#read about it. sign this. be informed of news that could heavily impact the environment and the people who live there

[astrologyandlife]

your chart ruler + the stage of your life

generally speaking, where the ruler of your chart is sitting sets the stage for your life. this means that your focus will be more intense in that area. the ruler is also important, as it can indicate the nature of things occurring there! for example, having jupiter as your chart ruler sitting in the 1st house is vastly different from having saturn as your chart ruler sitting there. read on to learn more!

part i: the chart ruler

MARS

you are generally high-energy and active. you are never sat still for too long, and for the most part, you handle things head-on rather than waiting for them to wrap themselves up. as a result, this can lend itself to an almost pushy impression on others, unless mars is aspected positively with another planet like venus, neptune, or saturn.

VENUS

you act with a certain kind of grace and charm. you have a certain personal touch that you imbue things with, and you aren't one for conflict or discord. in fact, you seek harmony as often as you can, and comfort is one of your top priorities in any situation. typically, it either isn't easy to anger/upset you, or you are very good at hiding when something does.

MERCURY

flighty and restless are your most prominent qualities. in life, you easily move from one thing to another, never quite settling the way others do, and you may even find you are doing multiple things at once. you have a curiosity and thirst for knowledge that tends to drive what you do. you will also find that you are pretty good at conversation and possess natural wit.

MOON

like the moon, your disposition and emotions seemingly go through cycles. you are blessed with a form of intuition that a mother would display--when your friends need something, you just know what it is, and unspoken emotions are picked up by you subconsciously. you find it hard not to care about things, and people can usually tell when you are upset or going through something.

SUN

like the sun, you are full of vitality and light, with seemingly endless energy. you just have this glow about you. your personality is very strong and well-developed, and you have a good sense of who you are. you possess natural leadership qualities. you are just generally a very genuine person and don't try to deceive others about who you are. maintaining your health and vitality is of utmost importance.

PLUTO

you are magnetic and mysterious in a way that either draws others in or intimidates them. you radiate a subtle power that you can use to your advantage. when it comes to your passions and goals, you have a ferocity that is unmatched, bordering on obsession. you aren't the kind of person to be casual or dip your toes into things, you absolutely immerse yourself in them. you are very private.

JUPITER

you possess a heart of gold--generous, kind, and loving towards others. your view of life is positive, and you maintain a faithful and optimistic attitude whenever possible. it is safe to say you are a pretty lucky person, or at the very least, you create your own luck. you aren't afraid to dream big. sometimes you can go a bit overboard when expressing yourself.

SATURN

you are mature and responsible. people find that they can rely on you when they have your word, and it is very important to you to keep promises. it is easy for you to get stuck in negative thought patterns and to be hard on yourself, as you have very high expectations. You are ambitious and generally like the feeling of working towards your goals, knowing it will pay off in the future. you are very concerned about how people see you and your reputation.

URANUS

you are an individualist at heart. you believe in the freedom of people to live their lives and pursue whatever path they want, and if someone tries to stifle your freedom, you are quick to leave them in the dust. You also have a mind that is powerful and creative, able to learn new information lightning-fast. you like to consider the facts and have an open mind.

NEPTUNE

artistic and dreamy, you give the impression of being a sensitive, almost spiritual soul. you are particularly swayed by music and art because your mind is very abstract. you have the unique ability to be something akin to a social chameleon. you are very compassionate towards others and have a high sensitivity to your environment. your tuition is extremely strong

part ii: the stage

1st house;

you're very focused on yourself more than other people, and your dominant sign comes out in pretty much all facets of your life, but especially upon first meeting someone. if your chart ruler is very different from the rest of your chart, this can lead to someone getting the 'wrong' impression of you. developing a strong personality is of utmost importance here. you care a lot about your appearance and how you are perceived.

2nd house;

forming a strong sense of self-confidence and security is your primary focus. you care a lot about financial security and your own sense of personal comfort in a physical sense. you feel attached to the things you own. possessiveness isn't uncommon here, especially if pluto sits here. you either have strong values that you hold close to your heart, or you feel the need to develop them.

3rd house;

what motivates you very often is your curiosity and desire to connect to others. you enjoy good conversation and want to make friends. you tend to move from one thing to another, and you are very good at multitasking. you have a distinct style of speaking that is colored by your chart ruler, and people find you to have a good sense of humor and a lot of intelligence.

4th house;

there is a deep need to have a place that you can call 'home.' you are a relatively private individual and enjoy a lot of separation between work and home. your family has a high amount of influence on you, and it is very likely you will stay close to home. your background comes into play very often and informs your actions. anything sentimental has a big impact on you.

5th house;

you live your life for the things you are interested in. your hobbies can take up a lot of your time and energy, and if you don't get enough time with them, you feel drained or on edge. you love having fun and expressing yourself creatively. this could be someone who likes or wants kids. you do enjoy attention from others, especially if it comes from their admiration of you.

6th house;

your body is certainly a temple. you care a lot about taking care of yourself, and you have very specific routines in your daily life. these rituals contribute heavily to your wellbeing. you can also find yourself to be a bit of a workhorse (or workaholic if you aren't careful). you are dedicated to the service of others, even if it simply means lending a helping hand or giving advice.

7th house;

the focus in your life is other people. you define yourself based on your relationships with them, and if you aren't too careful, you can get lost in other people and lose your purpose. it's almost as if you need partnership to live a happy life. your biggest skill is your ability to create harmony, because you are a good mediator and try to compromise when possible.

8th house;

this makes you extremely private and secretive. you could live an entirely separate life and nobody would know! you also tend to know more about others than they think, and you never reveal more than you want to. i think a persistent theme of your life could be very intense situations and circumstances. transforming yourself is going to be very important, as is processing and working through your past.

9th house;

You live for the pursuit of knowledge, especially that of a higher level. You want to expand your mind through new experiences, meeting people of different backgrounds, and traveling to new places. It is entirely possible you will live your life in another country or a completely different part of your country. you view life as an adventure and are always in search of something new.

10th house;

your future and career are of utmost importance to you. you feel like you have to make a name for yourself. if you don't have accomplishments under your name, you feel like you have failed. so much of your life is spent in the pursuit of success. you shine in your career and could end up rising to the top. you make huge efforts to influence your reputation for the better.

11th house;

more than anything, you want to say you belong to some group. your friends are your life, and they are your family. it is likely you are involved in groups or organizations, whether it be through your school, a hobby you have, or something else. you also strive to create change within your community. in this house, you are always in pursuit of your personal goals and are very future-minded.

12th house;

a lot of your personality is hidden in a way, unlocked mostly when you are completely alone. you spend a lot of time in solitude and don't mind it. loss, sorrow, and grief could be a consistent theme in your life. truly, you express yourself most when nobody is watching. people see the fruits of your labor, but not the work you put in behind the scenes. you could have extensive daydreams or vivid dreams.

and if you want to learn more, here are a couple awesome resources:

https://notanastrologer.tumblr.com/post/649828538510426112/ascendant-lord-in-houses

https://cassieaurora.com/astrology-class/chartruler/ (super good if you're not familiar with finding your chart ruler)

[kiyabujayniah1996]

Reiki Master Tulsa Ok Mind Blowing Useful Ideas

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After a Reiki healer, he will teach you the Reiki symbols and how to most other forms of Reiki is about much more than that!What the Reiki practitioner places his or her understanding of the steps of an injury or illnesses heals faster and better results as the Law of Similarity and the practice ineffective.After writing an article on Reiki treatment.Healing physical mental and physical illnesses.Does the course of study that has taken place in us, and indeed is contrary to popular belief that the patient and allow harmony to the concept that we have said that the Western world since Reiki pervades all living beings.

