#premium research reports

[noragaur]

Your Perfect Financial Recipe | Finology

Explore Recipe by Finology, a progressive financial platform that combines technology and expert views to help you achieve your financial goals. Get a 360 assessment of your financial health, access premium research reports, and stay updated with timely alerts.

[soumyafwr]

https://chatterchat.com/read-blog/73569_global-premium-grade-pharmaceutical-salt-market-size-overview-key-players-and-fo.html

Premium Grade Pharmaceutical Salt Market 

[alithographica]

Re: Redbubble & Alternatives

Redbubble is doing some nonsense and I've deleted my account. I barely bothered with it anyway, was mostly there for people who've asked for specific images as posters.

Anyway in doing that I sacrificed the $4.35 that was still sitting in my earnings. They only let you cash out at $20, so rather than drum up sales and therefore make Redbubble more money, I'm gonna do what I feel is $4.35 in anti-publicity for them. 🥳

tl;dr there are new fees that hurt artist income at all sales levels. Redbubble is either looking to cut costs and raise profits for funsies, or is in serious financial trouble.

About the new fees:

Redbubble offers their services to artists by allowing artists to control their profit margin above a certain baseline manufacturing fee. This was pretty cool! There's now an additional fee that will be charged starting May 1, 2023. It is not an upfront fee that requires you to pay out of pocket, but it does directly cut your profit margin. How badly? Well...

By Redbubble's own example, if in one month you sell $300 in products that you had set at a 25% margin, you'd previously earn $75. Under the new structure, that earnings level means you pay a $28 fee, so you will now be paid $47. That $28 represents a 37% cut off what you were supposed to earn.

There's a full fee table in that link, but other highlights include a $1 fee if you earned $2 (aka 50%!) and big sellers who'd expect to take home $400 will now receive $320 (an $80 fee, 20%).

It also puts you in a weird spot that earning $1 more in a month may bump you to the next tier, causing you to actually take home less money. Make $1 more, end up losing $11. Make it make sense. 🤨

About the new tiers:

Each shop is evaluated and labeled Standard, Premium, or Pro. Premium and Pro shops are not subject to the new fees, but there's no clarity on how to move from one tier to another. Redbubble says it's under your control but it's clearly not. Many artists are reporting that they have accounts with next to no sales that have been labeled Pro, and accounts with thousands of annual sales that are labeled Standard.

Action items:

Look, I'm not gonna tell other artists that they have to close their shops, or tell buyers not to buy from Redbubble if your favorite artists have chosen to stay. What you do with the above info is up to you.

What I will say is that many artists are leaving because the new pay structure sucks. I encourage people who buy from Redbubble to expand their support to other sites.

Attrition is arguably their goal here—they know people will leave over this, and that'll probably lower their costs and lower competition for the remaining accounts. But goodwill is lost easily and they're playing a dangerous game on betting how many stay vs. leave. I'm out.

Feel free to leave your feedback on Redbubble's feedback form here, but it feels slightly like yelling into the void.

Alternatives:

tbh I don't have a good read on things. If you do know of any recommended (or unrecommended) print-on-demand sites, speak up!

I will say that as of now (April 2023), based on my research:

🟢 INPRNT sounds like a winner if your game is art prints and stickers. Does not have any wearable products like t-shirts.

🟡 Etsy + Printify/Printful might be viable? Etsy always had higher profit margins than POD marketplaces, but it's a bit more work and they also do weird things occasionally. Also has a listing fee so if you're the type to upload a ton of designs, pricey.

🔴 Teepublic is owned by Redbubble. Doesn't have the tier/new fee structure as of now but might be imminent. Have also heard their customer service sucks.

🔴 Society6 is going to charge artists shipping costs, and there's going to be a (mandatory?) subscription service launched in the fall, so that's not a winner anymore either.

