons can be universally applied.

1. Putting Short-Term Gains Over Long-Term Value Creation

Plain and simple, if you manage a brand let alone an iconic one, do not sacrifice your future brand value for short-term gain. This is considered a big brand management mistake. The short-term increase in profit margin won’t balance out the long-term losses to your image and brand reputation. Omitting the essence of your brand, and thus sabotaging your customers’ expectations, is a hefty price to pay for temporarily satisfying your bottom-line. Lowering the amount of chocolate in one Toblerone bar but making it look similar enough at the expense of taking the even parts out is not only an unimaginative strategy, it’s also insulting –– to the brand and its long-standing legacy, the product design and its loyal following. Especially as there were better ways to do this.

The official statement from Mondelēz said: “We chose to change the shape to keep the product affordable for our customers.” I understand that we can never have full control over the world’s inherently changing nature, as there are many variables out of our reach to influence––the weather, quality of crops, price of ingredients and political and economic factors. But we need to learn to make the most of what’s available to us at any given moment instead of jumping to conclusions and pricey mental short cuts with invisible long-term consequences.

Short-termism is a typical byproduct of siloed thinking. It is the idea that cutting marginal costs will bring more value. You might expect a technologist or a CFO to think this way, but marketers should know better. It will not only prohibit additional value, it will devalue the value you already have. In the end, you will be left with less than when you started. And in the best-case scenario, you will only get more of the same. Organizations aren’t machines; they are living breathing organisms that create value. If you run a living organism like a machine, you will kill what makes it alive and valuable. Don’t cut the individual costs. Create value strategically, instead.

Brand managers need to become more strategically creative and learn to apply the power of creativity to business problem solving in their day-to-day operations. There is a reason why creativity was named the most important leadership skill in future business by IBM and third most important by 2020 by the World Economic Forum. No wonder, it’s the essence of all value creation. If Mondelēz approached this situation creatively and resourcefully, they could have overcome the increasing price of ingredients without making any unwanted changes to product design, which happens to be essential to Toblerone’s brand value.

In fact, there is a whole list of possible solutions other than cost cutting that doesn’t involve reducing the product’s very essence: a) making the bar slightly shorter but keeping the original design, b) making the bar smaller but keeping the right proportions, c) reaching out directly to the customers to crowdsource ideas to co-create a satisfactory temporary solution that doesn’t violate the product design, d) or even better, actively capitalizing on the situation by turning the negative into a positive –– reaching out to the fan base of creative consumers to harvest new ideas and co-create a new limited edition that will not only temporarily freshen up and energize the brand but will also significantly boost brand engagement and strengthen brand loyalty as people’s input will be valued and implemented.

There are few things in life that say ‘we don’t care about you’ more than an unthoughtful and visibly cheated design experience. The signal this change sends is not really ‘we made the product affordable to you’ as Mondelēz might have intended, it’s ‘we are cheap’ because we value our short-term gains more than, the strength of its long-term reputation and the key pillars Toblerone was built upon by the original maker Theodor Tobler in 1908.

In times of an ever-increasing cultural complexity and the omnipresent threat of business disruption, when the market research industry is pushed to its own limits to find and deliver interesting nuggets of new market opportunities and cultural relevance to give globalized brands even an incremental boost, this seems like a very short-sighted and somewhat dismissive move to implement. It’s not like people actually care about a lot of brands to the point that they would mind a minor change in design. Toblerone is one of those brands––it elicits a lot of emotion because people have it connected to their childhood, the no-longer-existing happy place of distant familiarity and deeply buried nostalgia.

It’s not an easy job to create something that people actually care about. Making brands means something––as intangible mental objects––is very hard. So if you are lucky enough to have a brand in your portfolio that people worship, you should guard it at all costs. Brand loyalty is not created overnight but it can sure be lost very quickly. Especially if you’re treating something that customers love as a disposable commodity. If you don’t respect the brand’s legacy and its core assets, you might as well discontinue the product, or better, sell it to someone else who cares more.

