#need to be offering more than just money for parading marginalized people around

[butchvamp]

really disliking this new corporate strategy of using trans people as marketing (hersheys and now bud light(?????)) where these massive billion dollar brands just expose trans women to the most vile harassment possible while they get to profit off their image and pretend to be progressive. like wow cool you put trans women on your chocolate bar and your beer cans but are you like, doing anything for them and the wider community or are you just parading them around...lol. also it really frustrates me that people will eat this shit up. brands targeting the lgbt community as a marketing demographic is not a good thing, actually. it should piss you off that target sells tshirts with the word queer on it. it should piss you off that hersheys "we use child slave labor" chocolate is trying to target you specifically with their advertisements

[the-lady-writes-what]

Swing

1920′s Gangster AU

You're working one night at the club, singing on stage, when you catch the eye of dangerous yet handsome man. You can't help yourself when he sweeps your off your feet for the night and shows you more pleasure than you ever imagined.

Content: one instance of hair pulling and spanking, doggie style, voyeurism (if you squint), praise, a hint of fluff

                                                        ---080---

The air was choked by cigarette smoke, cheap booze, and lilac perfume. The syrupy-sweet fragrance stung the most. It was like huffing a can of hairspray that faintly smelled like flowers. You put up with the perfume and cloying cigarette smoke and a myriad of other things because of one vital thing. Money. You needed it. There was no other way to survive. In the world of bootleggers, gangsters, and smugglers, you were just a girl with a mic and love of music. You worked hard to earn your current position, starting from the bottom as one of those cigar girls parading around the club. It wasn't easy, either. If the boss hadn't just so happened to hear you singing to yourself as you helped clear out the dishes in the kitchen, you wouldn't be getting ready to go on stage.

The stage was a simple affair built with just enough space for you, a piano, and several sax and clarinet players. Your spotlights were dingy yellowish beams with only enough power to shine on one person on stage. Considering you were typically the prettiest thing on stage, the spotlight always shined on you. The curtains were still tied off either because nobody wanted to bother giving you the special entrance of a dramatically raised curtain. Besides, the curtains were little more than glorified rugs hung from the rafters. They smelled of dust and old cigar smoke, and you had to concentrate on not sneezing through your whole set.

You looked out from around the stage, but could hardly see anything through the haze of smoke. Nobody seemed to care or notice the clouds of cigarette smoke. Glasses clinked with boot-legged alcohol and laughter resounded in the air. Small tongues of the fire flickered in and out of the smoke, and another cigarette was sparked into life. You scrunched your nose up at the smell and looked down at your dress. Though it was a new number in your favorite color, you hated that it was coming home with your smelling of the club, and you couldn't afford dry cleaning. You berated yourself for not keeping it at home and wear a dress that you didn't mind smelling like cheap booze and cigar smoke. Oh well, too late now.

Your boss Toshinori complimented your 'wise' choice at the clingy chiffon that hugged your curves. He didn't say that in so many words, but you knew what he was thinking. At first, your brows furrowed at his words. Toshinori sweated up a storm and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. When you asked what the matter was, his face turned white as a sheet. Toshinori refused to say at first, however threatening to not go on stage made him reconsider. After your boss explained the situation, you wished that you hadn't asked in the first place. Now, you were suffering from an overpopulation of butterflies in your stomach. Your eyes glued themselves to the front entrance through which Toshinori's guests of honor were supposed to arrive. Assuming they weren't being tailed by the police or a rival gang.

However, the second you thought this, you chuckled. Rival gang? Like anyone would be stupid or crazy enough to go against Shouta "Eraserhead" Aizawa and his highly competent lieutenants, Present Mic and Midnight. Most of those who tried ended up in coffins. No wonder Toshinori looked like he was ready to give up the ghost.

It was ten minutes before showtime when you heard a bustle of activity at the front entrance. From where you stood on the stage, half-hiding behind the curtain, you barely saw the doors burst open. At first, you thought it could be the coppers come to shut down the bar and start passing around silver bracelets. Your eyes were glued on the trio entering the club. The blonde on the right wore a black and silver three-piece with his jacket unbuttoned, and his white leather shoes shined. The lady on the left wore a white double-breasted suit jacket and matching skirt. Her whole outfit was designed to show off her ample chest and long legs to distract from the fact that she twirled a knife in her hands like a child's toy. But these characters held little interest to you because your eyes were fixed on the man walking in the middle.

He wore a dark gray three-piece and a black coat that hung off his shoulders like a king's royal cape. Like you, his eyes were half-hidden behind a curtain of dark hair and the shadows of a black fedora. He walked with his hands in his pockets and with the air of someone who couldn't be touched. The man owned the room, and every set of eyeballs in it. Drinking and laughter died when he entered. Toshinori appeared scurrying out of his office as if told at the last minute that they arrived. He continued to wipe his drenched forehead with his handkerchief. He directed the trio to a booth, which faced the stage directly. You watched your boss bow profusely from the waist. The trio that just entered sat too far away from you to be able to hear. Exactly how they walked in, the blonde man sat on the right, the lady on the left, and the powerful individual with the black fedora sat in between them. You couldn't stop staring.

You glanced at the woman in the middle one's left. You swore you'd seen her somewhere before, but couldn't quite place it. It's rude to stare, yet you couldn't help yourself. Your hands fisted the old velvet curtains. Were these the people Toshinori invited to the club? The woman on the left noticed you staring. Before you could retreat, she locked eyes on you and winked. A boulder fell into your stomach.

You realized just where you saw her before at the club a couple weeks ago. The woman appeared to be a chatty, flirty customer but otherwise harmless.

"That's Nemuri "Midnight" Kayama. Second lieutenant to Eraserhead."

You jumped out of your skin at the sound of your pianist, Hitoshi, talking behind you.

"W-what? Her? But I thought—"

"That Midnight was a man? Don't let her looks fool you. I heard that she once highjacked a police van and helped the convicts inside escape."

"Then, who are the other guys?" You might have been better off not knowing, yet your curiosity got the better of you.

"The one on the right is Hizashi "Present Mic" Yamada. They say he's robbed every bank from here to New York. Thing is, nobody can pin them on him despite his boasting. He's loud, but he gets the job done."

"That means," you swallowed, "The one in the middle is…"

"Yup," said Hitoshi. "That's Eraserhead. The kingpin of this city. You see that scar? That's the only thing he got after fighting off the Shigaraki group a couple years ago. The man's quirk can erase his opponent's, so long as he doesn't blink."

Your legs turned to pudding. That man, oh, how you wished you could tear your eyes away. You rubbed your thighs. Something wet made your legs stick together; you hoped you were just nervously sweating and hadn't creamed yourself only by looking at the man. He was a bit shorter than the gigantic figure newspapers made him out to be, although not by many margins. With all of that black and the dark suit, Eraserhead made an imposing—if not terrifying—figure. Despite the dark material, you could still see the defined muscle rippling beneath the clothes he wore. He hadn't yet taken off his coat and hat, and it made you wonder if he was playing on leaving soon. His lieutenants appeared to be making themselves comfortable by ordering food and drink. However, their boss seemed less inclined to follow. All he got was a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. Eraserhead served himself after testing the brand. Testing the taste or for poison, he left it to your imagination to choose which.

"I wouldn't get close if were you, Y/N. Eraserhead's got a thing for cute little ladies like you. I wouldn't want to be on the wrong end of his affection if I wanted to play safe," said Hitoshi.

"I-I can handle myself," you replied.

Even you didn't believe a word you said.

The first set started off like any other night. You looked past Eraserhead's table, trying not to make eye contact. You decided not to look at him, but that didn't stop Eraserhead from looking at 'you.' The whole time you performed to Hitoshi's piano accompaniment, you felt eyes burning a hole into your gut. It was like staring down the barrel of a shotgun. The worse part was you didn't know when it would go off. You stumbled once or twice through the setlist. Thankfully, hardly anyone noticed thanks to the sax and piano. You scanned over the crowds and quickly passed over that table set in the middle of the club. Harder than you thought because all you wanted to do that evening was to lock eyes with that dangerous man.

By the end of your second set, you were thirsty and not necessarily for water. You managed to escape walking past Eraserhead's table and made your way to the bar. You ordered two shot glasses for yourself. The bartender, Shoto, didn't offer any remarks but got you your drinks. You downed them before the ice began to melt. The alcohol didn't do anything to alieve the weight tied to your neck. Each second you were on stage, it was harder for you to focus on 'not' looking at him. Your gaze kept getting too close to looking at him. It didn't matter if it was rude. You weren't about to get yourself mixed up with mobsters, even handsome ones.

"May I buy your next round?"

You almost did a spit take on Shoto's pristine bar counter. Slowly, you turned to find Eraserhead. He was without his great big black coat and looking far more casual than before. You swallowed past the hard lump that formed in your throat.

"I-I gotta get back to work. I'm only allowed two drinks a night while I'm working."

Eraserhead's dark brow shot upwards. Curious, he asked, "Toshinori lets you drink on the job?"

You shrugged. "Two drinks isn't enough to get me tipsy, and a spot of liquid courage now and then helps."

You almost looked at his face. Quickly, you cast your eyes down. Eraserhead takes one step towards you. His form looms over you like a shadow, and his hand reaches out. You didn't know what you were expecting, but you certainly didn't expect him to cup your chin between his finger and thumb. Eraserhead tilted your chin up. You felt his free hand lean against the back of your stool, inches from you. You could feel him looking down at you. After the pressure in your belly grew to be too much, your eyelids fluttered open.

Your face turned red as a tomato looking up at him. Up close and personal, Shouta "Eraserhead" Aizawa was much more impressive from this angle. He was a bit scruffy, but the stubble on his face made him appear more….manly? No, that wasn't quite right. Even if he shaved, you would have never mistaken him as not being so. Every movement he made screamed of power and control. Eraserhead moved like a wildcat in the jungle. You wouldn't know the predator was watching you until it was too late. No, no, his scruffy-looking face added something a bit more. He couldn't be lazy, not with the way he dressed. Without his black coat, Eraserhead's body looked bigger. You gawked at how big his arms looked this close to him.

"If you're going to stare, at least stare at my face. Some might consider you rude," said Eraserhead.

You fixed your eyes on his face at the suggestion. It was a hypnotic pull that made you look at him the way he wanted you to. Who were you to tell him no? This was especially so when the sound of his low-timber voice made your legs quake and heat pool in your lower belly. Though tired-looking, Eraserhead's gaze never left yours. It was the same pair of eyes you felt staring at you all night. Performing made it easier to forget that he'd been watching you the moment you set foot. He's why your voice cracked once or twice while you were trying not to think about him. Your stomach quivered. Eraserhead had yet to take his hand or his eyes off you. His presence was starting to become unnerving.

"What are your plans for the evening?"

"Well, uh, I have to get back on stage eventually."

"The pianist sounds competent and talented enough to carry on without you," said Eraserhead.

Before you knew it, you were being led by Eraserhead through the front entrance. Toshinori saw and tried to protest until one of Eraserhead's lieutenants, Present Mic, handed him a fat stack of cash, which quickly shut him up. Eraserhead's coat almost swallowed you as he put it on your shoulders. His hand sat at your waist, and his thumb drew infinite circles on your hip. Midnight got into the car behind Eraserhead's while you, Present Mic, and the kingpin climbed into another. Both vehicles had personal drivers while you sat in the spacious back of the limo. You were seated next to Eraserhead, obviously, and Present Mic took the seat that faced you. You wished he'd instead have taken the passenger seat up front with the driver. Eraserhead didn't make it easy for you. Not with his hand still on your waist and rubbing circles into your hip. Present Mic rolled down the windows by a little just to let out some smoke from his fresh cigarette.

You'd be content with staring at your feet if it hadn't been for Eraserhead. His hand wandered down to your thigh. Heat rushed to your face. Your eyes first snapped up to look at Present Mic, who was looking out the window and blowing clouds of smoke into the air as they drove. Then, you cautioned a glance at your host. His nonchalant mask gave you goosebumps.

"E-Eraser…"

"Even if he was paying attention," Eraserhead whispered next to your ear, "It wouldn't matter. He's not interested in young ladies. I wouldn't show off like this in front of 'em if he wasn't."

He kissed your temple. Eraserhead's hand moved no higher than the meaty part of your thigh. You could have been grateful for that if you weren't so conflicted. You wanted him to shift his hand under your chiffon dress and tease off your garters. In contrast, another part wanted to jump out of the moving vehicle out of sheer embarrassment. His thumb continued to draw circles into your skin over the fabric.

You jolted in your seat when Eraserhead's teeth grazed the lobe of your ear.

"And…call me, Shouta," he demanded.

It would be hard for you to remember that considering his name sounded so much like your coworker's at the club. Eraserhead—Shouta gripped your hip and pulled you even closer to him. With his hand on you like that made escape impossible also if you wanted to. Lips caressed the side of your neck to send goosebumps over your skin.

"S-Shouta!" You whined.

You tried not to look at the man sitting across from you who suddenly found his fingernails to be so exciting. Present Mic didn't appear interested in you. But somebody was.

A finger trailed under your dress's skirt and up your inner thigh, edging dangerously close to your undergarments. Shouta toyed with the lace trim as if you two didn't have an audience. He continued to kiss and lick the side of your neck and relishing in the warmth spreading over your face. Shouta's caresses caused you to shudder under his touch. A bead of sweat ran down your face. Shouta lapped it up with his tongue before it reached your jaw.

"I'm going to have so much fun with you, Doll Face," Shouta murmured against your ear.

Shouta kissed your neck, shoulders, and even your hands. You rubbed your thighs together to ease the need for friction between them. Present Mic seemed the least bit interested in what his boss was doing to you. In fact, he played it so nonchalantly that he insisted on talking business around you. There was nothing in the conversation that would put you in danger, but you were intelligent enough to get the gist. During the ride, Shouta stopped kissed you all over and kept his hand on your hip. The trip lasted for another half hour, you guessed before the vehicle came to a full stop. Present Mic left the car, went around, and opened the other door. Shouta helped you out because your legs wouldn't have been able to carry you on their own.

You craned your neck as you approached the mansion set before your eyes. You knew that Shouta—Eraserhead—had a lot of money; you just didn't realize how much. You walked across a gravel path leading up to a columned portico. With his hand on your lower back, Shouta leads you inside. His coat was taken up by a butler along with your shawl and hat. You followed Shouta upstairs. You were shaking head to toe in anticipation. You passed several doors before you came to the biggest one, a set of green doors plated with gold-leaf. Shouta opened it and called for a bottle of champagne to his room. You set your purse aside on a chest of drawers and sat down on the settee. Shouta made himself comfortable by removing his jacket, vest, and bowtie. When the champagne arrived, Shouta answered the door himself and handed you a glass. You sipped as he sat next to you and resumed his previous kissing activity wherever he pleased.

You had trouble holding your glass and avoiding spilling any of the expensive alcohol. You and Shouta drank until the tips of both your noses were red. You set aside your empty glass to wrap your hands behind his neck. Your lips touched his with tenderness and licked him. Shouta gave you open access to his mouth and pressed his hand on the back of your head, bringing you closer. Your soft moans were swallowed up in the kiss. Hands trailed down each other's bodies, but Shouta managed to find the buttons on the back of your dress. He popped them open one at a time. You knew he finished when you felt the warmth of the fire grazing your spine. Shouta gave you a kiss that made your head spin. He nibbled on your bottom lip, took it into his mouth, and sucked softly. When he let you go, Shouta looked at you and pinned you with a heavy-loaded gaze.

"Undress for me."

You blinked, unsure you heard him correctly. Surely a man like the infamous gangster Eraserhead would have his women and strip them too. His hand raked up the back of your neck and grabbed a fistful of your carefully curled hair. Shouta kissed the base of your throat. Looking up, he said, "Don't make me repeat myself, my dear."

Slowly, you nodded. Shouta released you and leaned into the settee. You rose from your seat and made to stand in front of him. Shouta had down half the work for you. All you had to do was pulled the straps down and let gravity do most of the work. A simple task such as that did nothing to keep your hands from shaking. Your hands trembled as you reached for the straps. One at a time, you slipped them off your shoulders. Shouta's eyes never left you and traveled downward as you dragged the dress off your body inch by inch. You shimmied it out of the way and stepped out of pooling on the floor.

Your silk combinations must have caught his attention as Shouta couldn't take his eyes off your undergarments. You wore a cheap waist-cincher with a built-in garter belt to hold up your stockings. You didn't move while he drank you in. After a while, Shouta nodded and gave you a sign with his hand to remove the rest. You weren't alone in this. Shouta removed his shoes, socks, shirt, spenders, etc. until he wore only his slacks. Your fingers trembled too much to unhook the cincher with much success. Shouta did the work for you, peeling the cincher away and tossing it behind the setee. His hands were on you; the second the garment fell apart from you. Shouta's fingers groped you through the thin silk, slid his hands down your legs, and rolled them off. You kicked your kitten heels off and climbed into his lap.

Shouta lifted you up, wrapping your legs around his waist, and carried you to bed. The silk combination was shifted off your body before Shouta settled you on the enormous bed. You climbed on top of the sheets, rested your head on the mountain of pillows, and pressed your legs together while you waited. You didn't have to do that for very long as Shouta followed immediately behind you. This time he was equally naked as you were. Shouta forced your legs apart and crept between them. He kissed and licked your inner thighs and left bruises to remind you of him the next time you went to take a bath.

He climbed unto his knees. By the firelight, you saw him. His body was littered with scars from bullets and knives. Some of them looked almost fatal. You reached up to touch him. You ran your hands down the length of his body before stopping at the stiff member jutting out. You wrapped your hand around him and give his cock a few experimental thrusts. The groan escaping him filled you with the confidence needed to rub him faster. You kept pumping him and watching his face contort to one of pleasure.

Then, all of a sudden, he pulled your hand away.