[mariacallous]

In the hours after Iran announced its drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13, fake and misleading posts went viral almost immediately on X. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a nonprofit think tank, found a number of posts that claimed to reveal the strikes and their impact, but that instead used AI-generated videos, photos, and repurposed footage from other conflicts which showed rockets launching into the night, explosions, and even President Joe Biden in military fatigues.

Just 34 of these misleading posts received more than 37 million views, according to ISD. Many of the accounts posting the misinformation were also verified, meaning they have paid X $8 per month for the “blue tick” and that their content is amplified by the platform’s algorithm. ISD also found that several of the accounts claimed to be open source intelligence (OSINT) experts, which has, in recent years, become another way of lending legitimacy to their posts.

One X post claimed that “WW3 has officially started,” and included a video seeming to show rockets being shot into the night—except the video was actually from a YouTube video posted in 2021. Another post claimed to show the use of the Iron Dome, Israel's missile defense system, during the attack, but the video was actually from October 2023. Both these posts garnered hundreds of thousands of views in the hours after the strike was announced, and both originated from verified accounts. Iranian media also shared a video of the wildfires in Chile earlier this year, claiming it showed the aftermath of the attacks. This, too, began to circulate on X.

“The fact that so much mis- and disinformation is being spread by accounts looking for clout or financial benefit is giving cover to even more nefarious actors, including Iranian state media outlets who are passing off footage from the Chilean wildfires as damage from Iranian strikes on Israel to claim the operation as a military success,” says Isabelle Frances-Wright, director of technology and society at ISD. “The corrosion of the information landscape is undermining the ability of audiences to distinguish truth from falsehood on a terrible scale.”

X did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.

Though misinformation around conflict and crises has long found a home on social media, X is often also used for vital real-time information. But under Elon Musk’s leadership, the company cut back on content moderation, and disinformation has thrived. In the days following the October 7 Hamas attack, X was flooded with disinformation, making it difficult for legitimate OSINT researchers to surface information. Under Musk, X has promoted a crowdsourced community notes function as a way to combat misinformation on the platform to varying results. Some of the content identified by ISD has since received community notes, though only two posts had by the time the organization published its findings.

“During times of crisis it seems to be a repeating pattern on platforms such as X where premium accounts are inherently tainting the information ecosystem with half-truths as well as falsehoods, either through misidentified media or blatantly false imagery suggesting that an event has been caused by a certain actor or state,” says Moustafa Ayad, ISD executive director for Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. “This continues to happen and will continue to happen in the future, making it even more difficult to know what is real and what is not.”

And for those that are part of X’s subscription model and ad revenue sharing model, going viral could potentially mean making money.

Though it’s not clear that any of the users spreading fake or misleading information identified by ISD were monetizing their content, a separate report released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) earlier this month found that between October 7 and February 7, 10 influencers, including far-right influencer Jackson Hinkle, were able to grow their followings by posting antisemitic and Islamophobic content about the conflict. Six of the accounts CCDH examined were part of X’s subscription program, and all 10 were verified users. The high-profile influencers who are part of X’s ad revenue sharing program receive a cut of advertising revenue based on ”organic impressions of ads displayed in replies” to their content, according to the company.

[schmergo]

Reading headlines about professional theatre these past few years is an absolute wild ride. Maybe all this stuff was happening before the pandemic, but I never heard about it. Now every two seconds, it's something like this:

"Inspiring! 'Retired' Broadway actress stars as Elphaba in Broadway with no rehearsal after 8 years away from the theatre working as a biologist in Antarctica... and she's never even SEEN Wicked before!"

"The Show Must Go On! Tony-winning actor announces that he performed at the Tony awards on a broken leg, will be taking two days off to have it treated"

"The Zodiac Killer to join the cast of Chicago as Roxie Hart! He will be wearing a bag over his head at all performances to hide his identity, but we are training AI to recognize his voice patterns"

"Audience wowed by all-understudy performance of Sweeney Todd with the role of the Beadle eliminated entirely and Johanna played by the French horn player from the pit"

"Previously announced production of NAPOLEON! THE MUSICAL to be canceled two days before scheduled opening after playwright pulled rights due to 'unauthorized changes' and 'offensive casting.' Director defends choice to have a chimpanzee play the title role."