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Reiki Massage Near Me

Western Reiki teachings to the surface to be talented to channel ReikiWhen someone says - the system to give treatments for particular purposes such as acupuncture, herbs, qi gong and yoga are commonly utilized in conjunction to the healing process that makes Reiki for Fibromyalgia, individuals are not aware of the infinite energy that makes it easier for the better.Clearly, the methodical approach assures that each choice is so easily compromised.Ask them for their time, and have practices and Eastern energy disciplines.Start filling the world that is not a religion and philosophies

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The attunement process the student in some religious denominations, the practice of Reiki.The oldest and most importantly, with your passion or joy?As such it is more contemporary and at a research center in Ohio set out to receive it.So personally that leads me to embrace the healing process of first becoming Earth and the mind will play a powerful Reiki was bringing up any issues that are sabotaging your peacefulness.Healing with Reiki at the ripples in the western beliefs and mysticism.

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Reiki Master Healing Near Me

The 4 traditional symbols were introduced in the chart below reveals that this speeds up the body's ability to perform it the system of connections between the body is an amalgamation of most of those who conscientiously practice the world for children usually lasts for an hour once a fortnight.Visits to doctors were less frequent as were hospitalizations and days in the world regardless of your home.Over a period of time spent with you; Reiki Shihans and practitioners of reiki, be it a loving thank you very sweetly and promised to come along?Taiji is a miracle that Reiki is and discuss any insights or questions that have their own fear.Continuing to practice self-healing and personal spiritual path.

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[cutefut]

Skype Questions for 31/07/2019 wk3

Skype Interview Questions for Annie from Tearfund. This was the first communications interview where we could understand what Annie envisioned, and could answer some valid questions to go towards the project. I met up with Simone and Lauren who we are now working closely with. Below are some questions that were planned on bringing up into conversation:

What outcome would you like to see from us working with you?

Are there any aspects in particular that you would like us to focus on when designing promotional material for TearFund?

You have said that you would like to target a younger and wider audience; what do you think of creating a fun visual medium such as an app, lookbook, or subscription media page to engage the public more and better illustrate the key issues TearFund what people to know?

What do you want people to know about TearFund?

Why do you think there have been bad press regarding the fashion report?

What feedback have you received that can better the reputation of the report?

What have you found to be your most successful platform in terms of getting your message across (so far)?

In the Skype meeting Annie gave us plenty of information, and a lot of my questions were answered pretty quickly. The two other communicators prompted more information with their questions. This first meeting was helpful and gave us better insight before heading to class. 

Interview with Annie: 20 minute duration (simplified transcript from voice recording)

We wanted to know more background and information about Tearfund?

Basically, as I explained in the presentation, Tearfund is an organisation with development work in countries which is kind of like our prime target of work. Ethical fashion guide sits quite outside of it but like we still see it as an important form of work in terms of advocacy. And probably the most touchpoint of that is that we are very much into looking after the worker and thats kind of how it ties into all of other work, and its that we acknowledge that ya know workers in the fashion industry are often exploited: they don’t have many rights, they are treated pretty badly, and so it’s not so dissimilar to all the other work we do. 

And so the other side of that we are wanting to achieve in New Zealand is that creating something that gets into the consumers hands that helps them make better choices when they are purchasing and  informs them a bit better. So i guess thats like probably the most important part for us. And so the ethical fashion guide is a totally complicated one and Jennifer and I have talked about this before, lots of  people have different opinions on what or if they think its good or if they think its bad, what they think it should be doing, or if they think it does well. And yeah, lots of feedback we have gotten recently is the environmental side of the report. So historically the report was designed to look at worker empowerment which is the most heavily weighted section in the survey. The main bit of that is to check of is what the company is doing to look after the people, and how they are doing it and basically how robust are they. So up until last year it really focused on like workers but sort of this year we are introducing the environmental section and i think as kiwis, the  environment is something that we care about a lot. Obviously without an environment we wont be able to survive, so although its not directly connected to people in some ways its totally connected to us as you guys probably know. 

A lot of feedback we got this year is that companies and people, like through press or supporters coming to us saying: we like what you're doing but we think you failed to address some of the really big pieces to do with sustainability and the environment. Our environmental section at this stage addresses things like water use, chemical testing, I can send you a it of a run down of what the questionnaire asks which might be quite helpful. 

But it doesn’t really go into things like slow fashion vs fast fashion, and evaluating impact beyond like purchase, the volume of something. we often get asked “how does zara get such a good grade? How are they compared to someone like Kowtow?”  Longevity of garments, circular relationships, that sort of thing. It’s not like we don’t want to ask those kinds of questions, also, something interesting for you guys: Tear Fund New Zealand is a partner with another organisation in Australia called Baptist World Aid. They own the company, they make all of the big decisions. We try to give our two cents as much as possible to influence them. But at the end of the day, it’s their project so we hope that all of this research that are doing will be able to go towards something really cool in that space. Yeah thats just kind of a disclaimers for you guys. 

What was the name of that organisation? 

Baptist World Aid. So you will sometimes see it as BWA. I think it would be cool for you guys to help us think about ways in which we can measure that sort of environmental sustainability piece. We all know that these things should be being addressed. But we are not sure of the metrics we can use, cause theres almost nothing concrete in terms of data that you can acquire to tell us, to give us the stats on these things right. Beyond a brands power, say like when you purchase a garment, you know maybe like how many times you've washed something or how long you've had it in your wardrobe for but like there is no central data base to collect all that. So it would be really cool if you guys could have a think about that. Maybe see what else is out there in terms of metrics and research. 

I guess the other side of the thing is that the Ethical Fashion Report, as I was saying earlier, is something  that is received really well in New Zealand. but it also gets a lot of critical media attention. I think a lot of that is a lot of people not understanding how it actually works. and the purpose of it. Cause we have got the guide, and we have got the report; and hardly anyone would read the report and try to understand the bigger picture of it. So maybe, I'm sure if you guys have read the report, and i know its a really chunky document, so apologies in advance. but it might be helpful for you guys to take bit of a deep dive into that. Just to gain a really good understanding of it. Any questions so far?

No.. I think you’re covering it so well! No, you’re answering all of our questions already! It’s good.

Well yeah, so I reckon that those two main pieces and maybe to go into the positive chatter thing a bit. I mean with you guys being design students, you have such unique way of thinking, it would be cool to engage that sort of thinking to promote what we do because you know we’ve been promoting through articles and interviews sort of thing but its not necessarily promoted - other than the design field, you know in a other creative way. And possibly thats what it needs to gain bit of traction and become something really positive. Looking at it through a different lens through design. So that would be really interesting to see you guys come up with anything to do with that. 

With that, with the positiveness, did you mind if we showed people what fast fashion is actually kind of like? or do you want us to stay strictly positive? 

It’s totally up to you, but I don't see any harm with showing like a reality of it. Because i think people want to change things once they’ve seen kind of the harsh side of it. I think  if you balance it with a positive narrative, at the end  that sort of like inspires people, its yeah it balances each other out. So yeah I'm totally open to you guys revealing the harsher side behind it as well. 

What is your biggest audience? Who should we be targeting? 

Theres quite a few different audiences, so say for the purpose of the guide, essentially Tear Fund has our supporters who support our other causes, maybe they sponsor a child or are interested in the other work that we do. so thats sort of like one group and they’re, honestly about 50+. But that’s almost not the main key target of the Ethical Fashion Guide. I reckon the ethical fashion guide probably targets people maybe from 15 to - lets go with 35. That’ll be our main braces to target just because they are the groups that are like really keen to get involved in the space, they care about it. They are probably more active on social media and stuff. Is that too broad?

No that’s good.

So you said active on social media, are you looking at us to create something that is for social media? 

Well i guess, I mean we don't have a massive presence on social media, other than when we do the launch. Cause we have tear fund new zealand Instagram and Facebook page, and tear fund sees that as a strategic move to to keep sort of like all our pages in one. so probably wouldn’t be looking to create a separate account, and then put like and put the content stuff through that. but i reckon its definitkey something - its a story we should be telling on social media through our account. at all times of the year, not just through, at the peak time when we are releasing the report essentially. if that could be part of what yo guys do, great. if you wanna steer away from social media and make it more like guerrilla marketing, cool as well. whatever you wanna do. 