Consumers would rather pay a slight premium for the exact same product given the changing market circumstances than pay the same amount of money for the inferior version reminding them with every bite that they could no longer get something they actually wanted. Getting a lesser quality for the same amount of money is paradoxically more upsetting than getting the same quality for more money. It’s called the loss aversion bias––one of the most prominent from the whole array of human cognitive biases––and it says that people’s minds have a genuine tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. I believe that having one quick conversation with a behavioral scientist, a design thinker or a semiotician for that matter, before implementing this change would have undoubtedly saved the original product design and a lot of subsequent headaches.

The lesson here is clear: whatever the sudden change in your production cycle, don’t change the fundamental essence of your product. It’s not worth it in a long run and sooner or later will turn against you. Loss of integrity is a formidable threat to a brand and the damage control will be more costly than what you will save on your product. Bad reputation is an unforeseen cost you don’t want to be paying for. Out of the two, prevention is always the better strategy. Profits are important but think long-term.

2. Killing The Symbolic Aura Of Meaning Around Your Brand

Toblerone as a brand is full of rich symbolism. The Toblerone chocolate bar is emblematic of the essence of Switzerland, making the chocolate of both premium quality and rare appeal like conquering the peaks of snowy Matterhorn. It gives its consumers both a sensation of taste and a sense of accomplishment and exclusivity. Unlike many other famous chocolate brands, Toblerone was never the sensual indulgence-y kind of experience, it was clever and rewarding––a prized possession to be earned like climbing up a mountain summit. This sense of intrinsic reward is encoded deep inside Toblerone’s thoughtful design, which rewards you with mounting feelings of satisfaction. It was the kind of chocolate to be enjoyed, savored by individual pieces and received on special occasions only. This in turn gave Toblerone the aura of being special itself.

Paradoxically, by treating it like a market commodity and making it feel more like an ordinary product and less like a cultural icon, Mondelēz actually managed to kill the aura of the Toblerone brand and its symbolic exclusivity. It never ceases to amaze me how something as innocent as increasing a small space can not only throw the entire product design out of proportion, and therefore significantly decrease its desirability, but also water down its original symbolic meaning. By introducing the wider gaps, Mondelēz managed to kill much of the brand’s appeal and severely threaten what has always made Toblerone Toblerone. Changing the original shape––which was already close to perfection––threw the entire product design and its sacred geometry of carefully placed triangular prisms out of proportion, which made the hollowness on the brand level even more prominent. In one hasty action, the new owner managed to counteract the rich mythology that the Toblerone brand had been building for over a century.

The lesson here is clear: if you acquire a heritage brand, don’t kill the brand’s essence and legacy. If it’s outdated, make it culturally relevant again but don’t kill it. It will make your brand feel hollow––an empty shell of a brand lacking in both authenticity and value due to a significant decline in care. This loss in meaning will significantly devalue the brand and decrease your future return on investment.

3. Treating Powerful Iconic Elements As Disposable, Therefore Meaningless

Let’s say you manage a brand rich in iconicity or cultural symbolism and want to make some changes, be careful and do a thorough check first. What kind of a brand is it? Is it a legacy, heritage or jewel brand? What’s the sector? Is it filled with distinctive meaning? Does it have a lot of social currency? What are the key ownable assets and iconic elements of your brand? Make sure you know exactly what they are. Resist the temptation to change them. They are the primary layer of your brand’s iconicity that largely contributes to your brand value. Iconic elements are iconic for a reason and the reason is that they signify your brand’s essence, increase memorability and create a vital sensory distinction.

If Semiotics––the science of meaning––teaches us anything, it’s that everything means something. Everything communicates. And everything carries its own vital meaning. Even shapes do. Yes, shapes have meanings. So do colors. And gestures. Your body language. Voices and their tonalities. The things you say. The things you don’t say. The words you choose. And logos. And all parts of your brand, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. So if you treat iconic elements as random or worse disposable, you will erode your brand value. Iconic elements can be redesigned (change in color or dimensions) or repurposed (change in role and functionality) but they should not be drastically changed, unless there is a really good reason to completely redesign your brand and make a profound visual transformation.

For Toblerone, such an iconic element is the triangle. Triangles have a deeply religious and spiritual meaning across many different cultures around the world. From the mystical power of the triangular shape prevalent in the world of occultism, its connotation with man-made wonders and timeless treasures of human creative excellence, such as the ancient pyramids in Egypt, its powerful symbolism with masculinity and femininity (e.g. shape of life creation resembling to a female lap or the triangular basis of the heart symbol connecting love, sexuality and life), the triangle is the ultimate symbol of human transcendental experience.