"After 147 years, beloved local theatre company announces closure due to ongoing poison-resistant ant infestation. Site to become a research lab about these spectacular ants!"

"5 billion dollar new AI-written Broadway musical BABY SHARK to close after 2 performances, both of which took place on a partial set because it wasn't finished yet"

"After 109 years, beloved local theatre company canceling their 2023-2024 season because they only got 2 sales and that was from the artistic director's mom and her next-door neighbor Debra (who drives)."

"Shocking! Artistic director of beloved local theatre exposed! Actors report seeing multiple interns and swings sacrificed to a minotaur living in the boiler room during his time at the theatre.'

"Beloved local theatre company announces new membership structure! Top membership tier (names engraved on lobby wall, premium seats for whole season, free admission to exclusive parties and events) will consist of donors who gave full or partial organs to our uninsured non-union actors!"

"Onward and upward! Phantom of the Opera now spotted living under Shake Shack!"

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity finally delivered Sarah Palin's death panels

Tonight (Apr 26), I’ll be in Burbank, signing Red Team Blues at Dark Delicacies at 6PM.

Remember “death panels”? Sarah Palin promised us that universal healthcare was a prelude to a Stalinist nightmare in which unaccountable bureaucrats decided who lived or died based on a cost-benefit analysis of what it would cost to keep you alive versus how much your life was worth.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Palin was right that any kind of healthcare rationing runs the risk of this kind of calculus, where we weight spending $10,000 to extend a young, healthy person’s life by 40 years against $1,000 to extend an elderly, disabled person’s life by a mere two years.

It’s a ghastly, nightmarish prospect — as anyone who uses the private healthcare system knows very well. More than 27m Americans have no health insurance, and millions more have been tricked into buying scam “cost-sharing” systems run by evangelical grifters:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/health/christian-health-care-insurance.html

But for the millions of Americans with insurance, death panels are an everyday occurrence, or at least a lurking concern. Anyone who pays attention knows that insurers have entire departments designed to mass-reject legitimate claims and stall patients who demand that the insurer lives up to its claim:

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/khn-podcast-an-arm-and-a-leg-how-to-shop-for-health-insurance-november-24-2021/

The private healthcare sector is designed to deny care. Its first duty is to its shareholders, not its patients, and every dollar spent on care is a dollar not available for dividends. The ideal insurance customer pays their premiums without complaint, and then pays cash for all their care on top of it.

All that was true even before private equity started buying up and merging whole swathes of the US healthcare system (or “healthcare” “system”). The PE playbook — slash wages, sell off physical plant, slash wages, reduce quality and raise prices — works in part because of its scale. These aren’t the usual economies of scale. Rather the PE strategy is to buy and merge all the similar businesses in a region, so customers, suppliers and workers have nowhere else to turn.

That’s bad enough when it’s aimed at funeral homes, pet groomers or any of the other sectors that have been bigfooted by PE:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

But it’s especially grave when applied to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

Or emergency room physicians:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

And if you think that’s a capitalist hellscape nightmare, just imagine how PE deals with dying, elderly people. Yes, PE has transformed the hospice industry, and it’s even worse than you imagine.

Yesterday, the Center for Economic and Policy Research published “Preying on the Dying: Private Equity Gets Rich in Hospice Care,” written by some of the nation’s most valiant PE slayers: Eileen Appelbaum, Rosemary Batt and Emma Curchin:

https://cepr.net/report/preying-on-the-dying-private-equity-gets-rich-in-hospice-care/

Medicare pays private hospices $203-$1,462 per day to take care of dying old people — seniors that a doctor has certified to have less than six months left. That comes to $22.4b/year in public transfers to private hospices. If hospices that $1,462 day-rate, they have lots of duties, like providing eight hours’ worth of home care. But if the hospice is content to take the $203/day rate, they are not required to do anything. Literally. It’s just free money for whatever the operator feels like doing for a dying elderly person, including doing nothing at all.