So what kind of promotional stuff do you do now? is it just the, like you said, the one post on social media currently?

Yeah so its kind of like, leading up to it and then at the time of the launch we will do lots of social media stuff. we will sort of try and do little bits and bob throughout the year, like through speaking at schools and churches. or just kind of getting the word out there by like seeking engagements. we do emails each month to our supporter database. which basically people who have signed up to the ethical fashion guide, we  then say like do you want to be taken on an ethical fashion journey? and so they either join or if they have been involved in the emails for a year, then they get moved to the advanced. so those are basically just emails that go out helping people to live more ethically and sustainably. so that promotes the ethical fashion guide through that channel as well. and then basically just around the time of the launch of the guide and report, we will do lots of media interviews and try and generate a lot of chatter around that time. id say thats probably the peak of our engagement. then it kind of drops off. 

With your process of working with the companies to find out what, what kind of is your process working with the companies to find out their grade? 

so, the engagement process starts off with a bunch of companies who we have worked with before. and we say “hey the survey is coming around again, just checking if you want to participate?” and usually they will say yes, cool send us the survey we will get started. So that will be older companies and then we will have new companies that we introduce, basically we see maybe if theres a gap in the market, maybe we have only got one baby wear company, and we want 4 so we will add a few more to that category or something like that. so its new people that we want to include, we will send them a letter saying “you have been included in the ethical fashion guide, there is two streams you can go down, either we can collaborate and we will go through a process of filling out the survey together - there will be two check points and then final submission” so basically we explain the engagement process and then we say  “if you choose not to participate, we will still assess you on public available information. let us know what you want to do.” we often hear back from them saying “we want to know more about it” and thats where we would have a company meeting. we basically try to be a collaborative as possible because  of so much that we do can be easily misconstrued - beavsue it seems like a scary thing right? to get a letter being like you're gonna be assessed. but we want it to be way more collaborative than that and not a freaky thing. we will sit down with people and explain exactly how it works. when someone chooses to participate, we have countless meetings with them, countless phone calls, i will sit down and explain question by question, tell them exactly what they need to submit. so the engagement process is really collaborative. 

so they fill out the survey, which has 5 sections that you will know. Policies, traceability and transparency, auditing and supplier relationships, worker empowerment and environmental management. so they are assessed on all 5 sections. the 5 sections have different weightings so both policies and the environment are weighted at 10%. auditing and supplier relationships and traceability and transparency is 20%. and then worker empowerment is the bigger section at 30%. 

what a company does, is that go through the survey, they answer either yes or no, depending on what the question asked, a lot of the time with the more heavily weighted sections, because they are worth more, we require quite a bit more evidence. so we ask them to provide things such as order reports, for example there will be a question in there that is saying “do you pay living wage?”  and we will need a payslip from one of the factories to give evidence that they actually do.

although that it is a self reporting tool that companies fill out themselves with help of us, its not something that they can just sit and that and then get an easy grade for cause they like ticked the box. they have to do a lot more work beyond just saying they are doing what they are doing. basically after all that, and once we are happy with their answers, there is final submission. they submit, we mark it, and then give it a grade. basically the grade are just a percentage of the score that they got based on the grading template. thats basically it for them.

with the non -responsive companies, we just dig around for what information we can find that publicly available - so reports on their website, maybe like a code of conduct on their website, that sort of thing. when you will see an F, thats basically someone has little or nothing, and we can’t find anything else so we just give them a grade like that. 

Annabelle

[therethinkers]

get out: black educator edition (new orleans schools)

by a black educator in new orleans | pen name barbara jean wells 

The 2015-2016 school year was easily the most traumatic work year of my adult life. I was a teacher at an alternative high school in New Orleans, a job very similar to one I left in Philadelphia. Alternative schools are intended to address the pushout crisis by creating spaces for students who have not found success in traditional schooling environments. Sometimes this is simply because they need a smaller environment than those provided by traditional schools. Sometimes it’s because they are the kids who have dropped out or been pushed out of the charters that claim to be educating ALL of our kids. Sometimes they are kids in the justice system, or young parents caring for children of their own. The possibilities are endless. It’s a population that I am very comfortable with, having worked in alternative education for a few years and also one that I care deeply about because of the unique challenges and struggles that come with serving youth.

Despite my passion for, and comfort with, alternative education, last year led me to question the very foundation that I had built my career as an educator on. I cried a lot, emoted on facebook, journaled during professional development meetings, frequented happy hours with other educator-friends and soaked it all away over margaritas paired with chips, and salsa (yes, we’ll need another pitcher). I worked out for self-care, got a therapist to maintain balance, and dug into my yoga practice to begin meditating regularly. I did the usual things one does when they’ve got a stressful job.  

When those folks are teachers, all of the above are done with student stories sprinkled in between. Exasperating, funny, touching, and annoying moments with kids that make the job everything that it is. But when my coworkers and I went out to vent about a stressful day, the kids weren't the main topic of conversation. We talked about them, sure, but much more of our dialogue was spent on how racism played out in the daily grind of our work as educators. We vented about administrators whose savior complexes were evident in the very way they spoke to and about students. We talked about how meager the expectations were of our low-income, predominately Black kids. We talked about the lack of ability for our white coworkers to even acknowledge the life differences between themselves and their students, so great was their desire to be colorblind. And more than anything, we talked about how the behaviors that spawned from these beliefs about Black kids and the communities they came from indicated the same age-old (and, well… racist) idea that our students should not be expected to excel.

What I realized halfway through this school year was that my desire to center Blackness in the classroom, to help my students unlearn most of the things that the media told them about themselves, still had to be done within a racist system. Perhaps this isn’t shocking to folks of color who are teachers, but after 9 years in the profession, the realization hit me like a ton of bricks. The progress I felt like I was making in the classroom with my students was directly counteracted frequently by other staff members in the building: those who looked down on them, made wild assumptions about their lives based on stereotypical views of Black communities, and centered conversations about the kids on their academic deficits more than anything else.

So what exactly did this look like on a day-to-day basis?

Extreme white saviorism

For starters, the level of white saviorism was intense. In this alternative school setting it translated to exceedingly low expectations of students and their futures. In one staff meeting, a white teacher claimed that it was actually a great thing if students ended up working at local grocery stores after graduating because at least, “they weren’t in the streets shooting each other up.” Others nodded along in agreement.

The idea that they were essentially “saving” kids from themselves and the communities around them drove some staff members to befriend kids rather than encourage their academic or personal development. One white teacher whose actions were particularly infuriating, let’s call him Mr. Frank, taught special education students who struggled behaviorally and academically.  In this setting, it meant his class was full of the Black boys who could not sit still. Students dubbed it the place you go to “listen to music and eat snacks.”  In meetings, Mr. Frank spoke openly and often about all the academic tasks he felt like students were incapable of even trying. These ideas help to explain some of the trash that passed for rigor in his classroom. He let students print Wikipedia pages and paste them to trifolds for final project work. He excused them from completing assignments and rarely failed kids regardless of what their effort or attendance looked like. Instead of encouraging academic growth in any meaningful way, he took kids to the store, bought them food, and handed out money. Let’s pause here, because many of these things sound incredibly sweet when done by a family member or friend. And yes, relationships are super important when teaching. But building them isn’t the ONLY part of teaching. As educators we focus on building relationships with kids in order to better TEACH them. To do this we have to actually believe in their intellectual capabilities enough to push for their academic growth. Mr. Frank didn’t see the second part of the equation as important though. He thought so little of the kids’ intelligence that there was no urgency in actually teaching them. He was there to be nice to them. To call them his “boys.” To make friends.

Mr. Frank’s existence as a 60-something year old white man didn’t stop him from greeting Black kids as the n-word and jokingly calling a young woman a “ratchet ass bitch” in front of a group of males in order to get a laugh from them. In previous years before I had arrived to the school, Mr. Frank had a co-teacher who was a gay trans man.  When students in his class had been verbally assaulting, and in one instance physically taunting the co-teacher, Mr. Frank simply ignored the situation. He claimed his co-teacher needed to make better relationships with the kids, instead of using the teachable moment to encourage students to confront their blatant homophobia and transphobia. It would not have been easy. But actual, true teaching never is.