The triad signifies the basis of human existence as it mirrors the invisible structure of our lives. It makes us aware that by connecting two seemingly opposite ideas a new third one is born. Thesis–antithesis–synthesis. Father–mother–child. Large–medium–small. Body–mind–spirit. And for the Christians, the triangle has the highest spiritual meaning of all–the Holy trinity–the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The triad reminds us that the whole process of human creation (whether it’s creation of life or creation of ideas) is based on the intrinsic philosophy of threes.

Quite interestingly, the triangle is also the basis of Semiotics as the triad of the physical object, its mental concept and the word we use to label it with is shaped as a triangle. In many ways, Semiotics is the secret language of the world. It helps you see and map out the invisible patterns of meaning of all things around us and mine for breakthrough insights to best advise on your future strategy.

The lesson here is clear: when you’re acquiring a jewel brand with a long-standing cultural heritage or managing a brand full of iconicity and elaborate symbolism, you need to be extra careful not to treat their core assets as disposable. Because these elements create a layer of rich meaning, which in turn inflates the brand’s symbolic equity. Such a treatment will undoubtedly devalue the key assets that once made your brand special.

4. Breaking The Brand’s Clever Consumption Ritual

The Toblerone triangles aren’t only filled with symbolic meaning of spirituality and human transcendence; they also serve a deeply utilitarian purpose. In other words, it’s not just brand meaning, it’s also functional.

The functional aspect is quite prosaic: you’re supposed to push one triangle onto the other to crack it. That’s how you consume the individual pieces properly. The peaks symmetrically placed one next to the other have their own secret design language––they inform you that the chocolate bar is to be eaten piece by piece by breaking each of the triangles with one gentle push. So by taking the even parts out, Mondelēz made the chocolate bar’s proper consumption impossible, which further deteriorated the Toblerone brand. Throwing product dimensions out of balance took the IQ out of the design and made the chocolate look confusing and unappealing. The consumption ritual had suddenly been broken as these crudely disproportionate blank spaces cancelled out the meaning embodied in the product’s design. This made it very difficult for the bar to be eaten in the way it was originally intended.

This made Toblerone signal different meanings on the brand level (on the outside) versus the product level (on the inside), which resulted in an inherent inconsistency and brand fragmentation that left people feeling cheated. With the newly formed absent spaces, the chocolate bar gained an unwanted appeal of a toothless mouth of a 90-year-old man rather than the perfect chocolate symmetry it was originally. As someone swiftly commented in one of the numerous LinkedIn conversations this story sparked last week, the gap was wide enough to park a chocolate bicycle. The redesign made it obvious that something what was once there was now clearly missing, which is a deeply troubling experience for a chocolate bar whose sole purpose of existence is to make your present moment feel more joyful by giving you a piece of sweet psychological satisfaction.

When planning a new product design or thinking about making changes to the brand, one of the most important lessons to remember is that absence has a powerful presence. So when a brand decides to cut out whole chunks of chocolate that were there before in a way that makes their absence not only visible but highlighted, it’s a big problem. Absence of things makes an overwhelmingly loud statement as it structures the inherent meaning of the things we actually do see. Without the carefully placed pauses, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy music, literature, film or fashion to the extent we are today. It would all be just a blur. Musicians know that music is all about the notes you don’t play. Human creations are first and foremost curations––you need to carefully measure and decide on what will be taken out. This makes the end product better. Unless, you take the essence out. Then it’s meaningless. As Einstein would say: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And now we see why.

There aren’t many foods that have their own consumption ritual but Toblerone is clearly one of them, along with Oreo cookies courtesy of the same owner Mondelēz. When you have a brand that is a part of a ritual, don’t change the structure that makes the product ritualistic. If Mondelēz suddenly decided to change the ratio of the cookie and cream filling on the Oreo cookies too, they would be significantly less enjoyable and harder to take apart. The social ritual in a form of twisting and turning the two cookies counterclockwise on a fluffy bedding made of vanilla filling has not only its taste properties but it’s also a sensual and deeply satisfying emotional experience. One that kicks into our subconscious hunger for familiarity and repetition, which together make us feel calm and comfortable.