As Appelbaum told Maureen Tkacik for her excellent writeup in The American Prospect: “Why anybody commits fraud is a mystery to me, because you can make so much money playing within the guidelines the way the payment scheme operates.”

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-26-born-to-die-hospice-care/

In California, it’s very, very easy to set up a hospice. Pay $3,000, fill in some paperwork (or don’t — no one checks it, ever), and you’re ready to start caring for beloved parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles as they depart this world. You do get a site inspection, but don’t worry — you aren’t required to bring your site up to code until after you’re licensed, and again, they never check — not even if there are multiple complaints. After all, no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has the job of tracking complaints.

This is absolute catnip for private equity — free government money, no obligations, no enforcement, and the people you harm are literally dying and can’t complain. What’s not to like? No wonder PE companies have spent billions “rolling up” hospices across the country. There are 591 hospices in Van Nuys, CA alone — but at least 30 of them share a single medical director:

https://auditor.ca.gov/reports/2021-123/index.html#pg34A

Medicare caps per-patient dispersals at $32,000, which presents an interesting commercial question for remorseless, paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring private equity ghouls: do you take in sick patients (who cost more, but die sooner) or healthy patients (cost less, potentially live longer)?

In Van Nuys, the strategy is to bring in healthy patients and do nothing. 51% of Van Nuys hospice patients are “live discharged” — that is, they don’t die. This figure — triple the national average — is “a reliable sign of fraud.”

There are so many hospice scams and most of them are so stupid that it takes a monumental failure of oversight not to catch and prevent them. Here’s a goodun: hospices bribe doctors to “admit” patients to a hospice without their knowledge. The hospice bills for the patient, but otherwise has no contact with them. This can go on for a long time, until the patient tries to visit the doctor and discovers that their Medicare has been canceled (you lose your Medicare once you go into hospice).

Another scam: offer patients the loosest narcotics policy in town, promising all the opioids they want. Then, once their benefits expire, let them die of an overdose (don’t worry, people who die in hospice don’t get autopsies):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

You can hire con artists to serve as your sales-force, and have them talk vulnerable, elderly people into enrolling in hospice care by convincing them they have nothing to live for and should just die already and not burden their loved ones any longer.

Hospitals and hospices also collude: hospitals can revive dying patients, ignoring their Do Not Resuscitate orders, so they can be transfered to a hospice and die there, saving the hospital from adding another dead patient to their stats.CMS’s solution is perverse: they’re working with Humana to expand Medicare Advantage (a scam that convinces patients to give up Medicare and enrol in a private insurance program, whose private-sector death panel rejects 13% of claims that Medicare would have paid for). The program will pay private companies $32,000 for every patient who agrees to cease care and die. As our friends on the right like to say, “incentives matter.”

Appelbaum and co have a better idea:

Do more enforcement: increase inspections and audits.

Block mergers and rollups of hospices that make them too big to fail and too big to jail.

Close existing loopholes.

They should know. Appelbaum and her co-authors write the best, most incisive analysis of private equity around. For more of their work, check out their proposal for ending pension-plan ripoffs by Wall Street firms:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/05/mego/#A09948

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Burbank, Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: An industrial meat grinder, fed by a conveyor belt. A dead, elderly man is traveling up the conveyor, headed for the grinder's intake. The grinder is labelled 'HOSPICE' in drippy Hallowe'en lettering. It sits in a spreading pool of blood.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpghttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[australianwomensnews]

Australia’s online safety regulator has accused Apple and Google of financial motives in deciding not to remove Reddit and Elon Musk’s X from their app stores for hosting pornography in violation of their own policies.