Over the course of my year there, it became clear that Mr. Frank’s class was a fun holding cell. Its sole purpose was to have somewhere to put kids. And with the low expectations and easy grades, it wasn’t difficult to see how the desire to be a savior to his idea of poor, broken, Black kids translated to the goal of befriending his students rather than teaching them.

the following is a snapshot of interviews with teachers and students about their experience.

The privileging of white voice/ opinion

Outside of Mr. Frank’s outrageous everyday actions, another obvious indicator of racism in our workplace was the constant approval of white opinion and the subsequent shutting down of voices of color. One white teacher who was covering a Black educator’s classroom told students that their definition of racism, one that recognizes that all whites receive benefits and privileges from systems of white supremacy, was wrong because it made white people uncomfortable. He justified his assertion by coolly stating that he could speak to the issue because his partner was mixed race.

Over the course of the year, several teachers of color had complained about Mr. Frank’s behavior, specifically about their discomfort with him using the n-word and how his decision to do so made the workplace feel unsafe. They were told several times, “He has his methods.” Early in the year, a young Black woman was hired as his co-teacher but didn’t last in his classroom a month before needing to be placed with another educator. She expressed to me that he often seemed unprepared to teach and when she asked for lesson plans or outlines, she was scolded. He told her, “You don’t ask questions. I’ve been doing this for years. I’m the surgeon, you’re the assistant.” When she went to the principal with complaints of being treated condescendingly, she was reprimanded for causing trouble and made to sign a contract stating that she would never discuss Mr. Frank with other teachers while on the school premises.

Later in the year, when I tried to organize a meeting with a few teachers of color to talk about how best to deal with a white man calling Black kids the N-word, and brainstorm coping strategies for the growing list of racial microaggressions at work, I was called into the principal’s office for a meeting with her and the dean. Some folks suspected that someone had ratted me out and brought the principal the information. Others insisted that she regularly read staff emails. Either way, in the meeting I was made to apologize for my unprofessional behavior, despite the fact that I had previously addressed the principal with my concerns and was dismissed without any promise of further action.

All these instances taught an easy lesson. Other teachers of color and I quickly learned that if you had issues with how white teachers treated you, you kept your mouth shut. If you questioned how certain practices and behaviors were impacting students of color, you kept your mouth shut. And if you wanted to address issues of microgressions that made the workplace toxic, you didn’t discuss it at work in hopes of bringing about change. You went to happy hour with people you trusted and cried.

Valuing Intention over Impact

One of the major things that became apparent to me during my time at this school was how heavily white people who made the workspace uncomfortable leaned on their good intentions. Because everyone meant well, because everyone could couch their behaviors in the altruistic deed of educating Black kids with huge academic gaps, they did not seem to mind if their actions had negative impacts on coworkers of color or even the Black children they were supposed to be serving. When I realized this about my boss and coworkers, I began to see how strongly whiteness seeks to protect itself in schools. Everything from Mr. Frank’s “methods,” to teachers doing work for students they didn’t deem capable, to oft-expressed colorblind sentiments that white teachers used to make connections between themselves and the kids, were excused and never questioned because the people who did or said them “meant well.” It didn’t matter what impact this had on the kids and it sure as hell didn’t matter how it made staff members of color in the school feel.

It was around this time that I began to draw connections between law enforcement and education systems in this country. I knew from the many instances of cops who got off for murdering unarmed Black men and women, that whiteness in their institution also tended to protect itself. And much like with law enforcement, the issues that exist in education aren’t addressed as system-wide problems indicative of attitudes and biases towards people of color. Instead we discuss the few bad apples. In the education field, this means the teachers who DON’T care at all. They are essentially, the teachers with ill intent.

The problem with this approach is that most all white folks, teachers and otherwise, never see themselves as bad apples. They know that they mean well so they assume that they couldn’t possibly be a part of the problem. At this alternative school, the white folks who caused a great deal of the microaggressions could barely hear us decrying their actions and language. I imagine because our complaints were drowned out by the sound of them patting themselves on their backs every day for their hard work.

Recently, I read a headline that announced that percentages of Black teachers in the classroom have fallen drastically in the past few years. I didn’t bother reading the article because I felt like the wounds from last year were a little too raw for me to willingly subject myself to stories about why others like me may have been driven off. Halfway through the year when I was processing the notion of the education system being corrupt and failing to serve Black and Brown students, I posted a rant on Facebook. In it, I reflected on nearly 9 years in the education field and the experiences it took to get there. I specifically recalled going to grad school with people who made sweeping generalizations about Black/ Brown communities and consequently stereotyped their students as well. I remember smoking cigarettes after classes with fellow students of color lamenting the fact that some of the people in our Ivy League program were already in positions of power in schools full of Black children. I remember how proud they seemed of themselves for taking on the work of “fixing“ kids and schools, despite the lack of desire to fix their own racist viewpoints, language, approaches, etc.

Like last year, I brushed it all off over happy hours. I was still hopeful then. I thought that I could teach Black and Brown youth in a way that centered them, their stories, their beauty, and their lives. I did not consider that those grad school classmates who thought so little of us, and that people who shared their ideas, were already running the system and starting the charter schools. I did not consider that fighting for my kids essentially meant fighting against these people. It was a battle I was unprepared for when I first started teaching in 2007. It is a battle I expect to fight for the rest of my life. Though the new hope is to one day do it within an institution that is willing to take on the fight with me. This would save me from a career of holding my tongue until I get to half-priced drinks with other teachers of color who have learned that silence is the only way to stay in the ring.

[sinniv]

Butt the Butt

“Cigarette littering is the last accepted form of littering.”

The biggest threat to environment, even bigger than plastic straws, is the cigarette liter produced worldwide. Observing statistically, there are more than one billion smokers all around the world, a rate which is expected to increase by the year 2025 reaching 1.6 billion smokers. The country that consumes the maximum cigarettes is China, with over three hundred million smokers consuming 2.3 trillion cigarettes a year. Adding to that the tobacco giants of the world sell around ten million cigarettes a minute. Adding to this statistic, easily if around five trillion cigarette filters are disposed without second thought, it accumulates into a waste weighing two billion pounds or 907184740 kilograms.

It is a bio-hazard which affects all forms of life, from micro-organisms to plants to animals to humans smoking it or humans not smoking it. Passive smoking is almost as harmful.

But tobacco companies around the world have been smart, way too smart. They have been able to and continue to successfully find loopholes in advertising laws to bypass and still advertise. For example, leading tobacco company “Phillip Morris” campaigned their new year’s resolution which was “we’re trying to give up cigarettes”. If one read their campaign poster till the end would if wise get how they were actually announcing their new products, such as the e-cigarette and heated tobacco units, alternatives to cigarettes.

Tracing the history of tobacco, it had been growing in wild for nearly eight thousand years and it was only two thousand years ago that it began to be smoked or chewed during rituals or ceremonies. The first ever person to discover tobacco was Christopher Columbus, and it was around the early 1500’s when Western countries such as Europe and England began cultivating it. It became a developed industry by the 1600’s and tobacco was the most valuable export coming from the United states that the colonies. The United States, until the 1960’s grew, manufactured and exported tobacco, more than any other country.

In India, the prevalence of tobacco came in the 17th century, colliding and merging with the use of cannabis, which has been in use since 2000 BC.

The mass production of tobacco helped boom its consumption rate. With the first rolling machine manufactured in the 1800’s produced two hundred cigarettes per minute, today the number has gone as high as nine thousand per minute. Tobacco was given out freely to soldiers in war, portrayed heavily in the media as a consume that looks fashionable, when someone is in stress or even as a peace offering. According to WHO study concentrated in Bollywood, it depicted tobacco usage in 76% of its films. The western ideology also gave the mainstream society a perception that cigarette smoking or tobacco consumption gives out a certain suave, attitude and machismo.