The lesson here is clear: distorting or otherwise altering these ritualistic structures can make your entire brand spontaneously combust because it will suddenly lose all of its anchoring––the emotional territory it once occupied, the consumer occasion it fulfilled, the role it played in people’s lives and the good feeling it elicited will all disappear at once. Breaking the mental pattern of a brand ritual can only feel as a betrayal to the ontological security of your customers but can also make a dent into brand loyalty, and if particularly severe, can be damaging to the long-term brand value.

5. Not Realizing What You’re Actually Selling

Every brand, especially this iconic, is a part of a larger cultural conversation that creates a secondary layer of value around the brand.

When it comes to managing brands that are more cultural artifacts, as Toblerone undoubtedly is, their value and desirability are directly connected to their symbolic richness––the dense aura of complex cultural meanings that links brands to cultural zeitgeist, which in turn raises their equity and monetary valuation. Brand growth starts off as growth in meaning: only when a brand means something to people, can it grow in the monetary value too.

This means that brands cannot be run strictly by reason and measure, they need to be run also by mind and heart. Brand management isn’t about cutting costs in Excel spreadsheets; it’s about building symbolic value over time. It’s a creative discipline about managing meaning and emotions these meanings elicit in your customers, as they’re particularly sensitive to context and nuance. It’s equally soft and hard; tangible and intangible, just as people are. That’s why managers making strategic decisions concerning brands need to also have their symbolic hat on (apart from the feasibility-driven cost-cutting hat, the marketing sales profit-driven hat and the management strategy-driven hat) and understand how rich the world of branding really is and just how much it is packed with meaning.

Brands are, in fact, all about meaning––they are symbolic ecosystems of signs, dynamic in their ever-changing nature that mirrors the evolution of our culture. As the product itself is a physical manifestation of the brand, it needs to be subjected to the same symbo

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glenmenlow · 6 years

Text

5 Ways To Surely Kill Brand Meaning

Just last week Mondelēz concluded what its customers had known all along – it was a mistake and reversed their strategy, now with the realization that meaning drives the fortunes of brands.

1. Putting Short-Term Gains Over Long-Term Value Creation

2. Killing The Symbolic Aura Of Meaning Around Your Brand

3. Treating Powerful Iconic Elements As Disposable, Therefore Meaningless

4. Breaking The Brand’s Clever Consumption Ritual

5. Not Realizing What You’re Actually Selling

Every brand, especially this iconic, is a part of a larger cultural conversation that creates a secondary layer of value around the brand.

from WordPress https://glenmenlow.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/5-ways-to-surely-kill-brand-meaning/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

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joejstrickl · 6 years

Text

5 Ways To Surely Kill Brand Meaning

Just last week Mondelēz concluded what its customers had known all along – it was a mistake and reversed their strategy, now with the realization that meaning drives the fortunes of brands.

1. Putting Short-Term Gains Over Long-Term Value Creation

2. Killing The Symbolic Aura Of Meaning Around Your Brand

3. Treating Powerful Iconic Elements As Disposable, Therefore Meaningless

4. Breaking The Brand’s Clever Consumption Ritual

5. Not Realizing What You’re Actually Selling

Every brand, especially this iconic, is a part of a larger cultural conversation that creates a secondary layer of value around the brand.