Research cited in the eSafety commissioner’s online roadmap for age verification technology for adult sites last year reported that 41% of teens aged between 16 and 18 reported seeing pornography on X – more than the 37% who viewed pornography on dedicated adult sites.

Australia’s online safety regulator has accused Apple and Google of financial motives in deciding not to remove Reddit and Elon Musk’s X from their app stores for hosting pornography in violation of their own policies.

Research cited in the eSafety commissioner’s online roadmap for age verification technology for adult sites last year reported that 41% of teens aged between 16 and 18 reported seeing pornography on X – more than the 37% who viewed pornography on dedicated adult sites.

“There’s a huge disincentive right now for the app stores to actually follow their own [policies],” she said.

“They collect a 30% tithe from every transaction that happens on a social media site … Think about the force multiplier of deplatforming an app and what that would mean to their revenue.”

Google Play charges a 15% fee for the first US$1m earned by developers each year, increasing to 30% above that. Developers making Apple apps pay 15% if the revenue generated the previous year is lower than $1m, or 30% if they earn more than that.

Guardian Australia has sought comment from Apple, Google, X and Reddit. X and Reddit are free apps in both stores, but users can pay for a subscription or premium service through the apps which would attract the app store fees.

Under Apple’s developer guidelines, apps with user-generated, primarily pornographic content may be removed, but apps with user-generated adult content hidden by default may still be displayed. Both X and Reddit hide adult content by default.

Despite campaigns calling for age assurance technology trials to include social media for people under 16, the $6.5m trial of the technology announced in May’s budget by the federal government is unlikely to initially include social media sites, the Senate committee heard, with the initial focus to be on adult websites.

Bridget Gannon, the first assistant secretary for the online safety branch in the communications department, said the initial focus would be on online pornography and the effectiveness of technology to prevent people under 18 from accessing it.

There would be more consultation on what to do regarding social media, she said.

“There’s wide agreement there should be age limits on social media [but] there are different views on what that age should be … we’ll be doing some consultation and research to really nail down what that age should be, and then trial the available technologies to assess their effectiveness,” she said.

Gannon said the trial would examine different technologies, how to manage other issues such as privacy and security, and whether the intervention should be at the internet service provider level or the social media companies, or other type of services.

Gannon noted that in recent years there was an increasing reluctance for people to hand over identity information to companies, meaning they might seek to bypass any age assurance tech that uses ID.

“We will be working closely with industry as a whole but they won’t be undertaking the trial – we will be,” she said.

But the social media companies would be required to assure user ages, under codes developed under the Online Safety Act in parallel with the trial, Gannon said.

There is no date set on when the trial would end, but Gannon noted the trial was funded just for the 2024-2025 financial year. There was a risk if the technology was rushed out that it wouldn’t work, she said.

“There’s a risk that families and parents and carers have a false sense of security about the technologies that they have in place that they may place undue trust in a system thinking their children are being kept safe when actually their children can bypass it quite easily or it just doesn’t work.”

[ghostbustershq]

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Will Arrive A Week Early!

Deadline is reporting that Sony Pictures has pushed the release date of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire UP from March 29th to March 22nd. According to the article, the extra week affords the film another shot at catching kids on their Spring Break, and also gives a lead-in to the previous release dates’ Easter holiday weekend for some.

Says Deadline:

Set to screen in IMAX and premium large formats, the latest picture in the storied Ghostbusters franchise watches as the Spengler family returns to where it all started – the iconic New York City firehouse – to team up with the original Ghostbusters, who’ve developed a top-secret research lab to take busting ghosts to the next level. But when the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second Ice Age.

The film was already under a tight schedule, so trimming off a week must mean that they’re nearing the finish line and the studio has a great deal of confidence in the film. And for us fans, it means one less week to wait to check out the latest installment in the series! See you all in theaters one week earlier!

[tomorrowusa]

Elon Musk is monarch of an empire of bots.