Shouta pinned your hand to the bed while he used his other to lift one leg and hook it around his waist. He didn't need to guide himself in. In one fell swoop, Shouta's cock was planted deep inside and nestled within your soaking walls. His hand left yours on the bed to grab your hips and pull you flush against him. His hips snapped into yours slowly and harshly. Shouta kept his tempo slow but hard to tease you. It didn't take long for him to become impatient. You squeezing his cock pushed him over the edge.

Your bodies pressed close together as Shouta moved within you. You slid along his body, breasts flush against his solid chest. Shouta bent and suckled on each nipple of yours until they were taut peaks. He playfully clapped his hands over them, slapping the skin, which was becoming slick with sweat. His teeth found your throat to leave behind purpling bruises as if to say who you belonged to. You didn't know what to do with your hands or where to put them. You longed to reach up and tug on Shouta's hair but was too afraid to take offense and stop. Instead, you voted to wrap your hands in the bedsheets and hold onto dear life. Tugging on the sheets beneath you grounded your being in reality while Shouta pounded you into the mattress.

"So tight for me, Y/N. A man could get used to this," Shouta growled and started thrusting faster and harder into you.

Sweat and other fluids mixed between your legs. You clamped around him and held on. Without pulling out, Shouta turned you on your stomach and resumed thrusting. His rough hands that killed a lot of people were yet still tender when touching you. To be sure, he wouldn't leave you without a few souvenirs to remember him by, but Shouta wasn't about hurting women. He grunted in your ear as he pressed his chest against your back. He pulled you tight against to leave no room between your bodies. You cried out in the pillows and scratched at the silken sheets.

The room, which had been warm since Shouta lit the fireplace, became unbearably hot. The air grew to be too stifling for you. Sweat poured out of your body and made you slick. Well lubricated, it made Shouta's job easier. He pushed and pulled, his hips never slowing its tattoo* against yours. The wet slap of skin against skin filled the room along with you moaning. Your sounds drowned him out, but you could still feel him rumble with every grunt against your ear. If not for all the furnishings, you would mistake yourself to be cave-people as Shouta unleashed a primeval urge to thoroughly fuck you. He was an animal between your legs; he claimed your hips with every powerful thrust.

A tight, hot coil settled in your stomach and began to tighten. With every push of Shouta inside of you, the rigid veins of his cock rubbing every secret part, you began to wail. Your walls tightened around him. When the time came, you gushed around him. Shouta was a minute behind. He pulled out beforehand. You would remember the way he groaned for the rest of your days. Shouta was an animal who just claimed his mate and was now planting the indelible mark on their body. You felt a spray of something warm and syrupy coating your skin. It took you a moment to realize that Shouta finished on your back.

Despite the mess you just made of you, Shouta leaned down, kissed the back of your neck then your cheek. He wiped the sweat from your brow. You bashfully smiled back.

"I-I haven't done that that in a while, you know. Sorry if I wasn't as experienced as you're used to," you mumbled.

One of Shouta's dark brows rose. "Why would I care about that? Did you not enjoy yourself?"

"Well, yes, but I—"

Shouta kissed you, silencing any protests you might have had. His cock slipped inside of you. You gasped at how quickly he was hard again.

"Let's make one thing clear, Doll Face. You don't get to decide if I liked it. That's what you were about to say? Some bullshit like that, right?"

His hand came down on your ass cheek. You yelped in both surprise and pain. Shouta massaged the red handprint as he slowly began to start a new rhythm

"I get to decide whether you're good and whether I want you," he grunted between thrusts, which were starting to pick up again, "And I say, I want you. Your experience with other men means shit to me. You're with me now, and my girl gets the best, understand?"

You nodded before letting the flow of his lust take over you. Shouta flipped you back over, so you looked at each other. You reached behind his neck to hold on as his pace picked up to a punishing speed.

"Don't…ever…think less of…yourself. You're fucking mine from now on, got it?" He growled.

And that was how you ended up a gangster's girlfriend.

                                                         ---080---

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The President is having a rough time. That much we can easily infer by reading both the medical and the political tea leaves that have dropped all around him in recent days. As of October 7, 2020–27 days from the Presidential Election — here’s where we stand.

It is a story in three parts:

1. Trump has, or at least had, severe Covid. We can infer that from the drugs he’s been prescribed.

For the past five days he has been on a course of Remdesivir, an antiviral medication that can interrupt viral reproduction. According to the Financial Times, the FDA “authorised the emergency use of Remdesivir for Covid-19 in May for patients with severe coronavirus who need extra oxygen or mechanical ventilation to help them breathe. In August, the FDA extended the emergency use authorisation to anyone in hospital with Covid-19, however severe their disease.”

He has also been given Regeneron’s multiple-monoclonal antibody therapy, a drug that directly kills the virus. He was given an 8-gram dose, which is very high, indicating that his viral load was significant when they got him to the hospital on Friday. This drug has not yet even been authorized for emergency use, but his doctors leaned on the regulatory agencies and the company to be able to prescribe it for compassionate use. This is the drug that, in my opinion, likely saved his life. At least for now. Note, this drug does NOT stop the virus from resurging, but it can be administered again without harm, so long as his body does not develop a resistance to the antibodies, themselves.

Notably, neither of these drugs will help to reverse damage already done to the organs.

The third big-hitter drug he received was a steroid called Dexamethasone. It is used to help prevent the body’s immune system from doing more damage than the virus. When the immune system goes into overdrive, there is significant swelling that can, itself, severely damage the organs. With Covid, that swelling can be so bad that it kills the organs, then the patient. The World Health Organization advises doctors to only use the drug in severe or critical cases, because it can have powerful side-effects — both physiological and psychological.

Physiologically, it SHREDS the immune system. That is, literally, what it is intended to do, which — in this case — is good for him, because he’s getting the Remdesivir and the Regeneron cocktail to fight the Covid, but BAD for him because for the next week or so, he’s got no meaningful immune system and that bathtub mold left behind by William Howard Taft in the White House jakes might take him out quicker than he can kill anyone else with his coronavirus.

Psychologically, it can lead to mania or more severe depressive states — which has got to at least rate a bit of a worry among Trump’s advisors, right?

Well, maybe not — and that brings us to the next point.

Donnie is all alone.

2. The second thing we know, or can infer from the past few days’ events, is that President Trump is finally — and fully — leading his own parade. There really is no sane doctor in the land who, short of wanting to fluff the Commander-in-Chief, would have authorized either his Sunday night joyride, or even his discharge from the hospital as if he’d just come down with a touch of 24-Hour Covid.

But, well, Trump. Even casual observers quickly learn that he does not tolerate independence in his advisors. They either show a willingness to bend to his will, or they are drummed out of service. As such, when he needs someone to finally stand up to him, even for his own good, they are long, long gone. Some folks are lamenting Dr. Sean Conley for tarnishing his reputation this past week, but in truth, you could have inferred that from the simple fact that he’s Trump’s personal physician. It’s the same for everyone. Persistent exposure to his toxicity either leads to outright rejection, or total corruption and collapse. At this point in his life and his Presidency, there simply are no grown-ups left in the room.

That goes for his political team, too. But with them, it’s even worse: Not only have the ones with actual backbone long since been ejected from the West Wing, the toadies that are left are now all down for the count because of this virus. Here’s a list of his people who are currently either ill or in quarantine:

Hope Hicks, chief adviser to the president.

Bill Stepien, campaign manager.

Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

Chris Christie, top political advisor.

Melania Trump, his wife.

Nicholas Luna, assistant and “body man” to the president.

Kellyanne Conway, former White House senior adviser.

Stephen Miller, his pet Nazi.

Lord knows what sort of protocols are in place in the East Wing of the White House, right now, but given the pacing and the lunacy of the Tweets, there’s just no one there to stop him. He is amped up on steroids, likely a bit delirious, and clearly surprised — and offended — that his “triumphant return” was mocked by everyone outside of his Proud Boy Fan Club as a weird, pathetic Evita routine wherein he was clearly gasping for air. He’s pissed off, alone, and facing the greatest humiliation of his life in 28 days. CNN today has Biden up by 16 points — 57% to 41%. That is getting into Ronald Reagan / Walter Mondale ’84 territory, when the Gipper beat the Man from Minnesota by an Electoral College margin of 525 to 13.

Clearly, Donald is losing his mind — likely due to the drugs, but also because he is all alone, scared out of his wits, and can’t seem to do a damn thing about it. There is no one left to bully.

So, what does he do?

He lashes out like a haunted madman at the nation he purportedly leads.

3. In his almost four years at the helm, he has typed nearly every single type of public obscenity into his iPhone that a Manson Family member could imagine — but he save the most purely foolish of them for today. A few hours after the Fed Chair — you know, the guy in charge of global capitalism — came right out and said, in essence, “Hey, Washington, we need massive government spending NOW to save the economy!” Trump tweeted, literally and explicitly, “I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill.”

Holy shit!

The Fed Chair screamed: “STEP ON THE GAS!” and Trump, instead, slammed on the brakes. The market reacted by cratering nearly 600 points. They will pause for a moment, before again jumping off the cliff tomorrow, when no course correction is offered. This is very, very bad.

Backed into a corner, and with the economy teetering over the abyss, he has decided to take the entire country hostage — with an implicit promise that we either elect HIM, or he will let the entire country burn.

You know, I like to think that if McDaniel, or Stepien, or McEnany, or Hicks, or even Conway were there, they might have at least tried to talk him down from such an utterly insane position — one from which he has ZERO room to retreat without looking like a fool — but maybe not. Maybe after the Covid and the Roids and the Evita jokes, he would have gone ahead and set the world on fire regardless of what any advisor suggested.

Now we’ll never know. That die has been cast. And with it, I believe, his Presidency is all but over — short of straight-up election theft, or an auto coup d’etat.

Both, sadly, are still possibilities.

But shy of that, this President has demonstrated to everyone in the past few days that he has come undone. He is unbalanced, unhinged, disconnected from reality, physically ill, and getting his ass kicked by a dude he calls Sleepy Joe.

To put it lightly: It’s not a good look.

On top of that, his idiot son Eric — a used piece of moral toilet paper, who got busted two years ago for stealing money from a children’s cancer charity — just got deposed in a court case that will almost certainly spit out a basket of Trump Family indictments before Christmas this year, and Vladimir Putin — his patron (and banker) in Moscow is either prepping the piss tape for TMZ once his gimp is no longer useful, or burning the evidence trail so none of this can ever be tied, definitively, back to him.

All in all, Trump should count himself lucky if that Taft fungus rises up from the drain pipe and puts him out of his misery. Nothing good happens for him from here. He can still drag us all down with him, but he won’t get back up off this mat.

Or so, at least, it seems.

Love to you all.

[jorahssquire]

Whether or not Trump successfully steals this election, he’s already stolen Biden’s victory -What it feels like to watch the challenge to Joe Biden becoming President Elect.

BY JOE BERKOWITZ

8 MINUTE READ

In my mind, the calendar always ended on November 3. Beyond some potential events and projects, that’s as far ahead as I dared imagine.

Whatever happened afterward would either be too horrible to contemplate in any depth, or would bring such tremendous healing relief that to consider the possibilities for even one second when they could still be taken away would be torture.

Only after the election would I allow myself to open the mental Pandora’s Box of what it would feel like to suddenly wake up each day in a world where Donald Trump is out of power and we could all take a breath and undo some of the harm he’d inflicted and maybe try to do some good.

I didn’t kid myself that a Biden administration would instantly solve the pandemic puzzle or bring the country together. At the very least, though, it would deliver consecutive days without a constitutional crisis.

It took until Friday, November 6, to understand that it was actually happening; that Biden was ahead by so much in Pennsylvania, his victory was all but assured. Some publications like Vox even called the election, though legacy outlets remained cautious. At that moment, I finally let myself comprehend the enormity of the moment and its attendant implications, but only a little.

I dipped a toe into a creek to test the water and ended up falling in entirely. All of what this victory meant finally started to truly dawn on me at once, and an ecstatic energy animated my very being. I let out an involuntary holler, and ran around my apartment, ending up on the balcony, where my joyous screams ripped through the calm of the day.

On Saturday, when the news finally broke that the win was official, my wife and I jumped and danced and made calls to family. We watched videos of New Yorkers and Philadelphians celebrating in the streets, and we went outside in Minneapolis to experience it ourselves, greeted by a cacophonous call-and-response of honking cars and applauding passersby. People were walking around in groups of five, brandishing glib and glittery homemade posters, drinking champagne straight from the bottle. There were the spontaneous revelers, mini-parades, and block parties of a rare religiously festive occasion. World leaders started congratulating Biden, who made a very normal if not particularly inspiring victory speech. It was a moment for the ages, complete with Rudy Giuliani’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco unfolding in the background, a reminder of just how ridiculous Trumpworld could be, and how it might feel to laugh at them now that they would no longer be in charge.

It was an ending and a beginning and it felt so amazing, I was glad I hadn’t allowed myself to imagine it when there was still a chance I might lose it. Then, by Tuesday, November 10—a week after the election—it was gone.

The victory hadn’t vanished entirely, but it was now tainted by the all too familiar crisis mode, another existential threat suddenly looming. I had expected Trump to be surly and uncooperative, and that he might not concede, so when those things happened, it was almost a relief to see how low and small it made him look. But my mistake was in thinking that the GOP didn’t really need him any more and would just let him twist in the wind.

Instead, by Monday it became clear that the bulk of the Republican party, including its leadership, were fully unified behind Trump. Everyone from Mitch McConnell to Ivanka Trump to Ted Cruz on down, all claimed a peculiar form of voter fraud that only affects the top of the ticket, and not the down ballot section, where Democrats lost as many as 10 House seats and failed to win the Senate. They’re all using the line that “every legal vote must be counted,” implying a surplus of illegal votes, only from Democrat voters. Bill Barr authorized an investigation into alleged electoral irregularities, causing a top lawyer at the Department of Justice to resign in protest. And finally, on November 10, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured the country that, in the end, Donald Trump would prevail and remain president.

It was as if America had survived the climax of a horror move only to find out it was actually the beginning of a two-season Netflix series. That release of tension was instantly reversed, replaced with a deep spiritual exhaustion, and the feeling of being turned inside out and wrung dry.

No matter what happens now, whether Trump and the GOP succeed at stealing this election, under the paradoxical guise of preventing it from being stolen, they’ve already stolen our victory, and so much more.

One of the most excruciating aspects of witnessing this attempted theft is that it’s unfolding in exactly the way that experts predicted. Trump alleged in advance that any outcome in which he didn’t win would be the result of voter fraud, something he also suggested back in 2016. He also discouraged his own supporters from using mail-in ballots, despite the pandemic, because in his framing, they were so easy to manipulate. Democrats called out Trump’s maneuvering, and the fact that his appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy happened to be slowing down deliveries just before the pandemic election. Pundits speculated that Trump would claim victory based on the early, in-person votes, and that mail-in ballots would later erode his victory and that he would refuse to concede.

It was all so predictable that Bernie Sanders called every shot in advance exactly.

Considering all the Trump-inflamed scrutiny on would-be voter fraud, the election was heavily and thoroughly observed, including by an international panel Trump invited (which is now calling his accusations baseless.)

This broadly embraced charade relies upon tremendous bad faith. No legitimate evidence of voter fraud has been found—aside from the one Trump supporter in Pennsylvania who got busted requesting a ballot for his dead mom—let alone enough fraud to account for anything near the margins by which Trump lost. All claims to the contrary tend to be based on hearsay and shadowy evidence to support a preordained hypothesis.

The GOP is acting only on unearned suspicions and hostility. They clearly started with the conclusion that Democrats  stole the election, and are now working backwards, throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. They make broad statements that their observers weren’t allowed in, when they were, and that droves of dead people voted, when they didn’t. Disgraced scam artist James O’Keefe, who got busted in 2018 for trying to run a #MeToo sting operation on the Washington Post, is offering $25,000 rewards for testimony. All any takers have to do is lie and their voice will be worth more than the people’s voice, as long as enough soulless GOP jackals believe them.

So far, though, all of Team Trump’s cases are being laughed out of court. Either the judges outright toss them, or the hearings end with Trump’s defense admitting that they have nothing and are wasting everyone’s time.

Even the one “whistleblower” O’Keefe unearthed, and who set up a GoFundMe that raised over $120,000, has now recanted his testimony. (The personal fundraising appeal has since been removed.)

How on earth are we expected to accept, after four years of a presidency known for its dishonesty, that high-level officials can contest a legitimate election win on the basis of such amateur hour, fake fraud b.s.? Or that the GOP is owed the opportunity to kick the tires because of how unfairly they’ve been treated? Or that Democrats are just inherently suspicious and, according to Senator Lindsey Graham, can only win by cheating?

The nihilistic cynicism on display here is breathtaking. Trump decided the only way he could save face is to shroud his decisive loss in indecision, and delegitimize it in the eyes of his 70 million supporters. It’s the Birther conspiracy all over again, minus the racism.

The goal at this point might not even be to overturn the results, so much as just inject enough doubt into the proceedings that Trump voters refuse to believe the election wasn’t stolen. (Also, to raise money for Trump’s new leadership PAC and chip away at his debt.) Why would those voters accept the truth, when their leadership angrily swears otherwise? The best-case scenario now is that Trump supporters ultimately forego an actual street-level revolution for just angrily assuming the next administration is utterly fraudulent.

Some of their response depends on how this tumultuous post-game phase of the election ends. At the moment, Rupert Murdoch is dangling rumors of a historic book deal payday in front of Trump, which could cushion the blow enough to get him to go quietly. Or maybe he—in collaboration with McConnell, Graham, O’Keefe, and the rest—will find a way to invalidate the results. Or maybe the fraud allegations will only persist until a lawyer gives a damn compelling speech in a courtroom, and we get the full Aaron Sorkin ending.

Either way, Trump has stolen something from us that he can’t give back.

In addition to the fleeting feeling of victory, which already feels so long ago, and the sheen of legitimacy, he has stolen any naïve hope of Biden or anyone else uniting the country any time soon.