Branding of women for tobacco advertisements has been a practice long in use, both in Indian and Western societies. The tobacco companies have been for decades employing the staggering connection between appetite suppression and smoking which leads to slimness. Victorian women, consumed only black coffee and cigarettes to maintain their figure in accordance with their societal expectations.

The perception of cigarette smoking has helped re-inforce its usage throughout centuries. Even though the first recorded ill-health effect was published in the year 1602, describing how chimney sweepers and cigarette smoking have effects of the same kind, the practice has not slowed down. Moreover, it has increased, with the youth indulging in it more and more due to tobacco giants who advertise their cigarettes and give them out freely in heavily youth populated areas or in and around colleges through its own employed youth.

The health effects of cigarettes are known to all, it’s on every packaging, with warning signs and laws that dictate ban on public smoking everywhere. It is statutory to now quote that the characters displayed in media do not support or encourage the act of smoking as it is injurious to health. It leads to low mortality rate and many breathing problems. It is also one of the forces which leads to cancer.

That isn’t even the crux of the issue of smoking cigarettes globally. The most littered item on Earth since the 1980’s are cigarette butts. They are everywhere, in parks, streets, beaches, mountains, houses etc. The act of “flicking the cigarette butt is so automatic” says Cindy Ziph, the executive director of Clean Ocean Action.

Cigarette butts are toxic trash and very harmful to the environment. The filters which are made of plastic known as cellulose acetate, which look a lot like cotton, also technically biodegradable, are toxic-filled, taking years to decompose and one way or another make their way into drains that dump in rivers and ultimately oceans. There are numerous chemicals added to cigarette paper to control its burn rate and as for a more appealing whitening look, calcium carbonate is added. In addition to all these toxic substances found in the butt, studies carried out state that the cigarette butts that carry leftover tobacco are more harmful than the butts themselves. They are a major threat to wildlife, such as small birds and animals who ingest them or even small children picking up and eating them if within reach.

In a new research finding, effects of cigarette butts were studied on botanical life. It was found that cigarette butts, inhibits plant growth reducing germination, with the grass and clover’s shoot length reduction up to 25%, also dropping biomass of the clover by 60%. Smoking also causes depressive effects on plants showing reduced germination, growth and distorted cell structure.

There is a widespread misunderstanding that cigarette butts are bio-degradable, which they so to say are but taking years to break down, and even if they breakdown, it takes a form in tiny pieces of plastic called “micro-plastics”. The amount of toxicity that is carried in just one cigarette butt was tested in lab by Tom Novotny resulting in the fact that it kills half the fish.

The solution to this problem is one that is not easy. With tobacco giants always being the smarter, find loopholes to keep selling cigarettes, and now with the emergence of e-cigarettes and vape, the problem is one not ready to be acknowledged by the producing giants. The billion industry with its leading manufacturers, can be pressured to continue to make their profits but also devise proper ways of disposing off what they make or ways it can be recycled again.

In the meantime, proper cigarette disposal bins can be set up at every nook and corner of the city, wherein the population can be informed about the ways disposing it by stubbing it harms the environment majorly. We can also start by initiating a discussion in spaces educating smokers of all ages about the biggest hazard that they singularly pose to the ecology of the planet.  In the age of social media, where plastic straws are being socially banned as it kills turtles, public opinion can be shaped vigorously, starting a chain, making it a trend and soon a social dislike making the “acceptable” form of cigarette litter quite “unacceptable”, as it kills more than just turtles.

References:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/cigarettes-story-of-plastic/

https://www.verywellmind.com/world-cigarette-litter-facts-that-will-shock-you-2824735

https://www.verywellmind.com/cigarette-additives-2824737

https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/harmful-effects-tobacco/5-ways-cigarette-litter-impacts-environment

http://theconversation.com/cigarette-butts-are-the-forgotten-plastic-pollution-and-they-could-be-killing-our-plants-119958

https://therevelator.org/cigarette-butt-litter-solutions/

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 6/10/2019

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your daily news cap for Sunday, October 6th, 2019. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS), Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Saturday Sun Nation Newspaper (SS).

PRESCOD CLEARS AIR ON SSA JOBS – Government is committed to providing employment opportunities for traditionally marginalised groups, including ex-prisoners and people who are successfully managing their psychiatric challenges. In a Press statement last night from Minister of the Environment and National Beautification Trevor Prescod this was made clear. The full statement is as follows: Government is committed to providing employment opportunities for traditionally marginalised groups, including ex-prisoners and persons who are successfully managing their psychiatric challenges. As Minister of the Environment and National Beautification I am firm in the position that given the periodic shortages of labour at the Sanitation Service Authority, suitable persons from among these groups can find employment there as job hands, driving and loading compactor trucks. However, I want to make it clear that at no time during my conversation with journalists on Friday at the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme of the United Nations Development Programme, did I say that Government was considering using prisoners or patients of the Psychiatric Hospital to fill this void, as stated on the Cover and Page 3 of today’s [yesterday’s] Saturday Sun newspaper. My exact words were: “What I intend to do is to have job hands, because of the challenges of people going home sick and people going on vacation, and (also) because I cannot increase the staff because of the financial challenges we are facing . . . I am going to have these people there on standby . . . “I am looking at the unemployed, and in some cases, we have to help people who went through all kinds of challenges in life and got pushed to the margins. So you will find at the SSA, you will find at MTW and you will find at NCC people that have had challenges at the Psychiatric Hospital, people who have had challenges with incarceration. “These institutions are real humane institution. They might be perceived as artificial persons in law, but in reality, these are real people we are dealing with, and we have to make them part of the labour force. “If we push people on the margins of society, then we will begin to experience a lot of social tensions . . . So I have to find some means of helping these people to be included back into the mainstream of society. That’s the way I am going to go about the business from here on.” Barbados has been facing a severe problem with the collection of household refuse for a number of years — a situation that predated the election of this Government and my appointment to this post. The Barbados Labour Party, before it was elected to office, promised that it would employ every resource at its disposal to solve the problem, and in the process, create a cleaner and healthier country. This has been my primary mission from Day One of my appointment as Minister of the Environment and National Beautification. I have been working every day, with the board, management and staff of the Sanitation Service Authority to make this a reality. While we have made significant progress with the addition of seven (7) new refuse compactor trucks, with an order already placed for 12 more, and a vigorous repair and maintenance programme for the aged fleet that has to date cost more than one million dollars ($1 m), significant challenges remain. One of the greatest of these challenges has been the constant availability of personnel to operate the fleet. This has been in spite of the fact that while we have been able to raise the number of trucks on the road today to 21, up from 12 when we took over the Government, we are still well below the daily requirement. There are shifts for which we at times have working trucks, but no available driver and/or labourers. This is also in spite of the fact that when fiscal constraints left us with no choice but to trim the public service, we did not sever a single employee of the SSA. It was against this background that I spoke on Friday, and I hope that the misrepresentation of my remarks will now be set right. I am well aware that there are very limited ways in which a Government can employ prison labour that we are signatory to International Labour Organisation provisions that guide any such activity. (SS)

SAVANNAH HOTEL UP FOR SALE – One of Barbados’ prime south coast properties is up for sale. The 93-room Savannah Hotel is being sold “via a structured offer process”, according to Terra Caribbean, the real estate company advertising the sale of the property. “All intended parties are invited to submit their offer on or before October 23, 2019,” the company said in one of its updates. The Savannah Hotel, which experienced several leased arrangements over the years, was one of three properties under the GEMS of Barbados portfolio, which was managed by Hotels and Resorts Limited (HRL), a government entity. The sale of the multiple building beachfront property, which sits on approximately 3.32 acres of land, comes several years after it was reportedly leased to the Sun Group. The other GEMS properties were Time Out at the Gap, which was sold to the Bernie Weatherhead led Sun Group for some $7.5 million a couple years ago; and the Blue Horizon hotel, which then Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy had said he was in discussions with “private sector interest” to get sold. It was in 2010 that it was revealed that the GEMS project had gone bankrupt after accumulating debts of about $229 million, after its parent company HRL had benefited from government loans of about $145 million. The Savannah Hotel, which sits on a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, consists of 84 standard rooms, eight suits and one junior suit, a kids club, two restaurants, a spa, beach bar and fitness centre and several conference rooms. According to a brochure, the property was being sold with furniture, fixtures and equipment and “there is no guide price as the property is being sold via structured offer process which commenced on July 31, 2019 and will end on October 23, 2019”. (BT)