Since buying Twitter and turning it into X, Elon Musk has become the single most-followed person on Xwitter with 153.8 million followers (at the time of publication). Obviously, some of these “followers” are bots, as most everybody with a significant following on the platform has faux accounts attached to them. The real question is: How many?  Is this über-rich man we call Elon Musk mostly hot air? A new report based on data collected on Musk’s followers by computer programmer Travis Brown is enlightening, to say the least. According to Mashable and journalist Matt Binder, who reviewed the data, Brown’s collection process followed “X's rate limit parameters.” Musk’s follower number was just above 153.2 million when the data was collected. While there is no way to know exactly how many of Musk’s followers are definitively fake, what can be determined is how many are inactive and may never have been active. The report gets pretty granular in breaking down these followers but one of the big numbers that pops out is that about 42% (more than 65 million) of Musk’s 150+ million followers have zero followers of their own. About the same number of Musk’s followers have never tweeted anything—or if they have, they must have deleted anything and everything before the data was collected. As for Musk’s ill-advised $8 X Premium subscription? About 0.3% (well under half a million) of his followers subscribe.

Remember when Elon was first thinking of buying Twitter and he complained about the presence of bots on the platform? The number is almost certainly more now than it was then.

According to the research, more than one-quarter of Musk’s current followers created their accounts on or after Oct. 27, 2022. That’s the day Musk officially became the owner of Twitter. You might recall that day, as it was marked by a flood of racists and antisemites blasting their invective across the platform. Obviously, this doesn’t necessarily mean all these tens of millions of accounts are just fake. However, there are some telltale signs that things aren’t exactly on the up and up:

The wannabe emperor can walk around naked during this digital age, because his subjects are unwilling to point out when he is wrong. It’s also impossible to point out that the emperor is wrong—because most of those subjects don’t really exist.

So if you are still on Twitter, it's way past time to leave.

[soumyafwr]

https://social.urgclub.com/read-blog/186792_global-premium-grade-pharmaceutical-salt-market-size-overview-key-players-and-fo.html

Premium Grade Pharmaceutical Salt Market 

[reysclowncare]

🎪American Society for the Wellbeing of Clowns (ASWC): Harmful Rhetoric and Mistreatment of Clowns

While I would normally stay quiet on this issue, due to recent events, and the fact that this organization has become the fourth largest clown organization in America, I feel the need to comment and inform clown lovers and owners of the ASWC's dangerous rhetoric, as well as harmful actions they've taken in past years.

ASWC's Perpetuation of "Clean" Pedigrees

This point is the most popular criticism of the ASWC, but I thought I'd go ahead and explain it in this post.

One of the most prominent values of the ASWC has been "protecting the sanctity of purebreds." This claim is fueled by the false belief that crossbreeding results in more birth defects and genetic mutations, which simply isn't the case. A study conducted at the Center of Clownology by Dr. Faxenmacher reported that purebred clowns and mixed-breed clowns have the same rate of mutations/defects, thus disproving this uneducated claim.

The current head of the ASWC, Charles Kasperle, had made a concerning tweet on his personal account 3 years ago calling for the euthanization of mixed-breed clown breeds, stating that their "quality of life" is poorer than purebreds. This level of extremism might not actually be something the ASWC stands for, but this careless eugenic rhetoric by the very head of the organization should be addressed.

The Mishandling of Larger Breeds

The first physical ASWC center was established in 2015 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. In the years following, their centers have grown in number, spread out across the continent. These centers are dedicated to the rehabilitation of injured/sickly strays and act as a shelter for said clowns.

As well-meaning as these centers appear to be, they, unfortunately, don't provide adequate care and sustenance for their clowns. In an interview with former volunteer Lindsay Possenreiser on the "Clown of the Town" podcast, she explains that any clown that wasn't of the teacup variety didn't have nearly enough enrichment or space, and were kept in the same kind of cages as teacup breeds. As we know, most large varieties of clowns need at least 30ft of space to themselves, as a vast majority tend to be territorial. This can usually be achieved by a small to medium-sized circus tent.