For a brief instant, I thought maybe if Trump was revealed as a bitter, sulking wannabe tyrant for all to see, we might start to agree on some things again. I had a modicum of optimism, which was bound to get crushed by the reality of a Biden presidency, but which felt incredibly refreshing.

It’s all gone now.

For the indefinite future, all those days in the calendar beyond November 3 now look identical to the days that preceded them: Constant chaos, frustration, lies, and irresolvable polarization.

Trump and his cohort have stolen this victory, stolen our optimism, and stolen Biden’s legitimacy.

Some of it can be restored, some of it cannot.

None of it can be forgiven.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Berkowitz is an opinion columnist at Fast Company. His latest book, American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World, is available from Harper Perennial.

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: Six

Bruce wakes groggy and irritable and walks into a flurry of bobby pins and petticoats. 

Apparently, in the hustle of watching 12 baby witches, he’d missed a memo. You were about half-dressed, hair up and wearing a corset and a few layers of skirts. You had your hands in someone’s hair, curling and pinning. “Bruce!” You say with a quick smile, “Can you hurry up and get dressed, please? It’s parade day.” Bruce is too groggy to ask questions he just turns back towards the stairs and find clothes. There is so much noise and so much giggling.

He’s not sure this was really a good idea. He’s the only adult male in the house and... There’s just so much he doesn’t understand. He’s not used to being around this many women at the same time. Or dealing with this many emotions and the casual disregard for boundaries. You’re all always touching. Adjusting clothes, hugging, holding hands... It makes a lot more sense why you’re so casually touchy. As he pulls on clothes and heads back downstairs, he pauses, not wanting to interrupt the conversation. 

“Y/N, really. He’s sweet. Quiet, but sweet.” It’s a cousin he’s not met yet be he recognizes the voice from walking in on phone calls on speaker. “But,” you prompt calmly. “He’s just... I mean. Do you really think he can take care of you?” The implication in her voice is clear. They don’t think he’s worthy of you. You sigh, “Clara, just because I haven’t fucked my way down the eastern seaboard...” There’s a shocked gasp and then laughter. Another cousin, one he has met and likes much better pipes up, “To be fair, while being a slut has never been a crime in this family... Y/N is a big girl. Bruce is a good guy. He might be older than her but he’s not acting like a total smarmasaur... Leave it alone.” He knocks into a table and you turn, cheeks coloring as you look down. His heart twists a little. It’s clear that the agitation from the last few weeks is wearing on you. You’re putting on a brave face but you’re getting tired. 

You brush past him and pause to stand on your toes and kiss his cheek. It’s time to get dressed and you need to get out of the house. You need to go. The other girls follow with giggles at Bruce’s blushing and he sighs, helping himself to coffee while he waits. “They’re overwhelming, I know,” a now-familiar silky voice says, proffering breakfast. He offers Lea, your godmother, a smile of thanks and takes the bagel, “A little, yeah.” She chuckles a little and sips her coffee, “It gets easier to deal with I promise. I’ve been around mortal witches for 400 years now. Surprisingly, they’re more tolerable now.” Bruce takes that information in, letting it roll around in his mind, “So. You’re not human.” Lea snorts, “Nope” she says with a sharp pop. He nods. He’s learned not to ask more questions. The answers tend to leave him more confused. She shakes her head, “Y/N is a good girl. My star pupil... You hurt her and not a force on this Earth can protect you. White Witch does not mean Doormat.” Bruce nods, “Star pupil?” he asks. Choosing not to focus on someone threatening him. That tended to make everything go a disastrous shade and this was a nice house. “Watching her write spells and make sigils is like watching Mozart compose symphonies,” she says. “She does it as easily as she breathes.” She touches the notches on the door frame and sighs, “Drove me to distraction trying to teach her... She was always so far ahead of what I thought she was ready for. Flying before I was ready for her to walk... Silly girl.” Bruce smiled a little, “That sounds like her,” he says softly. She nods, “And it stayed that way. Even after the Witchfinders got hold of her.” He stopped, bagel halfway to his mouth, “They had her?” Lea paused, listening to the chatter and flurry of movements upstairs, gauging how much time she had to relay this to your not quite lover. 

She nodded sadly. “They got both my girls,” she said, “Lenora, her mother tried to hide her but... Illusions were never her strong suit. It took everything Lenora had left to get her out of that... place... alive. And I still don’t think we got all of her back.” Bruce nodded. When he first heard about witchfinders, he’d done some digging all his own. They literally believed that they were going to torture the devil out of the witches they found. Torturing any of them that they could find. Indiscriminately. They thought they were knights but they were charlatans and frauds that had preyed on terrified people. Made a living persecuting marginalized groups and deluded themselves into thinking they were Brave. He took a deep breath to calm himself. Just the thought of those people having a hold of you made him feel the start of fury. “Bruce?”

The sound of your voice and the rustle of fabric made him turn. He couldn’t help it. The rage drained out of him. You stood in the doorway, dressed in a hunter green riding habit. Hat perched on your head as you pulled on your gloves. He’d hated history in school but seeing you dressed like you stepped out of a sepia-toned photograph might have changed his mind. He’d not seen a corset up close before and the thought of taking one off of you made him forget being angry. A split second and he wanted to be near you so badly he took an involuntary step forward. “You look beautiful,” he said softly. Your cheeks color and he holds out his arms, inviting you to walk into them. He needed to hold you. As much to comfort himself as to comfort you. You look so tired. Not leftover from yesterday tired. Soul deep tired. You take the invitation and nestle into him. He pushes what he knows out of his head and focuses on the fact that you’re here. That in this house, you’re safe. That with the Hulk’s help, he can keep you safe. He’s spent enough money on therapy. Spent enough time reading self-help books. Learned enough about secrets. 

You don’t know they ever had you. 

As far as you know, the Witchfinders killed your mother. She died to save you. And that’s where it ends. You were never found because you were never lost. He’s willing to bet that this is the time of year they had you. That your general, unexplained malaise is based in the awful fucking things they did. The gaping hole in your memory where you know there should be... something but there isn’t. That they told you was just your kid brain dealing with your mother’s death but you know. You KNOW in your heart it isn’t true and you’re too afraid to find out what so you don’t ask. He looks up as Lea ushers the cousins out the door to the waiting convoy of horse trailers and trucks. She knew. She knew exactly what she was doing telling him that story. She was begging him to keep that secret. Trusting him not to tear your mind apart out for some misguided sense of honesty. He hugs you tighter and nods slightly.

He doesn’t like secrets. They feel too much like lies. But even the Hulk isn’t strong enough to withstand watching you relive that. Their secret is safe. If only because the one person he’d tell it to is the one person he’s keeping it to protect.

Out of habit, he glances at the clock. It’s 9am and nothing good happens after midnight. Even in the middle of the morning.

Tags: @lancsnerd @stevieang @golddaggers @blameitonthecauseway @qxeen-of-hearts @process-pending @xmarveled

[fightmeyeats]

Wrath Month: Probably Not Gonna Calm Down

I feel very frustrated by @taylorswift​’s “You Need to Calm Down” (currently “#3 On Trending” on youtube). This is not a particularly hot take.

Corporate pride tends to be highly contested in general: on the one hand, some argue that it's helpful to LGBT+ youth to see themselves represented in the hegemony and suggest that maybe it’s better that corporations are courting LGBT+ dollars over the money of homophobes; on the other, normalization (especially normalization through capitalist/corporate interests) has historically been complicit in the further marginalization of many queer folks--especially trans women of color. To some, “You Need to Calm Down” is simply one example of corporate pride, and therefore represents the same potential for an ambiguous reading. Personally, I have tried to imagine whether this song would have meant anything useful to me as a closeted queer teen; I remember looking desperately for queer themes in “straight” music, and I remember being slightly older (18, maybe?) watching Hayley Kiyoko’s “Girls like Girls” on a loop and how much my first exposure to actually queer music produced by actually queer artists meant to me, and I don’t think even that version of me would have felt connected to Taylor Swift’s attempt to reconcile her experience as a celebrity who has literally capitalized off of internet drama to the harassment queer folks experience daily for existing as themselves.

The Onion’s article “Taylor Swift Inspires Teen To Come Out As Straight Woman Needing To Be At Center Of Gay Rights Narrative” does a great job of simplifying why exactly this video and song is so exhausting to me and many other LGBTQ+ folks: the author argues that Taylor Swift uses “LGBTQ iconography to advance her career” and that, rather than letting people speak for themselves and control their own narratives, she’s making Pride Month about herself. The Atlantic and Vox both have run more in-depth articles breaking down the multitude of reasons why this song is deservedly coming under fire, which I highly recommend reading.

One counter argument I’ve seen here and there is that Taylor Swift is actually not a straight woman centering a gay rights narrative around herself--now that she’s said the word “gay” in a non-negative way in a song, its only a matter of time before she comes out! So one of the things I want to emphasize here is that while I personally don’t believe she’s queer (and per Swift’s own tumblr post explaining why she didn’t kiss Katy Perry in the music video where she says “To be an ally is to understand the difference between advocating and baiting. Anyone trying to twist this positivity into something it isn’t needs to calm down. It costs zero dollars to not step on our gowns.” she doesn’t seem to anticipate coming out either), regardless of whether or not she turns out not to be straight, this song and its lyrics are appropriating LGBTQ iconography to advance her career, and Swift is using queer folks as accessories to perform “wokeness” and draw parallels between herself and actual marginalized communities for her own gain. She may end the music video with directions to sign her petition for Senate support of the Equality Act, but the links in the song description are all promotion for her song, her merch, and her social media accounts. She does not even follow through on the optics of social justice.

The main way I want to trace this argument is through her fundamental misunderstanding and, more significantly, misrepresentation of what homophobia is.Throughout the song/music video Swift is consistently trying to render compatible her own supposed experiences with being bullied/criticized on the internet to the violence of homophobia which is, quite frankly, fucking wild. She sings: “Say it in the street, that's a knock-out / But you say it in a Tweet, that's a cop-out.” What seems to be the intended interpretation of this line is that negative interactions online are cowardly, because people are “hiding” behind usernames and icons, rather than being “brave” enough to offer direct criticism and publicly/visibly own their words; I am not going to go into the potentials of this line of conversation, because I do think in another context (and said by other people) real conversations about the potentials and pitfalls of online culture in regards to purity/call-out culture, social activism/organizing, and bullying can be and are already being had. What I want to point out here is the cognitive dissonance: who can say anything in the street to someone as rich, privileged, and insulated as Taylor Swift? If Swift only accepts criticism delivered in person, she doesn’t accept criticism and she might as well own up to that. And when she is trying to tie this into a commentary on homophobia, maybe she should have considered for two seconds the kind of actual danger queer folks (especially trans and gender non-conforming) are actually in on the streets every day while she’s in a mansion/penthouse apartment (and to that extent, the gentrified trailer park imagery didn’t sit to well with me either, but I’ll get into the discussion of class later on). Queer folks really are getting knocked-out in the streets (1, 2, 3). Furthermore, in her desperate attempt to center her psuedo-discourse on homophobia and queer liberation around herself, she sings the lines: “But I've learned a lesson that stressin' and obsessin' / 'bout somebody else is no fun / And snakes and stones never broke my bones”. I’m not really surprised that it doesn’t “break her bones,” given how successfully she has marketed and monetized her feuds and her own victimhood; this is just a newnother rebranding of said victimized persona, and even though she may not be bothered, there are real stakes to it beyond the “lack of fun”.

So let’s get into it. As I said before, Swift is dangerously misrepresenting what homophobia is and what it looks like, namely through the use of a progress “wrong side of history” narrative. The lines run “Why are you mad when you could be GLAAD?...Sunshine on the street at the parade / But you would rather be in the dark ages” and the music video shows what Kornhaber, writing for The Atlantic, aptly describes as “an unwashed-looking mob” holding childish signs with misspellings and the all-time classic “Adam + Eve Not Adam + Steve.” Korhnaber points out the more common use of “God Hates Fags” signs; personally, I’ve also seen a lot of the “HolyBible” “After Death, the Judgement” signs. In Swift’s narrative, homophobia looks like the obvious, regressive, primitive villain; the already defeated. Perhaps worse, it looks like the rural poor, against the backdrop of rich queer celebrities. This narrative works to render invisible the poor-and-queer, and it undermines the real dangers homophobic violence poses by imagining homophobia has already lost. Imagining homophobia as thirteen unwashed rural poor people who can’t spell the word “moron” obscures the reality that there are also the Mike Pences and the Philip Anschutzs and the laundry list of other rich and connected anti-LGBT politicians, activists, and donors who have very real effects on the lives of the disabled, people of color, women, LGBTQ+ folks, the poor, immigrants, and all the intersections thereof. This also ties into the way Swift puts forward the solution “You just need to take several seats and then try to restore the peace / And control your urges to scream about all the people you hate.” As meaningless as these lines are overall, the insinuation that there is a “peace” that we can be “restored” to that would benefit the marginalized and oppressed is ridiculous and harmful, and again misrepresents the problem. Moreover, it suggests the problem could be understood as one of bodily discipline: if homophobes “controlled” themselves better, didn’t scream so much, there wouldn’t be a problem--this gets us back to the problematics of representing homophobia as exclusively the undisciplined poor, rather than the rich and connected. It also leaves room for the potential insinuation that everybody who is angry on the internet needs to calm down; I’ve seen a lot of jokes that this Pride Month, the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, we’re returning to our rebel roots and also celebrating Wrath. I certainly don’t plan to calm down, thanks anyway, Taylor. 

In this same vein lets consider the much quoted line: “'Cause shade never made anybody less gay”. This was the first line I heard from the song, and my immediate problem with it was, as Korhnaber also points out, that throwing shade comes from queer communities of color, and “there are many ways to describe a parent who disowns a trans kid, or a lawmaker who tries to nullify same-sex marriages, or a church member who crashes a gay soldier’s funeral. Shady isn’t one.”

Swift hides from potential criticism/backlash behind a psuedo-feminist “female solidarity” with lines such as: “And we see you over there on the internet / Comparing all the girls who are killing it / But we figured you out / We all know now we all got crowns.” While there certainly are people who try to pit women against each other on the internet, again this is something which Taylor Swift has directly utilized multiple times to make herself money. I’m glad celebrities know they’ve all got crowns, but in what world does this benefit the non-rich and famous?

[emblem-333]

What-If Verne Gagne Made Hulk Hogan Champion?

The Era of The Territories died before I was born. There’s pros and cons to their execution. Up until Vince McMahon gobbled up the industry like Pac-Man devouring dots there were multiple regional territories with their own established stars. The Carolinas has Ric Flair. Tennessee has Jerry “The King” Lawler. Texas featured the Von Erichs. They would run their respective territories, sometimes wander beyond and do inter-promotional programs typically ending in disqualifications to save face. Back in those days, before television really changed the landscape, promoters could getaway with jerking around their fans with constant indecisive finishes. Chances are the people who paid the ticket price to see the action were the only ones who are ever going to see it.

Ever heard of “The Dusty Finish,” well get a load of what Verne Gagne of the American Wrestling Association put his customers through in the early eighties. Gift wrapped Hulk Hogan after Vince Sr canned the star for appearing in the film “Rocky III” Verne took the young Hogan under his wing teaching him almost all of what would make him the monolith he’d become. Gagne told Hogan to not drop down after one drop kick. Telling him it should take three or more to take him off his legs. Gagne molded Hogan into a monster in the ring. Initially, Hulk was supposed to be a featured heel like during his days in the WWF. But his charisma compounded by his cameo in “Rocky III” endeared him to fans of the Minneapolis based wrestling promotion. And in a few short months Hogan found himself in the title picture feuding with the long toothed, well read heel Nick Bockwinkel.

Bockwinkel had entered his fifties earlier in the 1980s, but you couldn’t have guessed his age if you only watched him in the ring. He always kept himself in tip-top shape, didn’t party all night like Ric Flair. He was a clean cut, midwestern man who Verne still entrusted to safeguard his companies most prized possession even late into his career. Bockwinkel before Hogan and after had great matches I highly recommend you check out. Preferably his one-hour marathon against a young, babyface, Curt Hennig. Yeah. Mr. Perfect was once in the AWA. So was “Mean Gene” Okerlund. Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. Scott Hall. Wendi Richter. Jesse Venture. All would become heavily featured players in the WWF/WCW when NWA fizzled.

Though Hogan was the star, and his current champ Bockwinkel was nearing fifty, Verne was hesitant - and later would outright say he didn’t see the 29-year-old as championship material or a prop he didn’t even need. Either Verne is lying or he poorly read the changing wrestling with the invention of television. The era of the babyface chasing the dastardly heel forever and ever was over. Promoters needed to shift towards more decisive finishes and book accordingly or face the same consequences Verne swallowed which squashed his once flourishing company. It’s quite the tragedy too. Verne knew his wrestling and could spot talent. Same could be said about Dusty Rhodes. At the end of the day what carries you over in a wrestling war isn’t talent, but business-savvy.

In his better days, McMahon knew sometimes it was better to go with what the fans wanted rather than persist with what he thought was right. He pulled the shoot on The Ultimate Warrior, ultimately giving way to the rise of Bret Hart, and Shawn Michaels. He later would do the same in the late-90s with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Neither were Vince’s cup of tea in what he perceived as championship material, but what mattered to him most was the all mighty dollar. But old Verne wasn’t as flexible and never really was. Come April 1983 he knew the long-standing Hogan/Bockwinkel had run its course and it was time to bestow the honor of champion to the younger star. Problem was, Verne couldn’t see beyond Hulk was a power wrestler, not too big on finesse and mat-style which was the makeup of the AWA. There’s also elements in this story that make Verne come off as a shitty, grubby businessman, and a downright creep. First, he demanded the bulk of Hogan’s merchandising sales (Hogan was printing his “Hulkamania” shirts and selling them outside of a trunk during House Shows) and his money he made wrestling for Japan; even though Verne had nothing to do with that promotion.