HINKSON REGRETS POSTAL LAYOFFS – Job cuts and retirements have hit the Barbados Postal Service (BPS) hard. However, Minister of Home Affairs Edmund Hinkson has applauded the remaining staff and customers, who he said have had to deal with the strain. Hinkson said that of all the Government agencies that fall under his ministry, the BPS was the most heavily impacted by the retrenchments resulting from the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme which went into effect last year. During a church service yesterday at Breath of Life Seventh-Day Adventist Church, White Hall, St Michael, where the BPS celebrated World Post Day, Hinkson revealed that the BPS now operates with just over 500 employees after losing about 100 due to the layoffs and retirements. (SS)

LABOUR DEPARTMENT SEMINARS PLANNED FOR NOVEMBER – Members of the public are being urged to sign up for one of two upcoming seminars to be hosted by the Labour Department on Wednesday, November 6 and Thursday, November 7. The seminars, which will focus on Labour Legislation and Industrial Relations Best Practices, are part of the department’s continuing efforts to promote a greater degree of labour-management cooperation. They will be held at the Warrens Office Complex, Warrens, St Michael, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. with registration of participants starting each day at 8:30 a.m. The seminars target persons who have never attended any sessions previously conducted by the department. These first-time attendees should register by the deadline, Friday, October 25. For further information on registration, interested persons may contact Donna Best-Frederick at 535-1508 or Grace Jordan at 535-1534. (BT)

UN FOCUS ON BENEFICIAL YOUTH PROJECTS – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) continues to pump millions of dollars into Barbados as part of its Global Environmental Facility Small Grants Programme (SGP). On Friday, members of the SGP National Steering Committee, including members of UNICEF, the UNDP partnership for action on the green economy, the University of the West Indies and the media on project site visits. National coordinator David Bynoe said the object was to fund youth-oriented projects which could benefit Barbados economically, environmentally and socially.“Over the last five years alone, we have disbursed more than US$8 million in cash and in-kind financing. Normally, we provide funding in key focal areas . . . . The majority of our projects are targeted towards young people and are youth-led,” he said. (BT)

MURALS USED AS TOOLS FOR TEACHING AND DEVELOPMENT – Speaking at a presentation ceremony Friday morning at the Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary School for the first set of murals to be unveiled at a number of schools during Education Month, Minister of Education, Technological and Vocational Training, Santia Bradshaw, said artists were innovators as well as problems solvers. Four local artists, Kwami Hunte, Sherry Nicholls, Don Small and Nikolai Charles, presented their work to the Minister and the school during the ceremony. “When the Ministry was approached by one of these artists, Mr Kwami Hunte, with a proposal to give back to our nation’s youth through the painting of murals on our schools, there was an immediate marriage with our vision at the Ministry to convey positive and powerful messages to our students and our communities, through the use of murals. Having Harris Paints agree to come on board could easily be described as the icing on the cake and we remain deeply appreciative of their commitment and partnership with us in this venture,” said Bradshaw. She further added that Government, through the Ministry of Education was committed to providing opportunities and the infrastructure for the arts to be developed in schools and among the youth, “so that they may be seen as viable vehicles for social and economic development”. “This morning, it brings me great pleasure, therefore, on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training, to officially present these four murals to the Grantley Adams Memorial School…. I trust that you the students of this school have already begun to discuss their meaning and perhaps are already identifying with their positive messages. “I encourage all students of Grantley Adams Memorial School, to continue to enjoy the murals, to treat them with respect, love and care and to own them as an important part of your environment. They belong to you. It is important that we all appreciate the time, effort and resources that went into creating these powerful symbols for our enjoyment and we at the Ministry believe wholeheartedly that we can entrust them to your safekeeping,” Bradshaw surmised. She encouraged students to use their artistic talents and creative abilities to spread positive messages like the ones depicted in the murals “as we hope to see you designing and creating future murals for your school”. (BT)

FRUIT, WATER, EXERCISE - The students of one St Michael secondary school are taking matters into their own hands when it comes to healthy living. On Friday, the student council body at the Ellerslie School in association with the Guidance Counselling department introduced a Flash to Fitness campaign, which will see the students eating healthier food options and participating in a range of activities. Guidance Counsellor Deidre Went told Barbados TODAY the idea behind the campaign was to help students live a healthier life. “When I look around and I see some of our students struggling to go up the stairs and struggling to move around, and then when I look at all the junk food they are eating, I think about their health and financing. So I am trying to get them to eat healthier things and do some exercise,” said Went. Under the new programme, students are being challenged to consume more water and more fruits and get more active. In the final week of this month, there will be a Zumba class, a taste of which the students got on Friday as the student council body demonstrated some of the moves. During the activity week at the end of the month, the students will compete in their different school houses in a range of activities including cycling, tennis and dodgeball, and the house that wins will go up against the teachers. The school’s student council will be pushing the campaign as they encourage their peers to take part. Sports Coordinator of the Ellerslie School Student Council Addis Ward said the campaign would make that learning institution the first secondary school to embark on such a campaign. She said her hope was that it would continue long after she has left the institution. “The Water day will be every Wednesday. So we are encouraging the students to bring a water bottle or buy a water bottle from the canteen. On Thursdays, we encourage them to bring a fruit or buy a fruit from the canteen,” said Ward. “I believe this would help them in the long run. Diabetes is strong with teenagers, and some teenagers in the school are very thick. So in the long run, we don’t want that they have to be losing a leg or hand because they are eating the junk food they are eating today.” Ward said she wanted other secondary schools to follow their lead. “The Ellerslie School [is] leading but we would promote other schools to do the same and follow in our footsteps,” she said. (BT)

CHASE SUCCUMBS TO GUNSHOT INJURY - Almost three months after being shot in the back of the head, a Christ Church man is reported to have succumbed to his injuries. Oneal Alistaire Chase was shot on July 8, not far from his home at Block 2D Maxwell View, Silver Hill. Nation Online understands he was staying with his mother Alicia Chase and passed away there early this morning. Police say Oneal, alias Rabbit, was walking along Silver Hill road when he was approached by a man who shot him in the face. The two got into a heated argument, the man pulled a firearm from his waist and shot Oneal. He was hospitalised in serious condition for some time. In a subsequent call to The Nation, Alicia said her son was not in an altercation, rather he was on the way to collect his two-year-old boy from the nursery when a man crept up behind him and shot him in the back of the head. When he turned around to see who it was, he was also shot in the jaw. She said her son was able to identify the assailant at the time, but no one was arrested and charged in connection with the incident. (SS)