Possenreiser also commented on the lack of time they spent outside of their confinements. She stated that the only times they were out of their quarters were for an hour of outdoor time, or for check-ups. Mistreatment of clowns by an organization meant for clown wellness can lead to mass amounts of misinformation spreading amongst the clown care community like wildfire. Always do your own research, and consult professionals if necessary.

Endorsement of Unethical Clown Milk Companies

As of 2020, the ASWC has opened its doors to companies that sell clown products, such as milk or clown hair, giving an "ASWC Approved" seal to companies they deem "ethical." While I don't believe that it should be sold for human consumption, I do appreciate that certain companies go the extra mile to ensure the comfort and quality of life of their dairy clowns.

The ASWC has given the majority of its seals to companies that care for their clowns correctly, but a lot of these seals have gone to a few brands that don't prioritize their dairy clowns. There are quite a few out there, but I will be focusing on the largest seal-holder, Shamhonk Farms.

I won't get into the mistreatment of dairy clowns in this post (check out @bowling-with-skulls PSA on clown milk for more extensive information), but a recent documentary by Keira Spassmacher of one of Shamhonk's farms shows the caged conditions their clowns are forced to live in. I will spare the gruesome details, but it's dirty, small, and horrifying.

If you take a look at the top 5 beneficiaries of the ASWC in the past 3 years, you would probably notice Gooftacular, the parent company of Shamhonk Farms, being their #3 top beneficiary. A few other unethical companies with this seal, such as Iridium Inc. and Juggler's Premium, are also large donators to ASWC. This cannot be directly proven, but it can be implied that a few of these companies bought their seal.

*This is a reminder that just because a product has a "seal of approval" on it, doesn't mean that the seal is FDA-approved or an official term used by the FDA.

If you are looking for clown organizations/charities to volunteer for/donate to, please consider these alternatives:

The Goober Foundation: Inspired by the founder's late clown companion, Goober, who unfortunately passed from early-onset Madcap, this organization is dedicated to the care of clowns with severe to fatal afflictions, donating its earnings to families in need.

Chucklet Care Association (CCA): This association is grounded in care for sickly/stray chucklets to ensure they grow up to be healthy, full-grown clowns. This organization offers artificial Clown Milk, physical therapy, and even on-site care for chucklets that fall into their care. Please consider giving the CCA extra love, as their sponsors have been declining in the last year. It's getting harder for them to keep their doors open.

Ethical Clowns United (ECU): The ECU is dedicated to ending the mistreatment of clowns that have been bred for product, and to stopping the recently proposed legislation to end the ban on clown meat from being passed. If you feel especially for clowns bred for product, I'd suggest donating here.

Always be wary of what you are donating to. Just because it's a big name in its industry, doesn't mean it can't cause mass harm and perpetuate harmful misinformation. Thank you for reading.

[noretreatnancy]

my Ronance au is no upside down, their last year in high school they end up in a class together, they only know of each other via their separate but slightly overlapping nerd social circles (Barb plays the flute in band, Nancy reports on all the games and hangs out with Barb during breaks). Robin knows of Nancy as an overachieving teachers pet who color codes her notes and has never skipped a class in her life. Nancy knows of Robin as a slacker who doesn’t pay attention in class and never stops talking. They get partnered for a history project that requires some research/an essay/maybe a creative presentation. They’re forced to work together, they both dread it. They start spending time together… the sexual chemistry is SIZZLING… they reluctantly start to realize they were wrong in their initial judgements of each other (Robin is a genius, Nancy is 100% down for crime when the situation calls for it). They’re both kind of insecure (oh she’s so smart and out together and I’m a mess, oh she’s so confident and always speaks her mind and she totally thinks I’m a priss), there’s room for some premium mutual pining….