0 notes

sherristockman · 6 years

Link

Ghost in the Machine, Part 5 — Lies, Denial, Deceit and Manipulative ‘Research’ Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola In the last decade, vaccines have become Big Pharma's biggest profit center. A report published by MarketsandMarkets estimates the global vaccine market, currently valued at $34.30 billion a year, will grow to an astounding $49.27 billion by 2022.1 Why the boom? As blockbuster drugs like Lipitor, Viagra, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Singular and Concerta have gone off patent, vaccines prove a lucrative replacement. Not only are they priced much higher than pills, governments and NGOs shamelessly help market vaccines to huge swaths of the world's population. These unethical partnerships, using taxpayer or NGO money, advance misleading research intended to frighten the public. Worse, they discredit vaccine critics who raise legitimate safety and efficacy questions and even discredit the families and victims of vaccine injuries themselves. To cash in on vaccine profits Big Pharma, governments and NGOs have characterized all vaccines as "life-saving." One of the clearest examples is the attempt to present vaccines against the HPV virus as vaccines "against cancer." "Science" articles warn that as many as 90 percent of adults, especially baby boomers, silently harbor the HPV virus much like articles that warn many baby boomers are infected with the Hepatitis C virus. In both cases, the drug industry is trying to "grow" the market for its products by inflating the amount of estimated sufferers. Reporters either wittingly or unwittingly help in the effort by repeating the drug industry supplied "facts." The truth is more than 90 percent of HPV infections are cleared by the body2 without symptoms and only 20 percent of HPV infections are the high-risk type that could develop into cancer if not identified and treated.3 Big Pharma's misleading advertising is not working, though. Many families of adolescent boys and girls targeted by HPV vaccine marketing by drug companies and government health officials are refusing the vaccine.4 Reacting to the HPV vaccine dropouts, Big Pharma launched an offensive "shame" campaign last year in which young adults with cancer blame their parents for not vaccinating them when they were adolescents. The ads were so over-the-top even supporters of the vaccine complained. Twitter remarks accused the company of trying to guilt-trip parents to bolster corporate profits.5 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Promotes Vaccines and Their Profits One of the world's leading funders of vaccine development and promotion is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF).6 In 2002, it began buying billions in drug stocks7 and subsequently added huge amounts of Monsanto stock.8 Two of the B&MGF's research heads were hired right out of Pharma — one from GlaxoSmithKline, with whom the B&MGF had a long-standing collaboration, and the other from Novartis.9 Even more shocking, it hired the former president of product development at Genentech to serve as its current CEO, Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann.10 This is how health writer Ruben Rosenberg Colorni describes the true nature of the foundation:11 "The Bill & Melinda Gates 'Foundation' is essentially a huge tax-avoidance scheme for enormously-wealthy capitalists who have made billions from exploiting the world’s people. The foundation invests, tax free, money from Gates and the 'donations' from others, in the very companies in which Gates owns millions in stocks, thus guaranteeing returns through both sales as well as intellectual-property rights. To add insult to injury, the system perpetuates the spread of disease rather than aids in their eradication, thus perpetually justifying his endeavors to “eradicate” them (solving a problem they are creating)." In a 2011 Forbes interview, Bill Gates admitted the new profitability of vaccines.12 "Ten or 15 years ago, nobody in the drug business would have held up vaccines as profit centers," he said, conceding that "vaccines are so tough, particularly because of liability issues." But now, "people are making money in the vaccine business," he noted. Questions About Overseas Vaccination Programs Questions about the ethics of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's overseas vaccination programs have swirled for years, specifically a study aimed at validating a low-cost way to screen for cervical cancer in India.13 This summer, STAT News reported that "new evidence of ethical lapses" has been published.14 "Dr. Eric Suba, a pathologist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco and co-author of the paper, provided STAT with a copy and links to supporting documents. In an interview, he described the Mumbai study, which ended in 2015, in stark terms: 'catastrophic, 'monumentally unethical, and a radical departure from normal scientific procedures’ … "Critics of the 18-year trial said that U.S.-funded Indian researchers used ineffective screening that endangered thousands of poor women in Mumbai. They were told the test could help prevent cancer, but far fewer pre-cancerous lesions were found than expected, suggesting that some lesions were missed — possibly leading to an unknown number of deaths." In 2015, judges in India's Supreme Court heard a challenge claiming the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation failed to obtain the informed consent of the children or their parents and demanded answers about juvenile deaths from the vaccine trial.15 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Is a Big Investor in Monsanto and Promoter of GMOs In 2012, Bill Gates announced he would try to end world hunger by growing more genetically modified (GM) crops. He had already invested $27 million into Monsanto. At the time, I said Gates was leading the pack as one of the most destructive "do-gooders" on the planet and that his views on addressing poverty and disease in poor countries were short-sighted and misinformed. Shortly thereafter, a team of 900 scientists funded by the World Bank and United Nations