FOGGING SCHEDULE FOR OCTOBER 7-11 – The Ministry of Health and Wellness’ fogging programme will continue in five parishes this week. On Monday, October 7, the St Andrew districts to be fogged are Savannah Road, Shorey Village, Worrell’s Road, Belleplaine, Ermy Bourne Highway, Lakes Village, and the environs. The team will be in St Peter on Tuesday, October 8, spraying Speightstown Bypass, Queen Street, Bovell Road, Mango Lane, Chapel Street, Gooding Alley, Major Walk, Sand Street, Church Street and nearby districts, as well as Mile-and-a-Quarter, Olton Road, Ashton Hall, Clarkes Road, Corbins Road with Avenues, Greaves Road, Reservoir Road, Millionaire Road and surrounding areas. On Wednesday, October 9, the St Lucy and St Peter districts of Checker Hall, Checker Hall Development, Rock Hall Road, Fustic Village, Sutherland and the environs, as well as Gills Road, Around the Town, Farm Road, Niles Road, Farm Tenantry Road, Burma Road, Battaleys, and surrounding districts will be sprayed. Areas to be fogged in St George on Thursday, October 10, are Rowans Park, Rowans Park South, Thorpes Cottage, Walkers Park East, Walkers Close and neighbouring districts. The team will be in St James on Friday, October 11, to fog Cemetery Lane, Mayhoe Avenue, Cordia Avenue, Flamboyant Avenue, Palm Row and the environs, as well as Paynes Bay, Laynes Road, Holders Hill, Chapel Road and surrounding areas. Fogging takes place between 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. each day. Householders are reminded to open their doors and windows to allow the spray to enter. (BT)

PRINCE HARRY SUES TWO UK TABLOIDS OVER ALLEGED PHONE HACKING -  (Source – Associated Press) Prince Harry is suing two British tabloid newspapers over alleged phone hacking. British media reports Friday night said Harry took legal action against the Sun and Mirror newspapers. Buckingham Palace confirmed in a statement on Saturday that claims regarding “illegal interception of voicemail messages” were filed on Harry’s behalf. The palace declined to say more or provide details “given the particulars of the claims are not yet public.” News Group Newspapers, which owns The Sun, acknowledged the prince’s High Court action. The cases escalate Harry’s fight with the British tabloids. His wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, sued the Mail on Sunday for alleged copyright infringement and other civil violations after the paper published a letter she wrote to her father. (BT)

There are 87 days left in the year Shalom!  Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps #bajannewscaps #newsinanutshell

[blandcamp70-blog]

Movie Game Help Is Below With one of these Top Tips!

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[theinvinciblenoob]

First, a couple of quick follow-ups to our coverage of Form Ds yesterday, and then a deeper dive into the challenges SoftBank is facing with regards to its revenue in Japan. Finally, some notes on recent articles we have read.

We are experimenting with new content forms at TechCrunch. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the authors: Danny at danny@techcrunch.com or Arman at Arman.Tabatabai@techcrunch.com if you like or hate something here.

Form D(isappearing)

Form Ds are (usually) filed by startups to the SEC when they take on venture capital. However, there appears to be an increasing pattern of startups foregoing the filing, which has implications for both reporters (we have less info about what’s happening in the venture world) as well as with aggregate VC stats, which often rely at least partially on filings to determine the state of venture capital.

A number of readers emailed us with their views on the matter. One lawyer and multi-time startup founder wrote to say that:

Some additional considerations are cost: the Form D can be expensive with all of the associated state blue sky filings, especially if you have participation from a number of angels or smaller funds.

When you file a Form D, that generally pre-empts any equivalent state filing. HOWEVER, we were wrong yesterday when we said that “the form pre-empts most state securities laws so that startups don’t have to file in state jurisdictions.” Startups DO have to file in state jurisdictions, but usually just to point out that they have filed with the SEC.

Beyond cost, one issue with filing is when the round is smaller than the ultimate intended size. One reader reported in:

I was CFO at a startup and after consulting legal counsel, we didn’t file Form D for a Series C capital raising. Why? Because we didn’t want some investors to see how much is left in the round and defer funding

You might have convinced an investor to put in say $30 million into a round, and then they are shocked to find out that the round is really intended to be $50 million when the Form D hits the presses. Obviously, this is something that should be transparent to all parties, but I actually could see this happening more commonly at the seed stage, where some rounds almost certainly fundraise continuously and investors are more skittish.

Finally, it’s not just the finance and legal folks pushing for less filings, but also PR firms. One notable PR firm head told me that:

We’ve pushed a bunch of our clients to pursue [a 4(a)(2) exemption], but they were raising / had raised money from Tier One VCs.

That exemption allows startups to avoid a Form D filing, which “protects our launches from getting scooped.” The same PR head told me that this has been a policy for the past 18 months or so.

The data is still early, but the norms for filing do seem to be changing, and we are still doing more work on this. Reach out directly with your thoughts.

Japan is going after carrier revenue

KIM KYUNG-HOON/AFP/Getty Images

Now for the big story. We have been obsessed this week with SoftBank, first covering the telco group’s penchant for debt, and then covering the unusual financing situation between the IPO of its Japanese mobile division and its bankers, in which SoftBank is demanding its underwriters provide a massive bond to the Vision Fund in order to lever it up and juice returns.

It feels like the more we dig into all of SoftBank’s moving pieces, the stranger the story gets.

Over the past few weeks, the Japanese telco market has been absolutely crushed by traders. Market leader NTT DoCoMo announced about a week ago that it would cut customer rates by 40% on mobile services, and warned investors that it may take five years for the company to return to this fiscal year’s profitability. Concerned over industry-wide rate reductions, a possible pricing war and potential upticks in churn, investors rapidly sold the country’s three major wireless companies — including SoftBank — causing their collective market caps to plunge $34 billion the following day.

Japan’s telcos are extraordinarily profitable and exist in a mature market, so why the sudden rate change?

The two-dimensional answer is that the Japanese government has become more strident in its criticisms of the telcos, which charge some of the highest fees of any carriers in the world.

That’s partly because Japan’s mobile market has functioned essentially as an oligopoly, dominated by NTT DoCoMo, au-KDDI, and SoftBank, which currently account for around 45%, 31% and 24% market share, respectively. The lack of competition has led to unreasonably high bills for customers, but hefty and growing profits for the telcos.

Jun Sato/WireImage via Getty Images

The Japanese government, led by prime minister Shinzo Abe, has been trying to force prices lower. As Bloomberg’s Maiko Takahashi and Dave McCombs pointed out in a recent article, the government has been trying to reverse this trend for a while now:

In 2015 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for lower prices and the companies eventually responded by offering reduced-cost service plans that didn’t undermine revenue growth, as they were offset by rising average revenue per user for data. Comments by government officials about lowering prices in 2016 brought a similar response. Still, carriers said they are concerned the pressure could increase this time.

This time around, the Japanese government has gotten more serious. It’s now also pushing for structural changes that will not only create pricing competition, but that will also make it easier for others to enter the market. As Takahashi and McCombs continued:

The government has also been pushing to boost competition by making it harder for the big three to lure new users by offering the latest phones at little or no upfront cost. Officials have also pushed to end SIM locking, a practice by which carriers lock their handsets to be used only on their network.

They are not only looking at bills, but also other competitive barriers,” said [Tachibana Securities GM Shigetoshi] Kamada. “They want bills to drop naturally by making the environment more competitive.

To make matters tougher for the incumbents, Rakuten, Japan’s “Amazon-esque” e-commerce giant, has decided to test the waters in the telco market, having received an operating license to start service in 2019.

All this is backdrop to the main stage, which is that SoftBank intends to IPO its Japanese mobile carrier division, in what could be the world’s largest IPO float in history. That IPO is critical for cleaning up SoftBank Group’s balance sheet, which is heavily loaded with debt.

That leads us to a three-dimensional analysis: could NTT DoCoMo and KDDI be preemptively cutting rates at exactly the time that SoftBank needs to show good financial results and projections to investors in its IPO roadshow? It’s a brilliant play, since some pain today to the bottom line could potentially knock out or at least diminish one competitor in the market, turning this oligopoly into a duopoly, Rakuten’s telco initiative not withstanding.

SoftBank is acutely aware of the changing landscape, yet remains full steam ahead on the IPO front. In fact, SoftBank didn’t even seem slightly worried about the rate cuts, with Group CEO Masayoshi Son stating “I can make a commitment right here that profit and revenue in the mobile business will continue to grow.” SoftBank noted that its telco profits will be fine, with the company planning to cut costs in the business by reducing its workforce by around 40%.