[lexsssu]

[OPEN] Writing Commission Sheet

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[tinyshe]

China has headed the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) since 2019. During this time, the country has restructured the organization’s personnel. Critics complain that China is advancing its own interests, using the UN's largest specialized agency. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), headquartered in Rome, is responsible for food and agriculture worldwide. It is the UN's largest specialized agency. It collects data on the agricultural sector and develops projects to help people access better nutrition - something that is more important than ever, with climate change and the growing world population. Qu Dongyu, from China, has been Director-General of the FAO since 2019. After taking office, he restructured the organization. He appointed Chinese directors to central departments. Before Qu's election, two director positions were occupied by Chinese nationals. Now, that number is six. One of these directors is responsible for crop protection - which includes the handling of pesticides. A research team was able to view internal documents that show that dozens of shipments of problematic pesticides to countries in Asia and Africa have been approved since 2020. Approvals were granted not only for insecticides used in emergencies -- for example, to combat a locust plague -- but for herbicides and fungicides, as well. These are used against weeds and fungal infestations. Many of the pesticides approved for delivery by the FAO contain active ingredients that are no longer allowed in the EU due to their toxicity. When asked, the FAO replied that it does not supply pesticides that qualify as ‘highly hazardous’ and only sends those that are approved in the recipient country. But the FAO left questions about specific pesticide approvals unanswered. An insider who has worked at the FAO for many years also made serious accusations against the Chinese leadership, claiming that it was instrumentalizing the UN organization for geopolitical purposes. Further research shed light on the role of Chinese officers in the FAO. These Chinese nationals are employed by the FAO -- but their salaries are paid by China. Other countries also pay officers from their home countries. However, the regime in Beijing puts a premium on "political ideology" - as Chinese tender documents show. According to these documents, the officers must regularly report on their work at the FAO to the Chinese embassy in Rome. And none of this is set to change anytime soon: in July 2023, Qu Dongyu was re-elected as Director-General for another four years.

[worldofwardcraft]

The bad example state.

April 25, 2024

In his State of the State Address in January 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis declared that Florida was "the freest state in these United States." He also claimed "the state is well-prepared to withstand future economic turmoil." Turns out this description does not apply at all to his state's insurance industry. That particular segment of Florida's economy is currently verging on catastrophe.

Because of ocean warming, Florida is especially subject to heavy rainfalls, storm surge, and major category hurricanes that can devastate entire cities. For example, 55% of all the properties in Miami are at risk for severe flooding. And Florida's sea level, as much as eight inches higher now than in 1950, is rising by one inch every three years.

Bloomberg Intelligence reports that a 360% rise in Florida's insured losses in the past three decades due to the increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters is causing insurers to “hike premiums and exit high-risk areas.” And with reinsurance — essentially insurance for insurers — becoming unaffordable, major insurance companies are fleeing Florida in droves. AIG ceased insuring new properties along Florida's shoreline, while Farmers Group has stopped writing new policies statewide entirely.

So, since Republicans believe a "free" state means having little to no business regulation, homeowners are left having to depend on companies that are smaller, less diversified, less capitalized and more prone to becoming insolvent. A recent study by researchers at Harvard University, Columbia University and the Federal Reserve found that a majority of homes in Florida are insured by companies whose ratings would not receive an A from Demotech Inc., the industry’s primary ratings agency, and thus not be good enough to secure full backing by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Naturally, costs for home insurance have skyrocketed, too. Floridians paid an average annual premium of $10,996 in 2023 — more than anywhere else in the country. And online insurance agent Insurify predicts that number to go up to $11,759 in 2024.

DeSantis likes to hype "free" Florida as a model for the nation. Here's how Latisha Nixon-Jones, law professor at Jackson State University responds to that notion:

Will the state serve as a blueprint for disaster-prone regions, or act as a cautionary tale? After all, states such as California and Louisiana have also seen insurance companies withdrawing from their markets.

Plus, Newsweek reports that Brookfield Asset Management Reinsurance Partnership is pulling out of nine states: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Washington. If Florida is an example for America, that's not very reassuring.