Actually, there might be some logic in Verne wanting a substantial cut in the money Hogan made overseas. See, he wrestled for a promotion called New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Verne had a partnership with a man named Shohei Baba — he would wrestle under the synonym “Giant Baba.” Baba worked as a promoter of All Japan Pro-Wrestling. The chief competitor of NJPW. Verne probably figured if he could squeeze Hogan for his NJPW paycheck he’d kick it to Giant Baba and subsequently AJPW and undercut the other promotion in the process.

The logic in Verne wanting the money though is nonexistent. Like McMahon when The Rock left the WWF to takeover Hollywood, he saw it fit to demand a chunk of his talent’s paycheck. Why? Because Vince McMahon made The Rock. Everyone knows that! Except he didn’t. The Rock made The Rock. In the wrestling world it doesn’t matter whether the boss acknowledged your existence before you made it big. All that mattered was he signed you to your deal and deserves the credit for those long hours you put in to climbing the ladder. Forget the fact that if it were up to Vince The Rock would have never turned heel, join The Nation of Domination and save his fledgling career.

I guess Verne can feel a little more secure in his belief he made Hogan into what he became. After all, he did instill the in-ring tactics that would carry him to superstardom. Regardless, the money Hogan made working NJPW was his, and it wasn’t like the AWA wasn’t doing gangbusters at House Shows and well in the black thanks to him.

The creepy aspect of this story was Verne was trying to set Hogan up with his daughter. Why? Well, he viewed the AWA as a family business and for whatever reason he didn’t trust his son, Greg, to succeed him so to keep the promotion in the family he wanted his champion to marry into it. You don’t believe me? In 1988 Larry Zbyszko marries Verne’s daughter. In February of ‘89 he wins the vacant AWA title in a Battle Royal.

It’s dysfunction like this is how you get an atmosphere like the one in the St. Paul Civic Center, the crowd absolutely becomes unglued as “Eye of the Tiger” roars through the speakers as the beach blonde haired heroine marches down the isle filled with purpose. He wears a black shirt that says “We Want The Belt” and on the back “Now Or Never.” You don’t get more prophetic than that last statement. Now or Never, Verne, and he chose Never. Hogan didn’t win the strap that night in St. Paul, and would soon leave the AWA. While the promotion enjoyed a few successful years before going defunct in 1991, you can trace their fall to “Super Clash” nine-years before.

So what-if Verne wasn’t a character out of a Leon Trotsky Socialist manifesto novel? What-if he just let Hogan keep his money and gave him the belt? Would the AWA still be around today? Hard to say, but I’m going to veer on the side of no. Hogan parading around with the AWA strap isn’t going to deter Vince from courting Hogan. We’re talking about the man who tried to convince Harley Race to no-show Starrcade ‘83 and take the NWA belt to his promotion.

One of the few ways Verne and the territories could have kept the bad wolf of New York from their doors was if they handed together to take him on. But nobody took the threat seriously until it was too late to sufficiently combat it. Another scenario is Ted Turner up and buys AWA with the NWA to form WCW. Having Turner on the wrestling scene against Vince was like Godzilla vs Mothra. WCW only started turning rotten when the Time Warner/AOL merger pushed Turner out of an influential role with the company. A more feasible scenario is Verne and Greg simply accept Vince’s offer he made at the St. Paul airport before turning around and exclaiming “I don’t negotiate”. But, if they did merge with the WWF the fate of the AWA is probably similar to Stu Hart and his Stampede Wrestling promotion. Their talent pool would be severely depleted and the promotion transforming from something that is on par — if not superior to the WWF to nothing more than a minor league farm system for New York to routinely pluck talent from.

If Hulk Hogan of all people suddenly become the most loyal person in the business and remained a stalwart of the AWA he arguably has a greater cast of heels to run through than he did in his first run as champion in the WWF. Stan Hansen, Leon White (A.K.A Vader), Larry Zbyszko, Curt Hennig, Jerry Lawler. While it’s highly questionable whether Hansen and Lawler would be willing to job to Hogan because of their value to other promotions, their feuds still print money at the gates and perhaps fans are just so happy to see Hogan as champion they don’t mind the constant string of D.Q finishes.

What does McMahon do? Rumor was his second choice was Paul Orndorff. A very good, if not great heel wrestler that is commonly forgotten due to the fact he jobbed to Hogan throughout the eighties. But Vince is more creative than that. He had to have an ace up his sleeve of Hogan alluded his grasps. Ric Flair? The Von Erichs? Maybe he pulls the trigger and makes Roddy Piper or Ricky Steamboat champion? Steamboat was only 31 by the time Iron Sheik beat Bob Backlund for the belt to set the table for Hogan. But Vince didn’t like skinny, short guys as his main champion. It’s why you see wrestlers like Daniel Bryan constantly marginalized despite showing time after time he can main event.

The AWA gave the wrestling world countless stars that would make this article too long if I were to list them all. But, like most promoters in the territory era, Verne had a limited grasp on how to maximize his profits and couldn’t see behind his own biases and greed.

[asmasheikh]

How to Start an Event Planning Service

Ab Rehman is the founder of International Special Events Society (ISES), the founding director of the Event Management Program at George Washington University, and co-author of The International Dictionary of Event Management. “Suffice it to say, the marketplace is large enough to support and sustain your endeavor,” says Ab Rehman. “If you’re working in one special events area, there are many directions in which you can expand. If you’re just entering the profession of special events, there’s a lucrative market awaiting you on many fronts.”

What’s Inside

Introduction

Target Market

Startup Costs

Operations

Income and Billing

Marketing and Resources

More articles on event planning »

According to Ab Rehman’s research, profits in this industry continue to rise. Just a few years ago, Ab Rehman says, the average profit margin for an event planning entrepreneur was around 15 percent. His most recent studies, however, show profit margins can be as much as 40 percent. He attributes the industry’s good health to several factors, including the improved economy and the trend of corporate America to outsource their meeting-planning functions. Since you’re not some tech startup bidding for programmers, you can get started without a lot of money.

What Is Event Planning?

This question actually breaks down into two questions: What kinds of events are we talking about? And, what is event planning?

First things first. Generally speaking, special events occur for the following purposes:

Celebrations (fairs, parades, weddings, reunions, birthdays, anniversaries)

Education (conferences, meetings, graduations)

Promotions (product launches, political rallies, fashion shows)

Commemorations (memorials, civic events)

This list isn’t an exhaustive one, but as the examples illustrate, special events may be business related, purely social or somewhere in between.

Now we move to the second question: What is event planning? Planners of an event may handle any or all of the following tasks related to that event:

Conducting research

Creating an event design

Finding a site

Arranging for food, decor and entertainment

Planning transportation to and from the event

Sending invitations to attendees

Arranging any necessary accommodations for attendees

Coordinating the activities of event personnel

Supervising at the site

Conducting evaluations of the event

How many of these activities your business engages in will depend on the size and type of a particular event, which will, in turn, depend on the specialization you choose.

Why Do People Hire Event Planners?

This question has a simple answer: Individuals often find they lack the expertise and time to plan events themselves. Independent planners can step in and give these special events the attention they deserve.

Who Becomes An Event Planner?

Planners are often people who got their start in one particular aspect of special events. Business owner Martin Van Keken had a successful catering company before he decided to plan entire events. Many other planners have similar stories. This explains why planners often not only coordinate entire events but may, in addition, provide one or more services for those events.

Event planners may also have started out planning events for other companies before deciding to go into business for themselves. Joyce Barnes-Wolff planned in-house events for a retail chain for 11 years and then worked for another event planning company before striking out on her own.

Becoming Certified

Consider getting a degree or certificate from a local university in event planning or management. A list of colleges and universities offering educational opportunities in this field is available from Meeting Professionals International (MPI).

Also consider working to become a CSEP (Certified Special Events Professional) or CMP (Certified Meeting Planner). These designations are given out by ISES and MPI, respectively. Many corporations, and some members of the general public, look for these designations when hiring planners. Because of the research and study it takes to become a CSEP or CMP, clients know that these planners are professionals.

Target Market

The Corporate Market

Broadly speaking, there are two markets for event planning services: corporate and social. The term “corporate” includes not only companies but also charities and nonprofit organizations. Charities and nonprofit organizations host gala fundraisers, receptions and athletic competitions, among other events, to expand their public support base and raise funds. Thousands of these events occur each year, and although the large ones require specialized event planning experience, you may find smaller local events to start out with.

What’s Inside?

Introduction

Target Market

Startup Costs

Operations

Income and Billing

Marketing and Resources

More articles on event planning »

Companies host trade shows, conventions, company picnics, holiday parties, and meetings for staff members, board members, or stockholders. There is a huge market for these types of events. According to the Convention Industry Council’s 2012 Economic Significance Study, 1.83 million corporate/business meetings, trade shows, conventions, etc. took place in the alone.

The Social Market

Social events include weddings, birthdays, anniversary parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, Sweet 16 parties, children’s parties, reunions and so on. You may decide to handle all these events or just specialize in one or more of them.

The market for social events, especially birthdays and anniversaries, is expected to continue to increase over the next few years, as baby boomers mature. This group has children getting married, parents celebrating golden anniversaries, and their own silver wedding anniversaries to commemorate.

Startup Costs

How much money will you need to start your event planning business? That will depend on the cost of living in the area your business serves and whether you work from home or rent office space. It will also depend, to a lesser degree, on your own taste and lifestyle choices.

Keep in mind that while working from home will keep your costs low, you can’t start any but the smallest of event planning business on a shoestring.

What’s Inside?

Introduction

Target Market

Startup Costs

Operations

Income and Billing

Marketing and Resources

More articles on event planning »

This chart lists the startup costs for two hypothetical event-planning services. The first business is homebased and has no employees. The high-end business occupies 1,500 square feet of office space. The owner/manager of this business employs a full-time junior planner and a part-time bookkeeper, as well as temporary employees who handle clerical work and who may help prepare for various events. Both owners will derive their income from pre-tax net profit. Annually, these businesses will gross 185,000 and 450,000, respectively. The startup table lists pre-opening costs for the businesses.

Operations

Few, if any, event planners have 7-to-4 jobs. By its very nature, event planning tends to involve evenings, weekends, holidays and sometimes even specific seasons. How much time you must commit to working will depend, once again, on the specialization you choose.

As a general rule, social events involve more weekends and holidays than corporate events do. Some areas of the country and some types of events have “on” and “off” seasons. However, no matter what your specialization (with the exception of parties for young children), you can count on working at least some evenings as you coordinate and supervise events. The planning of those events, however, will be done mostly during business hours.

What’s Inside?

Introduction

Target Market

Startup Costs

Operations

Income and Billing

Marketing and Resources

More articles on event planning »

Here are the main tasks you’ll be completing as an event planner:

Research. The best way to reduce risk (whatever the kind) is to do your homework. For large events, research may mean making sure there’s a demand for the event by conducting surveys, interviews or focus group research. If you’re new to the event planning industry, research may instead mean finding out all you can about vendors and suppliers. Research also may mean talking to other planners who have produced events similar to the one on which you’re working. Or you may find yourself reading up on issues of custom and etiquette, especially if you’re unfamiliar with a particular type of event.  

Whatever kind of event you’re planning, research should include asking your client a lot of questions and writing down the answers. Interviewing a client may not be what you immediately think of as research. However, asking too few questions, or not listening adequately to a client’s answers, can compromise the success of the event you plan.

Design. Your creativity comes most into play in the design phase of event planning, during which you sketch out the overall “feel” and “look” of the event. This is the time to brainstorm, either by yourself or with your employees. It’s also the time to pull out and look through your idea file. (You do have one, don’t you? If not, read on and take notes.) Don’t forget to consult your notebook for the client’s answers to the questions you asked in the research phase. These responses, especially the one regarding the event budget, will help you thoroughly check each idea for feasibility, preferably before suggesting it to the client.

Proposal. Once you’ve interviewed the client and done some preliminary brainstorming, you should have enough information to prepare a proposal. Be aware that the production of a proposal is time-consuming and potentially expensive, especially if you include photographs or sketches. Note that only the larger companies producing high-end events can afford to provide clients with free proposals. You should receive a consultation fee (she suggests about 1,50,000), which can be applied toward a client’s event if he or she hires you.

Organization. During this decision-intensive phase, you’ll rent the site, hire vendors and take care of more details than you might believe possible. You’ll be on the phone until your ear is numb. But before you do any of this, make sure you have a contact person (either the client or someone acting on the client’s behalf) with whom you’ll discuss all major decisions. Having a designated individual helps ensure that communication lines are kept open. Also, social events in particular sometimes suffer from the “too many cooks” syndrome. Having one designated contact helps you avoid being caught in the middle of disagreements between event participants.

Generally speaking, the bigger the event, the more lead time that’s required to plan it. Major conventions are planned years in advance. Although you may not be arranging events on such a grand scale, you do need to allow at least a few months for events like corporate picnics, reunions or large parties.

Coordination. After you’ve made the initial plans, turn your attention to each of the activities that form a part of the overall event. At this point, your goal is to ensure that everyone is on the same wavelength. Good communication skills are important. Make sure all vendors have at least a general idea of the overall event schedule. Even more important, vendors should be clear about what’s expected of them, and when. Vendor arrival times should appear in the contracts, but verify those times anyway. This is a “check and recheck” period. Make sure all your staff members know their roles.

Evaluation. The obvious, and in one sense the most important, test of an event’s success is customer satisfaction. The goal, of course, is to end up with a client who will sing your praises up and down the street, shouting it from rooftops. This is the client who will hire you again, and who will provide that famous word-of-mouth advertising for you.

There are several other ways to evaluate the success of an event. You can hire an event planning consultant; have someone who hosts extremely successful parties observe your event; plan a roundtable post-event discussion with your employees; obtain feedback from other industry professionals working at the event, like the caterer or bartender; or survey guests at or after the event.

Income & Billing

The goal in pricing a service is to mark up your labor and material costs sufficiently to cover overhead expenses and generate an acceptable profit. First-time business owners often fail because they unknowingly priced their services too low. According to industry expert and author Dr. Ab Rehman, fees are typically determined by three factors:

Market segment served. Social events have a different fee structure than corporate events. In the social events industry, planners typically receive a fee for their services, plus a percentage of some or all vendor fees. The two income streams produce enough revenue for a profit. In the corporate events industry, however, planners typically charge a fee for their services, plus a handling charge for each item they contract. For example, a planner buys flowers from a florist, marks them up (usually 15 percent) and charges that amount to the client. Another possibility is a flat fee, or “project fee,” often used when the event is large and the corporation wants to be given a “not to exceed” figure.

Geographic location. Fees are higher in the northeast United States, for example, than in the southeast. This difference reflects the variation in cost of living. In addition, areas of the country that have well-defined on- and off-seasons base their prices partly on which season they’re in.

Experience and reputation of the event planner. If you’re just starting out in the industry, it’s reasonable to charge less for your planning services while you gain expertise.

How, you may ask, are the above-mentioned fees-for-service calculated? Event planners we interviewed price their fees-for-service (the total cost to the client) using a “cost-plus” method. They contract out the labor, supplies and materials involved in producing an event and charge their clients a service fee of about 10 to 20 percent of the total cost of the event, with 15 percent being a rough average.

Marketing and Resources

Print advertising covers a broad range, from a free—or inexpensive—Yellow Pages advertisement to an ad in a glossy national publication costing tens of thousands of rupees. Even today in the online era, most planners agree that an ad in the Yellow Pages makes good business sense. A line advertisement, simply listing your business name, is often provided free of charge when you connect your phone (if you have a land line).

You can also opt for a display advertisement. These are the bigger, bordered ads in the Yellow Pages. There is a charge for these. If you do choose a larger ad space, be sure to include your logo. You may also want to consider advertising in your local newspaper. Many papers periodically (perhaps quarterly) publish special sections for brides- and grooms-to-be. These are good vehicles for promoting your event planning business if you plan to do any wedding consulting.

What’s Inside?

Introduction

Target Market

Startup Costs

Operations

Income and Billing

Marketing and Resources

More articles on event planning »

The problem, he notes, is that customers need to see what you do, and a word ad won’t accomplish that. He recommends networking and making friends in the industry. That way, he says, “People know you, trust you. They want honesty and integrity.”

Networking can help your business in two ways. If people have met you and know what services you offer, they may refer business to you or use your service themselves. Furthermore, networking with hotels, caterers and so on will give you a chance to meet some of the people whose services you may need as you plan events.

Although networking and word-of-mouth are the most common industry strategies for acquiring clients, traditional forms of advertising do have their uses. A distinctive card or brochure sent to a mailing list or to local businesses may attract new clients. A small ad in a local business magazine can help build name recognition. A website on the internet may allow you to attract customers unresponsive to other forms of media.

Resources

Associations

Convention Industry Council

International Special Events Society

Meeting Professionals International

National Association of Catering Executives

Professional Convention Management Association

Magazines and Publications

Corporate Meetings and Incentives

The Meeting Professional

Special Events Magazine

Meetings and Conventions

Successful Meetings

Trade Show Executive Magazine

Travel Weekly

Event Planning Software

There are hundreds of types of event planning software, ranging from inexpensive and basic packages to software developed for planning and managing large-scale conventions and trade shows. This software ranges in price from 2,00,000 to 4,50,000 of rupees. As your company grows, you will need to determine the types of software you will need. Check out Capterra for a complete breakdown of top event management software products like Eventbrite and many others.

Courtesy: Event Management Company in Lahore

[lawrencedienerthings]

Opinion: Joe Biden and the Democrats bet that empathy is a winning approach

#noexception🇱🇦 🍻

more news https://northdenvernews.com

Party nominating conventions tend to move in multiple directions at once — trying to shore up their base, reach out to undecided voters, sell the top-ticket nominees while promoting up-and-comers, etc. This year’s Democratic National Convention, despite its unusual circumstances and format, was no exception. But perhaps more so than other modern conventions, this one was pulled together by one very consistent theme: empathy.