determined the use of GM crops is not a meaningful solution to the complex situation of world hunger. The Seattle Times also called Bill Gates' support of GM crops as a solution for world hunger unsound science. It's an undisputed fact that the introduction of genetically engineered crops lead to diminished biodiversity — the direct opposite of what the world needs. To save the planet and ourselves, small-scale organic and sustainable farming not only must prevail but flourish, and GM crops do not help; rather, they threaten their existence. Seeds have always been sold and swapped freely between farmers, preserving biodiversity, and without that basis, you cannot have food sovereignty. With fewer farmers, "feeding the hungry with GM crops" is nothing but a pipe dream. A clear example of the false promise of GM crops is seen with the GM Golden Rice designed to bring beta-carotene to the diets of people in poor countries and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's donation of $20 million. The GM crop was ill conceived for two reasons. People eating the low fat, poor diets seen in poor countries generally cannot convert beta carotene to the vitamin A and it was estimated that someone would have to eat 16 pounds of Golden Rice a day to receive the benefits. Unethical Vaccine Marketing Only Tells Half the Story As I said earlier, marketing of the HPV vaccine relies on half-truths, scare tactics and alarmist advertising. By manipulatively presenting it as a "vaccine against cancer," which all but neglectful parents would give to their children, vaccine makers hope to occlude the real questions about safety and documented injuries.16,17 A few years after the vaccines were launched, questions about research and transparency had already arisen, according to the Huffington Post.18 "Critics ask why the primary endpoint in trials was not cervical cancer, but lesions that could become malignant and why placebo data was spun to make the vaccine look more effective ... There are also transparency questions. Why did former First Lady Laura Bush work with Merck-funded citizen front groups to promote the original vaccine and why are governors like Texas’ Rick Perry trying to mandate vaccination of all girls? University of Queensland lecturer Dr. Andrew Gunn was silenced by his university when he dared to question the vaccine and ordered to apologize to the vaccine maker, CSL, according to the Courier Mail. Dr. Gunn expressed doubts about the vaccine’s 'marketing as a solution to cancer of the cervix when at best it’s expected to prevent about two-thirds of cases and 'the incorrect and dangerous perception that it might make Pap smears unnecessary'... And one of Gardasil’s and Cervarix’s [two HPV vaccines] original developers, Dr. Diane Harper, a consultant to the World Health Organization, also questioned the vaccine’s lack of safety and effectiveness ... only to appear to retract her remarks later." ‘Herd Immunity’ Incorrectly Used to Sell Vaccines Vaccine makers and the governments and NGOs that help their marketing use the concept of "herd immunity" to sell mass vaccination — the idea that the vaccination rate in a given community must be kept high so that those who have not been immunized do not endanger others. But of course, HPV, which is a sexually transmitted disease (STD), is not spread through mere close proximity to another person like non-STD diseases. You can’t transmit or get HPV infection in a public setting, like in a classroom or crowded elevator. Maybe that is why the "cancer prevention" angle is pushed. Purveyors of the herd immunity theory never seem to be able to explain why the majority of outbreaks of diseases targeted by vaccines occur in communities thought to have already achieved herd immunity status, i.e., where the majority of people are fully vaccinated and transmission of infection "should" not occur. In fact, health officials appear to deliberately confuse the public. Natural herd immunity certainly exists but artificial vaccine-acquired herd immunity, which is temporary at best, is a misnomer. Vaccination and natural exposure to a given disease produce two qualitatively different types of immune responses. Vaccine Injuries Dismissed and Downplayed Vaccine injuries are well documented and the HPV vaccine is a case in point. Here is what the Indian Medical Journal of Medical Ethics reported in 2017.19 "The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been linked to a number of serious adverse reactions. The range of symptoms is diverse and they develop in a multi-layered manner over an extended period of time. The argument for the safety and effectiveness of the HPV vaccine overlooks the following flaws: (i) no consideration is given to the genetic basis of autoimmune diseases, and arguments that do not take this into account cannot assure the safety of the vaccine; (ii) the immune evasion mechanisms of HPV, which require the HPV vaccine to maintain an extraordinarily high antibody level for a long period of time for it to be effective, are disregarded; and (iii) the limitations of effectiveness of the vaccine. We also discuss various issues that came up in the course of developing, promoting and distributing the vaccine, as well as the pitfalls encountered in monitoring adverse events and epidemiological verification." Yet vaccine makers, government regulatory agencies and doctors administering vaccines continue to insist the many injuries seen after vaccination are mere coincidences and not caused by the vaccines. Controlled clinical trials have found no causal association between HPV vaccination and different adverse effects, say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.20 In addition to inflating the number of people suffering from diseases such as HPV, vaccine promoters inflate the effectiveness of their vaccines. The HPV vaccine has cut infections by up to 90 percent in the past 10 years, brags one science website, as if cutting infections and cutting the incidence of cancer were the same thing. It is especially irresponsible because the cancer rates cannot be determined until years or decades after the vaccine is given.21