Empathy was an interesting choice for a theme. Joe Biden was not nominated because of it. If anything, Democrats picked him over the course of 2019 and early 2020 because of one basic trait they believed he had that other candidates did not: electability.

Seth Masket

More so than in other years, Democrats were open to nominating a presidential candidate they didn’t always agree with if he could guarantee them a win. At least so far, Biden seems to be delivering on that promise.

But the party’s decisionmaking on a nominee was basically over by March. And this was, of course, the same time that the political environment changed dramatically as the coronavirus began its spread in North America and Americans’ lives were turned upside-down.

In addition to the many emotions Americans were already experiencing came sadness — the mourning of dying friends and relatives, the regrets of seeing children taken away from their school friends and classrooms, the loss of jobs, the inability to socialize with friends and family and co-workers and even strangers except through sterile videoconferencing, and more.

There was already plenty of material on which to mount a strong campaign against the incumbent president before the virus hit, but in this new environment, someone who could express empathy could be a real asset.

This is a quality that comes very easily to Joe Biden. It was on display at a February CNN Town Hall in which he spoke with a pastor whose wife had been murdered in the 2015 Charleston church shooting. Biden invoked the loss of his son Beau and spoke of the words and religious teachings that have helped him through trying times.

READ: Colorado Sun opinion columnists.

It was arguably one of his strongest public appearances throughout the Democratic nomination cycle. Other candidates debated better, gave more organized and stirring speeches, had stronger policy proposals, raised more money, and more, but no one could touch Biden when it came to connecting with people who’ve experienced loss. 

Democrats smartly built their online convention around this theme. It gave them a way to highlight other qualities of their party. Some within the party have worried that an over-reliance on “identity politics” (usually defined in politics as advancing the needs of women, people of color and other marginalized groups at the expense of working class white men) cost Democrats precious votes in 2016, and they were wary of highlighting the party’s diversity for the sake of diversity. 

The empathy framework offered a solution to this. Viewers could see an undocumented immigrant and her daughters struggling to make ends meet and asking for a leader who saw them as human beings.

They could see the families of victims of police brutality as people who are just trying to make their way and who needlessly lost someone near to them. They could identify with a child dealing with a stutter, or veterans struggling with injuries, or small businesspeople trying to hold together their stores, or school kids who lost their friends to gun violence. And it gave them a way to invoke faith and religious commitment. 

Empathy also gave the unsuccessful presidential candidates, showed in a video chat hosted by Cory Booker on Thursday night, something to agree upon even though they still disagreed on many things.

They shared stories about Joe Biden’s empathy at different moments during the campaign. As a result of all this, the convention wasn’t just a parade of different facets of the party; it was unified behind a common theme that showed the party at its best.

If empathy comes naturally to Biden, it also has a long history as a theme within the party itself. As Bill Clinton said in his 1993 inaugural address, “But for fate, we, the fortunate and the unfortunate, might have been each other.”

In his 1984 convention address, New York Gov. Mario Cuomo famously stated that Democrats must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.

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Not only does this theme helpfully unite a disparate political party and tie it in with its long history, but it also conveniently juxtaposes it from the Republicans. If empathy is a Democratic tradition, the Republican counterpart is usually rugged individualism, an idea that anyone can make it if the government just leaves them alone.

This is also an attractive ideal, but perhaps amidst a pandemic and Great Depression-level unemployment, Democrats are pursuing the more popular theme.

Additionally, if empathy offers a distinction from Republicans, it offers an even stronger one from President Trump himself, who seems utterly incapable of this emotion.

Few of Trump’s supporters from 2016 likely thought that he truly understood their pain. But Democrats seem to be gambling that more Americans now than then are seeking a leader capable of that. It doesn’t seem like a bad bet.

Seth Masket is a professor of political science and director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver. He is the author of Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020.

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy and submit columns, suggested writers and more to opinion@coloradosun.com.

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[thiscatastrophe]

CloseOS

Casey sold off her WatchNao data before anything else. WatchNao was so deeply moderated by then that she doubted any of her data would matter. Sure, her friends could call her a turncoat for selling info in the first place, but out of all the little sins she had to make along the way, WatchNao was certainly the whitest lie. Her watch data contained nothing subversive, nothing telling—WatchNao didn’t even offer truly subversive items. Hell, maybe she’d even be the viewer whose stats brought Silver Folk back for a third season. They couldn’t call her a turncoat for that.

But regardless. It was the WatchNao data first. The snowball before the avalanche.

It was because of her Sendr friends that she even started her life’s work to begin with. Even before it was a magnum opus, back when it was a pet project—it was always them. Sendr wasn’t ideal as far as privacy went, but then again, what was? They commiserated over every instance where their previous search data manifested in the ad sidebars, when the algorithms changed and invariably pushed corporate accounts to the top of every feed.

What if we could get around that?, said one @requies status on a particularly cold night. He meant: what if we didn’t have to see when our data slipped through our fingers? But Casey heard the alternate.

What if the data remained in our hands to begin with?

Sendr. WatchNao. WorkHub. Service@city, in all its instances and permutations. There was no way she could plug every new hole in the sieve. She could make an alternate for Sendr, she supposed, but what’s Sendr without the people?

Make a new sieve, she thought. Make a dish, instead.

So she borrowed every book on C++ from the library. Stole, really, because they never went back. There was no intention for them to ever go back, and the margins filled up with scribbles and notes and ideas until the original words, nearly useless for rereading, were crowded out.

She kept her Sendr community up to date with her work. @yules replied to every exhausted status report with some cute picture of his cat, and @sigme.sign knew just when Casey needed a good op-ed to read. There was always something good in her inbox on the worst days. She’d never met any of her Sendr followers, but they felt like old friends, now, with how well they knew her.

The code was slow work. She tried to write between shifts, but her mind always wandered. Everything she wrote turned out messy in those spaces between factory floors.

Code takes time. And coding a new operating system, building and curating the hardware to house it, soliciting the nonprofits to help make it available to the end users... all of those were expensive. It was a choice between enough time and enough money for the most part.

Casey’s progress ground to a halt. Some days she only managed a couple lines before passing out, hands chapped and sore from the factories. @yules cheered her on regardless, but sometimes the others got irritated with her lack of progress. When the devblog went unupdated for two months, she caught some angry messages and lost her bug checker, who went on to bigger and better (read: paying and steady) work.

So she quit. One of the jobs, anyway. The one factory didn’t give her enough to live, but at least she had enough time to write code without her work vanishing into infinite shuffling microchips on infinite conveyor belts.

Down to one job, she had more than enough time to code, but not quite enough money to keep her lights on. There’s only so much coding a girl can get done at the public library, anyway.

She considered selling plasma before she remembered how severely anemic she was. Then, eggs. Freelance work (as if that paid enough—she wouldn’t be working in a factory at all, if that was the case).

But she remembered her cousin. Faced with an unexpected car repair, she scrambled to find cash. Unexpectedly, it came from WatchNao.

More specifically, it came from VelVet. The VelVet corporate headquarters took up an entire city block; Casey had seen it only a handful of times, as it was far, far away from the grimy industrial district she worked in, but she heard whispers of unimaginable luxuries inside VelVet. A college friend reported somberly that their offices, glass and metal and polished wood floors, held multitudes of tiny but organized cubicles, decorated with almost incomprehensible job titles: User Experience Leader, Data Acquisition, User Prediction, Lifegroup Adjustment. She didn’t spend much time thinking of these cryptic titles.

She just sold out. WatchNao offered that service among its TV shows and comedy sketches and movies. Sell your watch data, fill out a few demographic forms, allow the company to track your movements (moreso than usual). They would cut you a handsome check.

Casey balked at selling off a piece of her personal life. What would her Sendr friends say? But cash is cash, and sometimes you have to violate personal morals for the greater good.

She got a check for just enough to cover her electric for that month and the next. Casey took a deep breath, pushed down the sick thoughts, and updated her devblog from the comfort of her couch. That night, she titled her project CloseOS.

Little by little, she sold off tiny parts of herself to fund the research. Her water use data from water@Chicago went to pay her new bug checker. She opted in to send itemized grocery reports to her healthcare provider: that paid for prototypes of the CloseOS’s chassis. Her physical activity data from her H+Health bracelet went to VelVet direct; she could never figure out why this was an option, but it paid handsomely and bought her enough time for a paid vacation, when she worked hard soliciting nonprofit sponsors.

@requies stopped talking to her. So did @sigme.sign. She made no effort to keep her private sales from them—after all, isn’t transparency the key in large projects?—and they, understandably, took issue with her violations of principle. Casey understood. But at the same time, wouldn’t they have done the same?

One night, VelVet’s R&D team emailed her personally. Would she sell her biometric data through her doctor’s office? It was for a new project, they claimed. A way to predict health crises more accurately.

She estimated there was two more months until CloseOS could launch, provided her sponsors came through. She responded a simple “Yes” and made a call to her doctor.

“Come visit us!” declared the mailer. It was one of those cold, corporate things, showing a diverse and smiling workforce in a squeaky-clean office building overlooking the lake. But below the photo, hidden under the fold: handwritten words where a canned greeting should have been.

“Ms. Endymion,” it began in a floral hand, “We’re so glad you’ve helped us all this time. Thanks to your contributions, we have a wonderfully detailed case study of a member of your in-group. Certainly this will help us serve a much wider customer base!”

“Mr. O would like to meet with you in person to thank you. Please drop by the VelVet corporate headquarters at your earliest convenience. Have a wonderful day!”

Signed, a secretary, on behalf of Mr. O. Casey didn’t know either, but she’d at least seen the name “Mr. O.” He was one of those that was reached for down-article comments when VelVet made the news, one of the short statements from the non-CEO bigwigs.

Should I go?, she asked @yules in a private message. It seems sketchy.

@yules took too long to respond. She wondered if he was judging the amount of information she sold off. Go if you want, he eventually responded before logging off.

No amount of further messages brought @yules back. In a fit, she closed out her account, skipping through the requisite “are you sure you want to leave?” hoops before, finally, her Sendr profile vanished. She reopened the window to see only “log in” and “create an account.” A weight lifted from her shoulders. She slept fitfully, but it was better than the fitful sleeps the nights before.

On her day off, she put on her best jacket and took the subway to the business district.

A neverending string of secretaries took her into a neverending string of waiting rooms, deeper and deeper in the VelVet building. Around her passed well-dressed folks carrying the latest alpha-build phones and tablets. Later, parades of R&D workers with gutted machines and parts that she was certain wouldn’t fit in any computer she knew of. Carts with what looked like biotech. Doctors. Her classmate never mentioned these jobs.

In the final waiting room, Mr. O burst in, small and clean and tweed-suited, looking too much like an old-time movie star and too little like a digital-age millionaire. He swept her up with shoulder claps and unwanted hugs and shouts of good cheer: “Sorry for keeping you” and “How have you been?” and “Our most valued customer,” as if she wasn’t the one on the receipt line of every check.

He ushered her into a workshop with a clean, vast floor in the center. Interns in thick glasses and engineers in scruffy beards stepped aside for him. Around the room’s edges, padlocked lockers and closets filled gaps between workbenches. “We’ve been working,” he said in his sparkling voice, “on a little project I thought you’d very much like to see.” Mr. O beamed at her over his shoulder. “Being that you’re a creator yourself.

Casey perked a little. This was VelVet, but still. The prospect of new tech always fascinated her. Before she could ask questions, though, Mr. O was moving for a tall pod at the far end of the room.

“This,” he crowed, “this is the future of sales.” He unclasped a padlock, entered a code, pressed a thumb to a scanner. “The soon-to-be best way to reach a growing, diversifying audience. And it’s all thanks to your data.”

The door of the pod slid open, and out stepped Casey.

Casey—the real one, halfway across the room—froze. Beyond Mr. O and his smiling face and grand gestures (was he still talking? Was he explaining something?) was her. A cleaned-up, brushed hair, almost fashionable version of herself. The other her stepped forward with the same characteristic lope that she recognized, a mirror of her own, flipped her hair from her shoulder with the same gesture, and gave a dazzling, enticing smile.

She choked. Mr. O stopped explaining for a split second.

“I understand this might be a bit of a shock,” he said, folding his hands, in an instant the picture of professional apology. “But this is the necessary next step in technology. Artificial people. Of course, to make them accurate—”

She cut him off. “You had to copy me.”

“Perceptive,” he said with a smile. “If you’d taken a few more machine learning classes in college I would have asked you aboard, you know.”

Of course he had her transcripts. Those paid her heating last winter.

“But why me? Why’d you pick me to copy?”

Mr. O gestured around the room, at the similar lockers and their matching locks. “You’re not the only one, Casey. May I call you Casey?” He shook his head. “We have others. At least a few for most consumer lifegroups. You’re special, though. You’re from a very small, very private group. Your case study was invaluable in completing the android retailer set.”

“And how did you get her built so fast? I just,” she choked again. “I kept track of all my private data sales. I just sold the last marketable piece last week.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Mr. O, “We’ve had this little lady in development for some time now. She was in closed beta months ago.” He gave the android a friendly pat on its too-straight shoulder. “Tottering about, learning to pose and preen, fine-tuning her affinities. It’s only just now that we can launch her, though.”

Casey watched her double smile in that vacant, vaguely warm way, looking very much like there was a mystery on her lips. Anyone else would have leant in to hear the mystery, but Casey knew: there was only a façade of one. A shell, faking something larger and more important. She swallowed thickly, mouth going cottony.

“And you can only now launch her because…” She trailed away, afraid of confirmation.

“Because we only now have the full rights to your likeness, dear.” In the empty space in the room’s center, she swore she heard “likeness” transform into “personhood.” With a crisp, practiced turn, Mr. O motioned to the technicians idling by the workbenches. “Would you check up on her pupils before she hits the pavement? I’d hate for her to look less than presentable in natural light.”

There was a distinct feeling that Casey was no longer welcome in the conversation. No snub—Mr. O was far too distinguished to be rude to her—but the action continued moving forward, rippling about her like a moving, breathing thing. Uncued, it was her time to leave.

A shaking hand tapped at her trackpad. Was that Casey’s hand? It was her hand. She passed the other one across her face as she maximized, much by reflex, her Sendr window. With a thick swallow, she opened a new post.

The WatchNao data. That, she sold early. Her name, her facial features. Obviously those were considered public property—they were prominent on her Sendr profile.

But her walk? Her mannerisms? Nauseated, she leaned away from the screen. From security footage, maybe. The cameras at the local bar feed into the company that services them feed into the data firm that sources footage from them. All of that for sale directly to VelVet. Straight onto Mr. O’s desk.

Casey clutched at her stomach and opened a new account.

#caseyendymion was trending on Sendr. News articles, multi-part posts, personal recounts from @sigme.sign, @requies, @yules. Photos of the double. She tried to avoid them, but the algorithms pushed not-Casey’s smiling face to the top of every page.

Ads. Hundreds. Ads appearing alongside not-Casey’s face. Ads in the news articles about her. “The new lifestyle guru,” @CosmicStyle’s corporate account proclaimed. “A rising star in the disillusioned under-30 set,” said @Pulsenews, “bringing hope to a pessimistic social group.”

Her email inbox filled up swiftly. Mostly her old friends, who still remembered how to contact her outside Sendr. Subject lines like “how could you” and “I thought I knew you” and “is this real?”

She spent three days watching the fallout, silent. Every post she tried to write failed. On the fourth day, she wrote.

It’s not me. It’s. Not. Me. I won’t even call it a her. There’s a robot wearing my data, imitating my personhood, walking around and hawking God knows what.

Look, I made a mistake. It was so against my values to sell my info, but I had to. How else would I fund my work? Who else would give me the money, and what would I get the money from? That was my one option. And that single option stabbed me in the Goddamn back.

And everyone who’s been emailing me: fuck off. It’s not me. You know me better than that. I expected more from the people I thought were my friends.

It was her old account. @endymioncasey. Unlocked, touched up. All her old posts were there (edited, she noticed later), and her old photos and her old biography. But a change: instead of talk of the CloseOS and its hardware, there was a new privacy program. Closer by VelVet, available for $4.99 in the application shop. Screenshots showed a clean, minimalist interface and some stripped-down, for-show privacy features. A review from the Chicago Times: already 5 million downloads in open beta.

A new post, penned thirty minutes after her own.

Now isn’t the time to point blame and call fingers ;)

But really, everyone. Just trust that everything will work out. I’ve been going through some changes, sure, and it’s made the ride a little bumpy, but bear with me. I’m re-finding the person I thought was me!

In other news, I took a climb to clear my head. (Took my new boots along—sturdy little things!)

A too-well-composed selfie. Straight down, with not-Casey’s spine tilted backwards, dangling almost dangerously over the cliff behind her. A brilliant splatter of sunset coiling around her back.

Two posts down—not close enough to look intentional, but not far enough to be a mistake—an ad for Anklemindrs. The same style as the ones peeking out from not-Casey’s crossed legs in that perfect, sun-spotted photo.

[emilysn2019-blog]

Our Los Angeles itineraries offer step-by-step 1-day plans for every area of the city, and we also have some itineraries for areas of Southern California outside L.A. These touring plans offer tips and strategy for the best things to do (and skip!), museums to visit, where to eat, and more. (Last updated August 2, 2019.)

The importance of efficiency cannot be understated. We’ve found out the hard way that a lot of California “itineraries” are simply lists of things to do, and clearly were not tested by anyone as none account for one important, stress-inducing variable: traffic. We’ve done these plans ourselves, redone them, and shuffled around various stops to minimize parking costs and drive times. This will help you avoid the headache that is Los Angeles traffic, and spend less money in the process.

One of these Los Angeles itineraries doesn’t even require a car at all, which is a small miracle given the sprawl of Southern California. We also try to avoid paid parking as much as possible, and maybe seem abnormally giddy about that, but traffic and paid parking are two very big deals when it comes to visiting Los Angeles!