#VitalityPath

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dawnajaynes32 · 6 years

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What to do When the Client Doesn’t Like the Work

It’s inevitable. Even if you’ve been a designer for years, you’ll encounter a client who isn’t satisfied with the work you deliver. It happens to everyone and, unfortunately, more than once. So it’s essential for the preservation of your reputation and your business to deal with it professionally.

First, and by far most important, is to not take it personally. Your work is not you—it is totally separate from you—and this concept can be hard to grasp when your confidence is low. But as much as it may sting, don’t interpret a client’s dissatisfaction as a personal insult. It may not even mean your work isn’t good—many clients can’t tell the difference between mediocre and excellent work.

What it does mean is that there was a disconnect between you and your client. When this happens, you need to resolve the problem with this client, either revising the work or parting ways, and make changes to prevent this from happening in the future—or at least reduce the possibility.

First let’s focus on this client. If necessary, start by saying to yourself, “If they’re not happy, it’s not personal. I time to think and I need more information to understand what’s going on.” You are well within your rights to ask for time to think or to talk with a colleague or mentor. Then, depending on the situation, you have a few options to choose from. Let’s look at each one closely:

1. Don’t revise the work. If you deliver the work and the client says, “This is not what we had in mind. We’re going to find another designer,” offer to do another revision, even if all your rounds of revisions are used up. But if they are looking for a way out, let them out.

Say this: “I’m sorry if you’re not happy with the work and I understand if you want to part ways. Best of luck to you in the future.”

However, if they ask for their deposit to be refunded, that’s where you draw the line, especially if they signed an agreement that protects you from this situation. (If they didn’t sign an agreement and pay a deposit up front, you have a bigger problem.) If they insist on a refund, talk to a lawyer. [Read more on the Marketing Mix Blog about how one of my clients handled this and what we learned.]

2. Revise the work for an additional fee. If you deliver the work and the client says, “We like it but our CEO wants to go in another direction,” that’s actually not a problem for you, at least, it shouldn’t be. In fact, things in the business world are constantly changing so this happens often. When the client changes the scope of a project, you should still be compensated for your work. You will, of course, be happy to provide an estimate for the new scope. You can even offer to slightly discount the second estimate because you’ve already done some of the upfront discovery. But it is up to you to make it clear that this is additional.

Say this: “What you’re asking for now is not included in our original agreement. I’d be happy to give you an estimate for the additional scope of work.”

3. Revise the work at no extra charge. If you deliver the work and the client says, “This isn’t working,” or something equally vague, your job is to diagnose the problem. You may need to help your client articulate what isn’t working. Be a detective and ask as many questions as you can so you can come up with a better solution—all without taking it personally.

If your first reaction is to be angry or defensive, wait until those feelings subside (you may need to sleep on it) then try one or all of these approaches until you get the information you need.

Curiosity: Can you identify what aspects are and aren’t working? (Give them a few choices).

Generosity: It seems like you’re having trouble articulating what’s not working. How can I help you convey what you’re thinking?

Humility: I’m sorry to hear this isn’t what you had in mind. Let’s put our heads together and figure out where the problems are.

Humor: Uh-oh—is this one of those “my wife doesn’t like red” situations?

Once the immediate situation is resolved, turn your attention to the bigger problem: making changes to your process to prevent this from happening again.

For example, you may need to fix your sales process so that you learn to recognize earlier the proverbial red flags, such as a negative, disrespectful attitude or stories about dissatisfaction with other designers.

Finding out at the very end of a project that you’ve taken the wrong direction or didn’t understand what they wanted means the problem to solve is in your process. You may need to get their—or their boss’—approval on initial concepts or comps, to make sure that you’re heading in the right direction in the first place.

Rest assured, this will happen to you, if it hasn’t already. So learning how to handle it is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your career in the long term.

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