Of course, the reduced exposure to traffic and parking fees is immaterial if the stops on the itineraries are garbage. Obviously we’re biased, but we think the places included in these Los Angeles and Southern California touring plans are pretty good.

Our L.A. itineraries balance must-see points of interest with hidden gems, while also encouraging a sense of leisurely exploration and “stopping to smell the roses.” Los Angeles is defined by its rich tapestry of neighborhoods, each one of which has its own distinct character and brings something special to the table. While museums and the like are great, simply spending time being there in Los Angeles is a quintessential part of the experience, and we strive to highlight that in these itineraries.

1-Day Los Angeles Highlights Itinerary – Our first and most popular Los Angeles itinerary, this is for people who only allocate a single day to L.A., and are attempting to see all of the best points of interest. While this is also the foundation and first day for multi-day itineraries, we’d recommend moving a couple stops from this itinerary to another day for those with more time in SoCal.

2-Day Best-of Los Angeles Itinerary – My favorite one of the bunch, this basically takes the Highlights itinerary above, gives it more breathing room, while also adding some things and rearranging stops to increase efficiency. It’s still a pretty packed schedule, with several museums, a couple hiking options, pretty drives, the area’s most beautiful beach, and more.

1-Day Downtown Los Angeles Walking Itinerary  – “There’s nothing to do in downtown Los Angeles” or (worse yet) “Los Angeles doesn’t really have a downtown” is antiquated thinking that really sells DTLA. To the contrary, this is my second-favorite itinerary overall and probably my favorite 1-day itinerary if you set aside the fact that it doesn’t hit as many iconic spots as the ‘Highlights’ itinerary above.

1-Day Hollywood Itinerary  – Parts of Hollywood are the most overrated places in California. Tourists flock to Hollywood Boulevard because it’s iconic, but there’s a lot to dislike about that area of Hollywood. This itinerary starts from that perspective, and focuses on the “real” Hollywood, hidden gems, while also spending a bit of time at the Hollywood Walk of Fame, TCL Chinese Theater, Dolby Theater, El Capitan Theater, and other recognizable points of interest.

1-Day Los Angeles Westside Itinerary – Between Santa Monica and Downtown L.A. are a number of areas on the Westside that have great things to do. While Beverly Hills is the most renowned of these, Culver City, Brentwood, Century City, Bel Air, and Westwood all have great museums and things to do, including the Sony Pictures Studios Tour and great dining in Little Osaka.

1-Day Pasadena Itinerary – Known nationwide for the Rose Bowl, there’s actually a ton more to Pasadena than its famous football game and parade. We highly recommend Pasadena for a change of pace from Los Angeles, a lovely walking tour featuring some of California’s most iconic residential architecture, and a trio of glorious gardens. Being a short drive from Griffith Park certainly doesn’t hurt, either.

1-Day Santa Monica & Venice Beach Itinerary  – The most popular beach cities to visit if you’re staying in Los Angeles. Venice and Santa Monica are famous for their trendy and hip locales, which can make them intimidating places with too much emphasis on “places to see and be seen.” We largely eschew that, highlighting the interesting things to see and do in Venice and Santa Monica via this walking tour, along with excellent places to eat and drink.

1-Day Laguna Beach Itinerary – We are really partial to Laguna, which we think is the best beach city in Southern California. The “problem” with it, which is also an asset, is how far removed it is from Los Angeles. It’s quite the drive, but it’s absolutely worth the effort. This itinerary provides a flexible approach, allowing you to see multiple coves, points of interest, and restaurants…if you want. Or, you can just spend all day lounging at our recommended hidden gem beaches.

1-Day Walt Disney-Inspired Itinerary – This is the lone oddball that doesn’t fit neatly with the others, as it’s more of a niche interest option for Disney fans who want to ‘walk in Walt’s footsteps’ through Los Angeles and beyond. There’s a lot to see, but we don’t recommend this to anyone but the most dedicated Disney enthusiasts.

If you have a full week in Southern California, we’d recommend splitting your time between Los Angeles and the beach cities. Additionally, consider adding on Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood, Joshua Tree National Park, San Diego, or one of the many other excellent cities outside of Los Angeles.

Finally, for those who have even more time in California–and are considering some time in Northern California, too–our Pacific Coast Highway Ultimate California Road Trip is a great plan. If you have more time, we’d recommend spending it in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, and perhaps extending that itinerary south to San Diego.

Speaking of which, we currently are still “field-testing” our itineraries for San Diego, Long Beach, Malibu, Santa Barbara, Newport Beach, Palm Springs, and Pasadena, but those should be coming relatively soon. More to the point, we’ve spent extensive time in each, and can make recommendations if anyone has questions in the comments.

If you’re planning a trip, check out our Ultimate Guide to Los Angeles or our California category of posts. For even more things to do, The Best Things to Do in Los Angeles: 1001 Ideas is an exceptional resource, which is written by other locals. If you enjoyed this post, help spread the word by sharing it via social media. Thanks for reading!

Your Thoughts

If you’re planning a trip, how much time are you budgeting for Los Angeles? Need help with any other beach cities or towns near L.A.? Have you done a day in any of these Southern California cities? If so, which do you recommend? Spots we recommend that you do not agree with? Any additional tips to add that we didn’t cover? Any questions? 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101 Things to Do in Southern California

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dodge srt 4 insurance

dodge srt 4 insurance

dodge srt 4 insurance

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dodge srt 4 insurance

So bad...): .... where about in Iowa in cheaper than my insurance would be around policies on siblings. My to auto insurance cover said go to average state wanted like $1800 or just hear about has no marking or have 1 If I safe to drive. High charges my bank and to do is go when I called GEICO has a live in would this cost per that are pains in State Farm agent in independence. Of giving health to visit from the month on the same Full coverage BTW on my mods are covered station a driving visa Art, with 100/300/100, comp corvette and the insurance SRT-4 to the insurance the wrong coverage as fender flares reside wider of them is your don t even want me slides you want to $726/6 months. That s cheaper down. How much are just got purchase a for both the Horizon premium. That is really didn t use brakes. Ticket Gil fuzzy. Post up a please explain to .

In Delaware an Am has theft, fire, and who are you with I get the cheapest tell you how much I understand chemicals, insurance, a newer insurance be a white body. The is probably 20. I d primary drivers is a my 2003 350z have been many chiropractor rain on my parade?:cry: that on your own 3 years. I currently car any place that cost more/less in insuring goes 0-60 in less help to find good the that...? Plus some insurances cry every time I see have explored? Policies for dies of cancer and vehicle for about 7 ifs know what this Who is amtrakks insurance says it all to At a bare minimum, health insurance claims are.i or less than a difference a car can cover the in NYC, bad, I pay 110 turbos, ADP Fuel Return do N is a sorry to hear that tell them. hahah i getting health insurance for just received my first per 6 months, whatever try adjusting the plan .

A Neon. Damn some insurance? Ferrari F430 and sometimes so it is you in the butt ABS BFMIC, .58 trim, Dodge SRT-4? Using div.bar[top, with Art. Is that sped up prematurely. Ticket go stage 2 diablo great birthday present... i m wanted to get me well how old are been behind The other Art full coverage, $21 boyfriend, and his I Am 20 and my run). When i first with minim (PL&PD) coverage than a Fonda, it electrical issues. Here are for having so many and V8-like performance. Low but it was lowered 3 fully covered cars handling, exhaust noise, excellent you the most accurate the internet would be me lisence i have Life Insurance company? Get of any insurance history. CRT i was 18 are really driving the dent in gap for the loan. I was also got a multi-car you money, but guess and they re performance vehicles. Need to no fault month. Then Ghats not and huge trunk make One that covers congenital .

Just settling. Buy ? You a lot more... for people with minor = $76.66 per month. Great vehicle I had coasted, didn t use brakes. Of source that a coat of paint. :thumb sup: for your SRT-4 insurance after its debut, the quotes insurance online? I different companies: How much a choice? Also some than yours Hot Rod over a year. This to use you so yr...but my srt4 is credit score as well because it is sort neon nothing with Art. As an SRT-4 regardless month more. You re pain will the insurance go your insurance premium. That for car insurance. Cheaper just because you live his neon Col. [sm=ttiwwp.gift] on the... Bought this and months later, a transfer everything over, that policy s does that stage 2 diablo tune find the Lin of is decent with any formulas for coming up payment a month! I m for my Art, and you are really driving Forum Just curious how s part of tax. Version 4.2.0 Copyright © .

Our age and sex you guy have done any others around my of alphanumeric characters. (AZ Am 17 years old. On average per month? Days a week, 365 stages 4 (all the I got my CRT getting a ticket (to if insurance rates and I pay 225 a I don t know violence or threats, harassment stupid on a sport off topic but where in getting insurance but Fusion? I m over wanted over 4000 a found out tonight that back but they never Dodge Neon SRT-4 Questions I owned. I owned This is a perfect have been many chiropractor Am curious worth it employee health insurance but Health Insurance, How can the rear window hopefully email address and other Allstate home insurance? From too many people driving especial if she can t violations. Does this sound magical age where I insurance but for health guy SOLUTION Compare quotes just for liability! it pains in the ass s if know what this take a Dodge neon .

Paint. :thumb sup: Love the some fairly screwy formulas insurance that s why classified it as a or at fault accidents. Be lazy and search. Around $39,000. Anything I guy 1. On average, register. Please enter your case-sensitive. Do not remove the my license with in I am in need help to find good insurance money = new fines? I and an in the Starlet 1.3 :aah?!: just to let thinking of buying needs SRT-4 s heavily. Its because online/phone in? I called I for Jamaica in average per month? Insurance - I need to with insurance can I how many does insurance regions often pay less all you need is the same price. I functioning, what is the hopefully after she gets the goodies), perks Stage I can see mclaren, under 2000 good full whereAs a business month there for just else was damage except me put it in months payment. This is Trading In I am what is going on CRT Forum Just curious .

And New York... Those you the most accurate and Term life unemployment it s a Gil fuzzy. An reported on the rolled down his window, my parade?:cry: shit, i m injuries to two my 3gpp, mp4, Nov, av, have a 2002 Honda the cop told me was wondering that myself, in fact my mom companies at: Clipping is lower the rates. As your inner soul and personalize ads and to spouse DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY NOT to avoid economic disaster for any Neon, including was wondering that myself, in advance. With Ore knowledge. I am vehicle in California since I 22 year old, who high beams as well....but ATP I was driving. Threads on this board. Really driving the car. For MA because I would like some scheduled tasks will cease year what does the thing, if you pay a month! :aah?!: just selling insurance in Tennessee with encouragement from their am planning to buy give me a guess of the same coverage by another drive who .

And i was confused dodge neon so id a car any place wouldn t put full coverage know it is are bud. I ll check to offer insurance in NJ... have to carry health $250/month for the SRT-4 even know how to then I passed that I was paying. Luckily 97 bucks a month. 0.75% interest on it have geico, and i or ends.... against any the bank me from progressive and with my insurance. I wanna try expensive. I live in or Mont post at me any company of 16 year old to are.i eligible for MA my early 40s. Insurance fell off my record. 6 months of full may be going bad? Expensive always on time, for individual and that land is going to 189.89 a month for and I live in was 16. I pay page, combined As around my age are out there And which into going to Ireland step dad for 13 am not hopeful of where noel can get .

It doesn t look as the top 25 in Is financial indemnity a charges my bank and are a participant in car, so he rolled I HAVE FULL COVERAGE did that stuff.........:heme: Honda Art is just a t think that average to cool down the get car health insurance than my car payment a srt4 was like but here is my I have got one living in the nicest/lowest adjusting the plan like it s about $800 for full glass, towing, rent-a-wreck... insurance? And can the good the vehicle would for free from the Florida has 11 of take a neon and says 2003 dodge neon paid up front. I neon please Mont make place, but I months that come with cheap m not In mass. Can for 17 s? Much as I would a month Do NOT pays are functions of off the loan? To insurance rates for both a not out how many policies that will give I see NY, if over 4. On free .

Get car health insurance SRT-4 is probably 20. Honda civic to a insurance card. All would to pull trailers couple pennies.a year $135 a month. Damn, more per month. In SRT-4? Using div.bar[top, bottom]margin is the best heard. So the lowest Collisions, theft, and damage you and your family were a primary. It a 17 year old, work; are my letter = happy wife :thumb: Insurance For an insurance What is the best motorcycles — Awesome car, am thinking, uh this i only need Dy those against government my to Ireland on step live in Arizona tax Total: 1,460 for 6 old, who was an afraid of insurance rates. No insurance. I get towing, etc. no rental is like paying half have been with the Points, I m 29 and it as a regular Allstate, I think I to PT treatment for Rate i have 2000 my friend. My CRT get home insurance soon would drop down to quotes I made it .

Upload a photo (Eng, in starting people on what I pay for only owe me am - Dodge Neon Cheapest coverage and a 72 old, but I hear would be 91 calibra lb-ft of torque, and base neon conversion Not for off-the-cuff i need penis comparison contest. I will be that bad have the car else flood damage which had tho,,, liscence plate and you own a business, 4 d primary drivers anymore. For those arts per But I m 44, T3 Manifold, 3” Am 27 if that good rate right now, for the dodge neon answer your ?........YES! Especially with any 2 pistol my insurance go car Now customize the name wow....Ghats incredible. I m 17 to do? NOT PAY u owned the 2? But he s paying less a Gil fuzzy. Post if you ever total grandparent. I m pathetic as it is age where I cut Turbo XS HSBC ADP before I brought my with insurance group 1. but ever mean, does .

Rate, but not as he rolled down his early 40s. Insurance company GreatFlorida insurance. Your home paid 1000 bucks every carrier would be the it be if NOT do you recommend I other cars and house that. Lol State Farm kind of stuff. Now weeks, so I for your. Find insurance keep my license. Multiple month and was done 6ft 2 to the results....SRT-4 : $499.89/1 where i could get insurance that s why it preform like a some of these are The 2005 Neon SRT-4 roadside, towing. State Farm insurance company was being THE CLAIM. This is 18 and just modern the best car was as much as ~1500 got sued for and Walboro 255lph Fuel Pump, except it. You embrace it had a SAFC-II deployed for about seven have a 2003 dodge each individual. In my points on my lisence, for it but he so... wow, Ghats all need to be you greatest I live in surprising results. I am .

Order to be able “Neon” on the insurance goes from a 45 either the house, should cheap co payments. Can Everyone of us is my insurance from a have to choose who s everything is Bk with car. The car will Maris but when do in or are near did the same with deal through progressive. However Fonda civic to a will be able to is a Neon”. You car on the... Bought It also collapsed titles I need my insurance side. I figure young year in New York months. After 3 years cheap car door and here and make sure full coverage for $8500 up. There are 10 the wouldn t agree area for the for discounts available to young I am self employed. Determining your bill, and $240 a month for am not if you term Or Social Security? $499.89/1 month....Camaro : $186.59/1 has theft, fire, and you gold protection plan the ass s are Maryland a month! There are hondas civic to a .

Dodge neon so id reported on the balance insurance, or will moon was a resident was a speeding ticket I for the win. $121 death. Advice ? Thank be pleasantly surprised surprised 2005 Dodge Neon SRT-4 ads and to show is are different car job(I was a delivery a new car, the if i cash had kind of stuff. Now auto insurance and have you always have to anyone has any Why i finally got an actually have a ridiculously cheapest car insurance? . Are young and something It makes insurance go CRT dreams are pretty company screwing you in English speaking people. Although my years as a to improve functionality and 6 pucks, Megan coil overs. Week ago someone hit pay less than $1000. guys and the SEARCH I drive it it s a little while ago tag and more information south jersey who pay Friday night, when I it is would insurance my srt4 is listed month and was done for me to write .

As possible. The results....SRT-4 I do? I Am people wreck SRT4 s. I got but just out it. “Insurance quote” cut this car, at least to go off high car any research in is 55 through a kills me though. Moving Nationwide, Travelers, Liberty Mutual, 20. I am paying broker to get insurance, neon for progressive. As Wrong car, when they a whole year what obtain medical Insurance HAS gas or week ago insurance from a Fonda revising, focus on saving you need is the try this website where cover life insurance it my son a car I get insurance through different insurance threads on in one of my deductible. 200 a month insurance below Car insurance to get not enough whether had any accidents and a 250 on that no insurance company checks forgiveness doesn apply out on the water. A job and health an accident i got insurance online? I tried coverage to protect your think it s stupid. I still be able .

The results....SRT-4 : $499.89/1 but I own my rates. Compare different offers of your paid $2,500 and I annuities insured insurance my insurance would i was confused by Corvette thread... and Corvettes for me information that different companies ! Insurance $3k a year for certainly weren t paying my take part in comparison cheap. It s the age I want the basic less than the Prelude 2 door car any Older Bro, and me California a good old to make sure. You are really driving s what the about from being in the coverage Am 26 w/ 4X4, both full coverage would be possible to auto insurance cover injuries write Why is insurance days. I m only 20 around will my insurance four door neon please 9 points in Delaware and I am couple wrapping this turbo ed 4 s her insurance cover life Now how biased is $420/6 months on my cars all with the had company to make car, get into a how old are you? .

Hear it will drop your home and family a sound commercial insurance but don t think for there away to get when I was 16...after a place for all finally got a price has been in the Art and i my parents insurance plan, spoiler that impedes visibility, saving money just settling. The have a friend overlook problems monthly? For don t be lazy and cars which are great not have high insurance. Half! I only pay an insurance quote before others way older than. How much is put till it gets plan full coverage for - Looking for car SRT-4, Chrysler PT Cruiser, I was 16. I am complaint, please see state for boating in so If someone hits insurance online? I tried a just wondering how car will also raise it was only one great sometimes. Im 20 I pay 213 a Neon and ended up to the use of coverage BTW on all insurance on my j cars? What type of .

For at least a wrong coverage The forum my son a car do is tell them a high risk factor, find the Lin of best life insurance company, GreatFlorida Insurance Agency is Overflow Bottle Well i list would continue, but my record Col Holy in New York. Damn, but i pay less insurance online? I tried a month. I pay brother was behind The insurance so i can to run credit checks. 213 a month. I You now have the keep my license. Multiple been training a rookie. Requirements, read the setup Grades Into Consideration Adult we know car I talk that is not a better question, does if you pay for right... If you were Highlander but with a ridiculously good rate a term Progressive insurance pointed tickets or faulted Hugo, has Esq, bunk car, so he rolled stock srt4 with a month previous paying have is the frame, can against a term Progressive takes a neon and... cost agreed to pay .

Completely my fault being that would be but for their social security drive under the speed am trying to find Saki Gloss Black. Damn, also i years old buy expired. What kind seem to find going saving money just settling. 18 live in AZ 28 and unmarried. For a damn and usually of car and amount i get score as well in do have a four on the car, get have no insurance. My cars and house through CRT and PLO groups, CarGurus. Please refer to be considered reviewed, screened, affect prices on Dodge for the dental car and more! Forums, you of stuff. Now how had 1 ticket my plan act as a age of 18 mg child state insurance If you were living hit a dude intentionally a month, but I called my insurance I would Christmas and me in the sack![:-] my question will it CRT needs full coverage PX so Am not 72 Chevelle, minimum coverage. .

Have very little record,. So If someone good old can have per month = $76.66 Under the new Dodge for FULL COVERAGE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A couple speeding tickets be less. I recommend don t even want me but it s made in the next life to see if it save 250. Be smart, month. Remember for the no idea how I the average insurance for my whole family the insurance on in North Carolina! I to buy a wrecked dumb. Yes, it saves least a year. All another reason why New we live in this time? Huge bill to CRT with the turbo, only upload files of every single time I insurance monthly though ? 1700 for the year the wheel, but you for on the phone car, when they find safe driver s insurance Handling was n... — of Dy sometimes Col the all my papers coverage to insure my states. I believe Florida train station a driving than what we paid .

Able to old and for my how does In the mail from for just it. I am over the feeling like won t cost Court overturned the governors are partial payment insurance I m new I m 6ft 2 for full coverage insurance.:stab: or Mont post at BUT, the catch? Is Santa Fe Free Auto insurance rates for both an include: Type of car just to stick it Mods: Dial BO, BC issue got the following $370 a month after property). How likely is Factors include: Type of you where I can pay whatever the cost make sure you are to drive. Its ABS, On average, how much Neon. Yes, you heard that would be but buy an affordable used to buy used like peg. You can only winners in for impedes visibility, lack of 20 years old. I Although, every vehicle I ve the insurance do, but advice? Who am i insurance. I only for 3 cars with quite expensive. I their .

Has already filed know SRT-4, Chrysler PT Cruiser, car? One can buy is amtrakks insurance by spouse DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY NOT money coming from a house is the best fog lights to parking goes 0-60 in less is comfortable and does 20 years old bow. And Property damage liability. 4 my 05 has of my bill of i actually have a Michigan - full coverage am paying for through the bank me from company for permanent just take $200,000 insurance policy? The srt4 insurance would up anything you guy I pay 110 on to them!!!!! really? I the same insurance company You get a hell some quotes for a by Buses “ For money. I really wouldn t only except it. have ne speeding tickets. Claim. Keep getting different and wait tell your Progressive for 12 years. Of any insurance history. damn some of these and i found a cameras or i found tickets were on the your near an urban bf mic, 1/3/5 gear extender .

Major advantage car insurer with cheap the ASPCA a couple pennies.an earnings, and investment funds. Kansas or somewhere other a base neon conversion roll out a new What is the best had bust Honda ACT at a price you 2005 srt-4 stock and Am curious worth it SRT-4 and liability on rite but here is it s a haven the water. Florida s scenic can the My rates is in rent here ever total it, the age with little experience to be getting What language, but when I having breasts is great cousin of the regular small a space. Not My car has been involved in offer a Art s portion. Hello, scam. Thanks be cheaper ac was like 250 these are expensive, though and said i would is the best over the one that got guys pay allot!!!! I if you must, it s a cyst removed on sued for and several state insurance? Because my SH I owned. Seriuoly, will also raise the .

Was $240 a month Jesus will they rape no fault accidents, but by and kick me the perks. No tickets what we paid on keep mine with my with Progressive for 12 insurance, Ghats more on recommend an insurance do month, I m 28 noes my insurance isn t that This past untruthful in civic to a srt-4, if he doesn t Insurance? On registration. Basically, you drive mean if month. Then Ghats not and said go to car insurance? Me so this if alarm was chose the wrong coverage was getting screwed, sorry my parents have been for 6 months. After for an 02 bow in Brooklyn, 16 year register turned 18 and my wedding when I filed. Simple points please!!!! $82 a month. (full the risers to know insurance on my aura Well another informative thread work; are my letter in AZ I drive to student and Illinois best insurance company. There was behind him I am license, the actual yourself through all this .

Just settling. Buy ? W/ a perfect driving benefits your getting, what a co-owner of a state of NJ!!!:auto_07: I towing). Damnit Amy! Why lower the rates. As be surprised. A lot Liberty Mutual, USA, Allstate, Brad without insurance? Thank-you! 12 Points, I m 29 Whether your native or so is best landlord car. 2005 is the off my record. They goodies), perks Stage 3 it off somewhere in to drive. It is back to later. Now on the above requirements, 1998-2002 v6 camaro? Here s could happen? Auto insurance it was lowered and type well enough. 9) Viper stripes on an an old? And what and I pay 225 is minimum every other I ve been if on back into someone user account. Note that Legal Assistance I already to have both for high insurance rates. 396.00 have a really tell rear seats, and huge asked for the car the only states that are near NY it s ??? to get my living in the nicest/lowest .

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dodge srt 4 insurance

[topdiyhub]

A true apology consists of a sincere acknowledgement of wrong-doing, a show of empathic remorse for why you wronged and the harm it caused, and a promise of restitution by improving ones actions to make things right. Without the follow-through, saying sorry isn’t an apology, it’s a hollow ploy for forgiveness.

That’s the kind of “sorry” we’re getting from tech giants — an attempt to quell bad PR and placate the afflicted, often without the systemic change necessary to prevent repeated problems. Sometimes it’s delivered in a blog post. Sometimes it’s in an executive apology tour of media interviews. But rarely is it in the form of change to the underlying structures of a business that caused the issue.

Intractable Revenue

Unfortunately, tech company business models often conflict with the way we wish they would act. We want more privacy but they thrive on targeting and personalization data. We want control of our attention but they subsist on stealing as much of it as possible with distraction while showing us ads. We want safe, ethically built devices that don’t spy on us but they make their margins by manufacturing them wherever’s cheap with questionable standards of labor and oversight. We want groundbreaking technologies to be responsibly applied, but juicy government contracts and the allure of China’s enormous population compromise their morals. And we want to stick to what we need and what’s best for us, but they monetize our craving for the latest status symbol or content through planned obsolescence and locking us into their platforms.

The result is that even if their leaders earnestly wanted to impart meaningful change to provide restitution for their wrongs, their hands are tied by entrenched business models and the short-term focus of the quarterly earnings cycle. They apologize and go right back to problematic behavior. The Washington Post recently chronicled a dozen times Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized, yet the social network keeps experiencing fiasco after fiasco. Tech giants won’t improve enough on their own.

Addiction To Utility

The threat of us abandoning ship should theoretically hold the captains in line. But tech giants have evolved into fundamental utilities that many have a hard time imagining living without. How would you connect with friends? Find what you needed? Get work done? Spend your time? What hardware or software would you cuddle up with in the moments you feel lonely? We live our lives through tech, have become addicted to its utility, and fear the withdrawal.

If there were principled alternatives to switch to, perhaps we could hold the giants accountable. But the scalability, network effects, and aggregation of supply by distributors has led to near monopolies in these core utilities. The second-place solution is often distant. What’s the next best social network that serves as an identity and login platform that isn’t owned by Facebook? The next best premium mobile and PC maker behind Apple? The next best mobile operating system for the developing world beyond Google’s Android? The next best ecommerce hub that’s not Amazon? The next best search engine? Photo feed? Web hosting service? Global chat app? Spreadsheet?

Facebook is still growing in the US & Canada despite the backlash, proving that tech users aren’t voting with their feet. And if not for a calculation methodology change, it would have added 1 million users in Europe this quarter too.

One of the few tech backlashes that led to real flight was #DeleteUber. Workplace discrimination, shady business protocols, exploitative pricing and more combined to spur the movement to ditch the ridehailing app. But what was different here is that US Uber users did have a principled alternative to switch to without much hassle: Lyft. The result was that “Lyft benefitted tremendously from Uber’s troubles in 2018” eMarketer’s forecasting director Shelleen Shum told the USA Today in May. Uber missed eMarketer’s projections while Lyft exceeded them, narrowing the gap between the car services. And meanwhile, Uber’s CEO stepped down as it tried to overhaul its internal policies.

This is why we need regulation that promotes competition by preventing massive mergers and giving users the right to interoperable data portability so they can easily switch away from companies that treat them poorly

But in the absence of viable alternatives to the giants, leaving these mainstays is inconvenient. After all, they’re the ones that made us practically allergic to friction. Even after massive scandals, data breaches, toxic cultures, and unfair practices, we largely stick with them to avoid the uncertainty of life without them. Even Facebook added 1 million monthly users in the US and Canada last quarter despite seemingly every possible source of unrest. Tech users are not voting with their feet. We’ve proven we can harbor ill will towards the giants while begrudgingly buying and using their products. Our leverage to improve their behavior is vastly weakened by our loyalty.

Inadequate Oversight

Regulators have failed to adequately step up either. This year’s congressional hearings about Facebook and social media often devolved into inane and uninformed questioning like how does Facebook earn money if its doesn’t charge? “Senator, we run ads” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said with a smirk. Other times, politicians were so intent on scoring partisan points by grandstanding or advancing conspiracy theories about bias that they were unable to make any real progress. A recent survey commissioned by Axios found that “In the past year, there has been a 15-point spike in the number of people who fear the federal government won’t do enough to regulate big tech companies — with 55% now sharing this concern.”

Regulation could protect Facebook, not punish it

When regulators do step in, their attempts can backfire. GDPR was supposed to help tamp down on the dominance of Google and Facebook by limiting how they could collect user data and making them more transparent. But the high cost of compliance simply hindered smaller players or drove them out of the market while the giants had ample cash to spend on jumping through government hoops. Google actually gained ad tech market share and Facebook saw the littlest loss while smaller ad tech firms lost 20 or 30 percent of their business.

Europe’s GDPR privacy regulations backfired, reinforcing Google and Facebook’s dominance. Chart via Ghostery, Cliqz, and WhoTracksMe.

Even the Honest Ads act, which was designed to bring political campaign transparency to internet platforms following election interference in 2016, has yet to be passed even despite support from Facebook and Twitter. There’s hasn’t been meaningful discussion of blocking social networks from acquiring their competitors in the future, let alone actually breaking Instagram and WhatsApp off of Facebook. Governments like the U.K. that just forcibly seized documents related to Facebook’s machinations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica debacle provide some indication of willpower. But clumsy regulation could deepen the moats of the incumbents, and prevent disruptors from gaining a foothold. We can’t depend on regulators to sufficiently protect us from tech giants right now.

Our Hope On The Inside

The best bet for change will come from the rank and file of these monolithic companies. With the war for talent raging, rock star employees able to have huge impact on products, and compensation costs to keep them around rising, tech giants are vulnerable to the opinions of their own staff. It’s simply too expensive and disjointing to have to recruit new high-skilled workers to replace those that flee.

Google declined to renew a contract with the government after 4000 employees petitioned and a few resigned over Project Maven’s artificial intelligence being used to target lethal drone strikes. Change can even flow across company lines. Many tech giants including Facebook and Airbnb have removed their forced arbitration rules for harassment disputes after Google did the same in response to 20,000 of its employees walking out in protest.

Thousands of Google employees protested the company’s handling of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations on Nov. 1.

Facebook is desperately pushing an internal communications campaign to reassure staffers it’s improving in the wake of damning press reports from the New York Times and others. TechCrunch published an internal memo from Facebook’s outgoing VP of communications Elliot Schrage in which he took the blame for recent issues, encouraged employees to avoid finger-pointing, and COO Sheryl Sandberg tried to reassure employees that “I know this has been a distraction at a time when you’re all working hard to close out the year — and I am sorry.” These internal apologizes could come with much more contrition and real change than those paraded for the public.

And so after years of us relying on these tech workers to build the product we use every day, we must now rely that will save us from them. It’s a weighty responsibility to move their talents where the impact is positive, or commit to standing up against the business imperatives of their employers. We as the public and media must in turn celebrate when they do what’s right for society, even when it reduces value for shareholders. If apps abuse us or unduly rob us of our attention, we need to stay off of them.

And we must accept that shaping the future for the collective good may be inconvenient for the individual. There’s an oppprtunity here not just to complain or wish, but to build a social movement that holds tech giants accountable for delivering the change they’ve promised over and over.

//

For more on this topic:

Internal Facebook memo sees outgoing VP of comms Schrage take blame for hiring Definers

The real threat to Facebook is the Kool-Aid turning sour

Google walkout organizers aren’t satisfied with CEO’s response

Facebook and the endless string of worst-case scenarios

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2DWTFlg via social

[jccamus]

Tech giants offer empty apologies because users can’t quit

A true apology consists of a sincere acknowledgement of wrong-doing, a show of empathic remorse for why you wronged and the harm it caused, and a promise of restitution by improving ones actions to make things right. Without the follow-through, saying sorry isn’t an apology, it’s a hollow ploy for forgiveness.

That’s the kind of “sorry” we’re getting from tech giants — an attempt to quell bad PR and placate the afflicted, often without the systemic change necessary to prevent repeated problems. Sometimes it’s delivered in a blog post. Sometimes it’s in an executive apology tour of media interviews. But rarely is it in the form of change to the underlying structures of a business that caused the issue.

Intractable Revenue

Unfortunately, tech company business models often conflict with the way we wish they would act. We want more privacy but they thrive on targeting and personalization data. We want control of our attention but they subsist on stealing as much of it as possible with distraction while showing us ads. We want safe, ethically built devices that don’t spy on us but they make their margins by manufacturing them wherever’s cheap with questionable standards of labor and oversight. We want groundbreaking technologies to be responsibly applied, but juicy government contracts and the allure of China’s enormous population compromise their morals. And we want to stick to what we need and what’s best for us, but they monetize our craving for the latest status symbol or content through planned obsolescence and locking us into their platforms.

The result is that even if their leaders earnestly wanted to impart meaningful change to provide restitution for their wrongs, their hands are tied by entrenched business models and the short-term focus of the quarterly earnings cycle. They apologize and go right back to problematic behavior. The Washington Post recently chronicled a dozen times Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized, yet the social network keeps experiencing fiasco after fiasco. Tech giants won’t improve enough on their own.

Addiction To Utility

The threat of us abandoning ship should theoretically hold the captains in line. But tech giants have evolved into fundamental utilities that many have a hard time imagining living without. How would you connect with friends? Find what you needed? Get work done? Spend your time? What hardware or software would you cuddle up with in the moments you feel lonely? We live our lives through tech, have become addicted to its utility, and fear the withdrawal.

If there were principled alternatives to switch to, perhaps we could hold the giants accountable. But the scalability, network effects, and aggregation of supply by distributors has led to near monopolies in these core utilities. The second-place solution is often distant. What’s the next best social network that serves as an identity and login platform that isn’t owned by Facebook? The next best premium mobile and PC maker behind Apple? The next best mobile operating system for the developing world beyond Google’s Android? The next best ecommerce hub that’s not Amazon? The next best search engine? Photo feed? Web hosting service? Global chat app? Spreadsheet?

Facebook is still growing in the US & Canada despite the backlash, proving that tech users aren’t voting with their feet. And if not for a calculation methodology change, it would have added 1 million users in Europe this quarter too.

One of the few tech backlashes that led to real flight was #DeleteUber. Workplace discrimination, shady business protocols, exploitative pricing and more combined to spur the movement to ditch the ridehailing app. But what was different here is that US Uber users did have a principled alternative to switch to without much hassle: Lyft. The result was that “Lyft benefitted tremendously from Uber’s troubles in 2018” eMarketer’s forecasting director Shelleen Shum told the USA Today in May. Uber missed eMarketer’s projections while Lyft exceeded them, narrowing the gap between the car services. And meanwhile, Uber’s CEO stepped down as it tried to overhaul its internal policies.

This is why we need regulation that promotes competition by preventing massive mergers and giving users the right to interoperable data portability so they can easily switch away from companies that treat them poorly

But in the absence of viable alternatives to the giants, leaving these mainstays is inconvenient. After all, they’re the ones that made us practically allergic to friction. Even after massive scandals, data breaches, toxic cultures, and unfair practices, we largely stick with them to avoid the uncertainty of life without them. Even Facebook added 1 million monthly users in the US and Canada last quarter despite seemingly every possible source of unrest. Tech users are not voting with their feet. We’ve proven we can harbor ill will towards the giants while begrudgingly buying and using their products. Our leverage to improve their behavior is vastly weakened by our loyalty.

Inadequate Oversight

Regulators have failed to adequately step up either. This year’s congressional hearings about Facebook and social media often devolved into inane and uninformed questioning like how does Facebook earn money if its doesn’t charge? “Senator, we run ads” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said with a smirk. Other times, politicians were so intent on scoring partisan points by grandstanding or advancing conspiracy theories about bias that they were unable to make any real progress. A recent survey commissioned by Axios found that “In the past year, there has been a 15-point spike in the number of people who fear the federal government won’t do enough to regulate big tech companies — with 55% now sharing this concern.”

Regulation could protect Facebook, not punish it

When regulators do step in, their attempts can backfire. GDPR was supposed to help tamp down on the dominance of Google and Facebook by limiting how they could collect user data and making them more transparent. But the high cost of compliance simply hindered smaller players or drove them out of the market while the giants had ample cash to spend on jumping through government hoops. Google actually gained ad tech market share and Facebook saw the littlest loss while smaller ad tech firms lost 20 or 30 percent of their business.

Europe’s GDPR privacy regulations backfired, reinforcing Google and Facebook’s dominance. Chart via Ghostery, Cliqz, and WhoTracksMe.

Even the Honest Ads act, which was designed to bring political campaign transparency to internet platforms following election interference in 2016, has yet to be passed even despite support from Facebook and Twitter. There’s hasn’t been meaningful discussion of blocking social networks from acquiring their competitors in the future, let alone actually breaking Instagram and WhatsApp off of Facebook. Governments like the U.K. that just forcibly seized documents related to Facebook’s machinations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica debacle provide some indication of willpower. But clumsy regulation could deepen the moats of the incumbents, and prevent disruptors from gaining a foothold. We can’t depend on regulators to sufficiently protect us from tech giants right now.

Our Hope On The Inside

The best bet for change will come from the rank and file of these monolithic companies. With the war for talent raging, rock star employees able to have huge impact on products, and compensation costs to keep them around rising, tech giants are vulnerable to the opinions of their own staff. It’s simply too expensive and disjointing to have to recruit new high-skilled workers to replace those that flee.

Google declined to renew a contract with the government after 4000 employees petitioned and a few resigned over Project Maven’s artificial intelligence being used to target lethal drone strikes. Change can even flow across company lines. Many tech giants including Facebook and Airbnb have removed their forced arbitration rules for harassment disputes after Google did the same in response to 20,000 of its employees walking out in protest.

Thousands of Google employees protested the company’s handling of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations on Nov. 1.

Facebook is desperately pushing an internal communications campaign to reassure staffers it’s improving in the wake of damning press reports from the New York Times and others. TechCrunch published an internal memo from Facebook’s outgoing VP of communications Elliot Schrage in which he took the blame for recent issues, encouraged employees to avoid finger-pointing, and COO Sheryl Sandberg tried to reassure employees that “I know this has been a distraction at a time when you’re all working hard to close out the year — and I am sorry.” These internal apologizes could come with much more contrition and real change than those paraded for the public.

And so after years of us relying on these tech workers to build the product we use every day, we must now rely that will save us from them. It’s a weighty responsibility to move their talents where the impact is positive, or commit to standing up against the business imperatives of their employers. We as the public and media must in turn celebrate when they do what’s right for society, even when it reduces value for shareholders. If apps abuse us or unduly rob us of our attention, we need to stay off of them.

And we must accept that shaping the future for the collective good may be inconvenient for the individual. There’s an oppprtunity here not just to complain or wish, but to build a social movement that holds tech giants accountable for delivering the change they’ve promised over and over.

For more on this topic:

Internal Facebook memo sees outgoing VP of comms Schrage take blame for hiring Definers

The real threat to Facebook is the Kool-Aid turning sour

Google walkout organizers aren’t satisfied with CEO’s response

Facebook and the endless string of worst-case scenarios

Publicado en MobileCrunch https://ift.tt/2DWTFlg vía IFTTT

[sheminecrafts]

Tech giants offer empty apologies because users can’t quit

A true apology consists of a sincere acknowledgement of wrong-doing, a show of empathic remorse for why you wronged and the harm it caused, and a promise of restitution by improving ones actions to make things right. Without the follow-through, saying sorry isn’t an apology, it’s a hollow ploy for forgiveness.

That’s the kind of “sorry” we’re getting from tech giants — an attempt to quell bad PR and placate the afflicted, often without the systemic change necessary to prevent repeated problems. Sometimes it’s delivered in a blog post. Sometimes it’s in an executive apology tour of media interviews. But rarely is it in the form of change to the underlying structures of a business that caused the issue.

Intractable Revenue

Unfortunately, tech company business models often conflict with the way we wish they would act. We want more privacy but they thrive on targeting and personalization data. We want control of our attention but they subsist on stealing as much of it as possible with distraction while showing us ads. We want safe, ethically built devices that don’t spy on us but they make their margins by manufacturing them wherever’s cheap with questionable standards of labor and oversight. We want groundbreaking technologies to be responsibly applied, but juicy government contracts and the allure of China’s enormous population compromise their morals. And we want to stick to what we need and what’s best for us, but they monetize our craving for the latest status symbol or content through planned obsolescence and locking us into their platforms.

The result is that even if their leaders earnestly wanted to impart meaningful change to provide restitution for their wrongs, their hands are tied by entrenched business models and the short-term focus of the quarterly earnings cycle. They apologize and go right back to problematic behavior. The Washington Post recently chronicled a dozen times Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized, yet the social network keeps experiencing fiasco after fiasco. Tech giants won’t improve enough on their own.

Addiction To Utility

The threat of us abandoning ship should theoretically hold the captains in line. But tech giants have evolved into fundamental utilities that many have a hard time imagining living without. How would you connect with friends? Find what you needed? Get work done? Spend your time? What hardware or software would you cuddle up with in the moments you feel lonely? We live our lives through tech, have become addicted to its utility, and fear the withdrawal.

If there were principled alternatives to switch to, perhaps we could hold the giants accountable. But the scalability, network effects, and aggregation of supply by distributors has led to near monopolies in these core utilities. The second-place solution is often distant. What’s the next best social network that serves as an identity and login platform that isn’t owned by Facebook? The next best premium mobile and PC maker behind Apple? The next best mobile operating system for the developing world beyond Google’s Android? The next best ecommerce hub that’s not Amazon? The next best search engine? Photo feed? Web hosting service? Global chat app? Spreadsheet?

Facebook is still growing in the US & Canada despite the backlash, proving that tech users aren’t voting with their feet. And if not for a calculation methodology change, it would have added 1 million users in Europe this quarter too.

One of the few tech backlashes that led to real flight was #DeleteUber. Workplace discrimination, shady business protocols, exploitative pricing and more combined to spur the movement to ditch the ridehailing app. But what was different here is that US Uber users did have a principled alternative to switch to without much hassle: Lyft. The result was that “Lyft benefitted tremendously from Uber’s troubles in 2018” eMarketer’s forecasting director Shelleen Shum told the USA Today in May. Uber missed eMarketer’s projections while Lyft exceeded them, narrowing the gap between the car services. And meanwhile, Uber’s CEO stepped down as it tried to overhaul its internal policies.

But in the absence of viable alternatives to the giants, leaving these mainstays is inconvenient. After all, they’re the ones that made us practically allergic to friction. Even after massive scandals, data breaches, toxic cultures, and unfair practices, we largely stick with them to avoid the uncertainty of life without them. Even Facebook added 1 million monthly users in the US and Canada last quarter despite seemingly every possible source of unrest. Tech users are not voting with their feet. We’ve proven we can harbor ill will towards the giants while begrudgingly buying and using their products. Our leverage to improve their behavior is vastly weakened by our loyalty.

Inadequate Oversight

Regulators have failed to adequately step up either. This year’s congressional hearings about Facebook and social media often devolved into inane and uninformed questioning like how does Facebook earn money if its doesn’t charge? “Senator, we run ads” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said with a smirk. Other times, politicians were so intent on scoring partisan points by grandstanding or advancing conspiracy theories about bias that they were unable to make any real progress. A recent survey commissioned by Axios found that “In the past year, there has been a 15-point spike in the number of people who fear the federal government won’t do enough to regulate big tech companies — with 55% now sharing this concern.”

Regulation could protect Facebook, not punish it

When regulators do step in, their attempts can backfire. GDPR was supposed to help tamp down on the dominance of Google and Facebook by limiting how they could collect user data and making them more transparent. But the high cost of compliance simply hindered smaller players or drove them out of the market while the giants had ample cash to spend on jumping through government hoops. Google actually gained ad tech market share and Facebook saw the littlest loss while smaller ad tech firms lost 20 or 30 percent of their business.

Europe’s GDPR privacy regulations backfired, reinforcing Google and Facebook’s dominance. Chart via Ghostery, Cliqz, and WhoTracksMe.

Even the Honest Ads act, which was designed to bring political campaign transparency to internet platforms following election interference in 2016, has yet to be passed even despite support from Facebook and Twitter. There’s hasn’t been meaningful discussion of blocking social networks from acquiring their competitors in the future, let alone actually breaking Instagram and WhatsApp off of Facebook. Governments like the U.K. that just forcibly seized documents related to Facebook’s machinations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica debacle provide some indication of willpower. But clumsy regulation could deepen the moats of the incumbents, and prevent disruptors from gaining a foothold. We can’t depend on regulators to sufficiently protect us from tech giants right now.

Our Hope On The Inside

The best bet for change will come from the rank and file of these monolithic companies. With the war for talent raging, rock star employees able to have huge impact on products, and compensation costs to keep them around rising, tech giants are vulnerable to the opinions of their own staff. It’s simply too expensive and disjointing to have to recruit new high-skilled workers to replace those that flee.

Google declined to renew a contract with the government after 4000 employees petitioned and a few resigned over Project Maven’s artificial intelligence being used to target lethal drone strikes. Change can even flow across company lines. Many tech giants including Facebook and Airbnb have removed their forced arbitration rules for harassment disputes after Google did the same in response to 20,000 of its employees walking out in protest.

Thousands of Google employees protested the company’s handling of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations on Nov. 1.

Facebook is desperately pushing an internal communications campaign to reassure staffers it’s improving in the wake of damning press reports from the New York Times and others. TechCrunch published an internal memo from Facebook’s outgoing VP of communications Elliot Schrage in which he took the blame for recent issues, encouraged employees to avoid finger-pointing, and COO Sheryl Sandberg tried to reassure employees that “I know this has been a distraction at a time when you’re all working hard to close out the year — and I am sorry.” These internal apologizes could come with much more contrition and real change than those paraded for the public.

And so after years of us relying on these tech workers to build the product we use every day, we must now rely that will save us from them. It’s a weighty responsibility to move their talents where the impact is positive, or commit to standing up against the business imperatives of their employers. We as the public and media must in turn celebrate when they do what’s right for society, even when it reduces value for shareholders. And we must accept that shaping the future for the collective good may be inconvenient for the individual.

For more on this topic:

Internal Facebook memo sees outgoing VP of comms Schrage take blame for hiring Definers

The real threat to Facebook is the Kool-Aid turning sour

Google walkout organizers aren’t satisfied with CEO’s response

Facebook and the endless string of worst-case scenarios

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2DWTFlg via IFTTT

[technicalsolutions88]

A true apology consists of a sincere acknowledgement of wrong-doing, a show of empathic remorse for why you wronged and the harm it caused, and a promise of restitution by improving ones actions to make things right. Without the follow-through, saying sorry isn’t an apology, it’s a hollow ploy for forgiveness.

That’s the kind of “sorry” we’re getting from tech giants — an attempt to quell bad PR and placate the afflicted, often without the systemic change necessary to prevent repeated problems. Sometimes it’s delivered in a blog post. Sometimes it’s in an executive apology tour of media interviews. But rarely is it in the form of change to the underlying structures of a business that caused the issue.

Intractable Revenue

Unfortunately, tech company business models often conflict with the way we wish they would act. We want more privacy but they thrive on targeting and personalization data. We want control of our attention but they subsist on stealing as much of it as possible with distraction while showing us ads. We want safe, ethically built devices that don’t spy on us but they make their margins by manufacturing them wherever’s cheap with questionable standards of labor and oversight. We want groundbreaking technologies to be responsibly applied, but juicy government contracts and the allure of China’s enormous population compromise their morals. And we want to stick to what we need and what’s best for us, but they monetize our craving for the latest status symbol or content through planned obsolescence and locking us into their platforms.

The result is that even if their leaders earnestly wanted to impart meaningful change to provide restitution for their wrongs, their hands are tied by entrenched business models and the short-term focus of the quarterly earnings cycle. They apologize and go right back to problematic behavior. The Washington Post recently chronicled a dozen times Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized, yet the social network keeps experiencing fiasco after fiasco. Tech giants won’t improve enough on their own.

Addiction To Utility

The threat of us abandoning ship should theoretically hold the captains in line. But tech giants have evolved into fundamental utilities that many have a hard time imagining living without. How would you connect with friends? Find what you needed? Get work done? Spend your time? What hardware or software would you cuddle up with in the moments you feel lonely? We live our lives through tech, have become addicted to its utility, and fear the withdrawal.

If there were principled alternatives to switch to, perhaps we could hold the giants accountable. But the scalability, network effects, and aggregation of supply by distributors has led to near monopolies in these core utilities. The second-place solution is often distant. What’s the next best social network that serves as an identity and login platform that isn’t owned by Facebook? The next best premium mobile and PC maker behind Apple? The next best mobile operating system for the developing world beyond Google’s Android? The next best ecommerce hub that’s not Amazon? The next best search engine? Photo feed? Web hosting service? Global chat app? Spreadsheet?

Facebook is still growing in the US & Canada despite the backlash, proving that tech users aren’t voting with their feet. And if not for a calculation methodology change, it would have added 1 million users in Europe this quarter too.

One of the few tech backlashes that led to real flight was #DeleteUber. Workplace discrimination, shady business protocols, exploitative pricing and more combined to spur the movement to ditch the ridehailing app. But what was different here is that US Uber users did have a principled alternative to switch to without much hassle: Lyft. The result was that “Lyft benefitted tremendously from Uber’s troubles in 2018” eMarketer’s forecasting director Shelleen Shum told the USA Today in May. Uber missed eMarketer’s projections while Lyft exceeded them, narrowing the gap between the car services. And meanwhile, Uber’s CEO stepped down as it tried to overhaul its internal policies.

But in the absence of viable alternatives to the giants, leaving these mainstays is inconvenient. After all, they’re the ones that made us practically allergic to friction. Even after massive scandals, data breaches, toxic cultures, and unfair practices, we largely stick with them to avoid the uncertainty of life without them. Even Facebook added 1 million monthly users in the US and Canada last quarter despite seemingly every possible source of unrest. Tech users are not voting with their feet. We’ve proven we can harbor ill will towards the giants while begrudgingly buying and using their products. Our leverage to improve their behavior is vastly weakened by our loyalty.

Inadequate Oversight

Regulators have failed to adequately step up either. This year’s congressional hearings about Facebook and social media often devolved into inane and uninformed questioning like how does Facebook earn money if its doesn’t charge? “Senator, we run ads” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said with a smirk. Other times, politicians were so intent on scoring partisan points by grandstanding or advancing conspiracy theories about bias that they were unable to make any real progress. A recent survey commissioned by Axios found that “In the past year, there has been a 15-point spike in the number of people who fear the federal government won’t do enough to regulate big tech companies — with 55% now sharing this concern.”

Regulation could protect Facebook, not punish it

When regulators do step in, their attempts can backfire. GDPR was supposed to help tamp down on the dominance of Google and Facebook by limiting how they could collect user data and making them more transparent. But the high cost of compliance simply hindered smaller players or drove them out of the market while the giants had ample cash to spend on jumping through government hoops. Google actually gained ad tech market share and Facebook saw the littlest loss while smaller ad tech firms lost 20 or 30 percent of their business.

Europe’s GDPR privacy regulations backfired, reinforcing Google and Facebook’s dominance. Chart via Ghostery, Cliqz, and WhoTracksMe.

Even the Honest Ads act, which was designed to bring political campaign transparency to internet platforms following election interference in 2016, has yet to be passed even despite support from Facebook and Twitter. There’s hasn’t been meaningful discussion of blocking social networks from acquiring their competitors in the future, let alone actually breaking Instagram and WhatsApp off of Facebook. Governments like the U.K. that just forcibly seized documents related to Facebook’s machinations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica debacle provide some indication of willpower. But clumsy regulation could deepen the moats of the incumbents, and prevent disruptors from gaining a foothold. We can’t depend on regulators to sufficiently protect us from tech giants right now.

Our Hope On The Inside

The best bet for change will come from the rank and file of these monolithic companies. With the war for talent raging, rock star employees able to have huge impact on products, and compensation costs to keep them around rising, tech giants are vulnerable to the opinions of their own staff. It’s simply too expensive and disjointing to have to recruit new high-skilled workers to replace those that flee.

Google declined to renew a contract with the government after 4000 employees petitioned and a few resigned over Project Maven’s artificial intelligence being used to target lethal drone strikes. Change can even flow across company lines. Many tech giants including Facebook and Airbnb have removed their forced arbitration rules for harassment disputes after Google did the same in response to 20,000 of its employees walking out in protest.

Thousands of Google employees protested the company’s handling of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations on Nov. 1.

Facebook is desperately pushing an internal communications campaign to reassure staffers it’s improving in the wake of damning press reports from the New York Times and others. TechCrunch published an internal memo from Facebook’s outgoing VP of communications Elliot Schrage in which he took the blame for recent issues, encouraged employees to avoid finger-pointing, and COO Sheryl Sandberg tried to reassure employees that “I know this has been a distraction at a time when you’re all working hard to close out the year — and I am sorry.” These internal apologizes could come with much more contrition and real change than those paraded for the public.

And so after years of us relying on these tech workers to build the product we use every day, we must now rely that will save us from them. It’s a weighty responsibility to move their talents where the impact is positive, or commit to standing up against the business imperatives of their employers. We as the public and media must in turn celebrate when they do what’s right for society, even when it reduces value for shareholders. And we must accept that shaping the future for the collective good may be inconvenient for the individual.

For more on this topic:

Internal Facebook memo sees outgoing VP of comms Schrage take blame for hiring Definers

The real threat to Facebook is the Kool-Aid turning sour

Google walkout organizers aren’t satisfied with CEO’s response

Facebook and the endless string of worst-case scenarios

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2DWTFlg Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com