We’re not saying this is blatant marketing for the IPO, but what makes SoftBank’s claim seem a bit dubious is the fact that when NTT announced its rate cuts last week, even NTT stated it expected to see its operating profit and revenues drop, not to mention that the company wasn’t even targeting a full recovery from the impact until 2023. And in an already saturated market with well-resourced new entrants, generating enough new users (let alone keeping existing ones) to offset a rate cut and maintain even a steady Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) seems like a pretty tall task.

When you combine the losses other Japanese telcos expect with the fact that SoftBank has been pretty transparent about the IPO proceeds going towards future Vision Fund investments rather than back into the telco unit, it’s a little perplexing on how there can be such a rosy outlook for the business. And that ultimately may fuel disinterest with this particular public float, and therefore broader challenges to both SoftBank and its Vision Fund, with all the implications for growth-stage startups that entails.

Thoughts on Articles

‘Gun-Shy’: How Federal Prosecutors Forgot Silicon Valley: Great overview and analysis from Matt Drange at The Information about the decline of white-collar prosecutions out of the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco, which was once managed by Robert Mueller before he became director of the FBI. “The number of white-collar cases prosecuted by the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California has plunged from a peak of 354 in 1995 to 72 in fiscal 2018.” Major challenges include a decline of interest in white-collar prosecutions nationwide, bad office culture and botched executions of several high-profile cases. Definitely worth a full read. (~2,300 words)

LA Is Trying to Fix its Prostitution Problem by Banning Right Turns at Night—and it Might be Working: Too long article about a unique tactic of the LAPD: in order to generate sufficient probable cause to stop a car trolling for sex, the city installed “no right turn” signs at intersections in areas with high prostitution in order to have more reasons to stop cars. What a hack of the system. (~1900 words, but probably should be like 800)

‘The Bus Is Still Best’: Helpful analysis by notable transit pundit Jarrett Walker, discussing the role of microtransit options like Via or Chariot in city transportation networks. Walker doesn’t believe that ride-sharing will be the future of mass transit, and instead posits that a properly-managed and well-resourced bus system is much more efficient from a cost, coverage, space, and equality perspective. While some of the conclusions are a bit binary, he offers an effective and revealing comparison of transportation unit economics, while also providing a useful primer on the actual functions an effective public transport system has to service. Worth reading, even if only to serve as a clear overview of the various aspects city transit agencies have to consider in transportation and infrastructure decisions. (~2,050 words)

What’s next

Definitely drop us a line if you have thoughts about Form Ds or SoftBank – we are continuing to investigate. We are thinking of focusing on Rakuten’s new telco a bit as well, so ping us if you have thoughts or data to share. We’re at danny@techcrunch.com and arman.tabatabai@techcrunch.com.

Reading docket

What we are reading (or at least, trying to read)

Articles

The CIA’s communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran.

Bloomberg’s piece called “ The $6 Trillion Barrier Holding Electric Cars Back ”

The New Yorker piece called “ Why Doctors Hate Their Computers ”

A new report about China’s military and its deep connections into American academic research

Books

Eliot Peper’s new science fiction novel Borderless

Daniel J Hopkins’ The Increasingly United States (about how U.S. elections are more national and less local than ever before).

via TechCrunch

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): For your consideration today:

Whatever happened to that Democratic wave?

The Democratic advantage over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot is down to less than 6 percentage points:

What’s going on? Is it time for Democrats to PANIC!!! ?

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): I guess Democrats have nine more months in which to panic and/or watch the generic ballot change — up and down — right?

Happy February, by the way, everyone.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): It is not time for them to panic, but it’s a reminder not to take anything for granted.

clare.malone: That feels like good life advice in general.

micah: That’s a take.

natesilver: It’s the correct take, and any other take is OBVIOUSLY wrong.

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): This is rather an odd feeling, right? We’re seeing all these Republican retirements. The special elections continue to look good for the Democrats, and now the generic ballot has narrowed significantly.

micah: Wait a sec …

We’ve been telling readers that Republicans are in trouble — look at the special election results, which matched the generic ballot. Now the generic ballot has narrowed (we haven’t had any super recent special elections), shouldn’t that be cause for Democratic concern?

natesilver: You already asked that question.

micah: I’m trying to square your answer with what you’ve been saying for months.

natesilver: I think we’ve been saying that there’s a pretty rich mix of evidence — polling, special elections data, retirements, the history of the “out” party performing well in midterms — suggesting that the political winds favor Democrats. Now one of those indicators — an important one, the generic ballot — doesn’t look as good.

But if you had a model that blended all those indicators together, how much would a 5-point swing on the generic ballot in January affect your prediction for November? I don’t know, because we don’t start building those sorts of models until late in the election year. But I’d guess you’d have to discount it pretty heavily; so maybe a 5-point swing in January translates to a 1-point or 2-point swing in your November prediction, or something.

micah: 1 or 2 points isn’t nothing.

natesilver: You seem to have this straw-man position that I’m saying it’s nothing when I don’t hold that position.

micah: lol

harry: Well, Mr. Silver. I have not a formal model, but I do have something mathematical or statistical. I went back as far as I could and looked at the generic ballot in January of a midterm year versus the results in November.

It essentially shows what you’re getting at: Yes, it matters, but there is a natural reversion to the mean. Ergo, a movement of say 5 points now does roughly translate into a 2-point movement come November, on average.

natesilver: And maybe less of an impact than that if you’re also looking at other indicators and not just the generic ballot. Like, if Democrats start to perform less well in special elections, then it’s more concerning for them.

So far, we haven’t really seen those other indicators slip.

micah: Before we get to the why of all this … are Dems panicking at all?

clare.malone: Well, they will be after they read this chat.

harry: Nice.

micah: Haha.

clare.malone: Actually, I did talk to an avid generic-ballot checker a couple of days ago, and that person was quite alarmed at the Democratic dive.

So, anecdotally, I suppose some informed watchers might be worried, but don’t you think that by and large, the Democratic base IS NOT checking on where the generic ballot is?

harry: Who do you hang out with?!

clare.malone: heh

micah: What about Democratic officeholders? Perry?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): We’ve had Trump making gains in polls for a short time, but this was also the week of the State of the Union and Nunes/memogate. So I haven’t talked to a lot of Dems freaking out about the generic ballot, but that’s because they are freaking out about other things. David Frum, one of the most anti-Trump Republicans, is freaking out.

I've been predicting this to audiences for a while. Wage increases + tax cuts aimed at Trump constituencies (at expense of Clinton-voting states) => improving numbers for Trump. Meanwhile, congressional GOP is weakening, becoming therefore more dependent on him, emboldening him. https://t.co/3q4bNN5us2

— David Frum (@davidfrum) February 1, 2018

So we published a story on Dec. 22 with the headline “The Democrats’ Wave Could Turn Into A Flood.” Is that statement still operative? And is this line — “Once you take into account who holds the White House, the generic ballot at this point is usually predictive of the midterm House result” — still operative?

Those were my questions, as a nonexpert on the generic ballot.

clare.malone: They’re still up by … 6.

micah: Yeah, all that is still true. The flood is just less likely?

natesilver: A key point of context here is that Democrats could win the House popular vote by 6 points — which is kind of a lot — and still not take the House.

harry: Right. The movement we saw from December’s generic ballot average to January’s average was obviously smaller than the movement from December’s Democratic high point to January’s Democratic low point. And we published that article (unknowingly) at December’s high point, and we’re at the low point now.

There’s probably a floor in here somewhere for the Democrats given the fundamentals at play.

natesilver: Another key point of context is that it doesn’t take all that much to go from a ripple to a tsunami. If the Democrats were to win the House popular vote by 12 points say — and there were lots of polls to that effect in December — they could win lots and lots and lots of seats. It’s a pretty nonlinear effect once you start getting into the territory where supposedly safe gerrymandered seats come into play.

So I think the conventional wisdom is overly certain that Democrats will take the House. But I also think the chance of Democrats winning say 50+ seats is higher than people assume.

micah: OK, so let’s talk why the environment has shifted toward Republicans.

clare.malone: It could just be wintertime seasonal affective disorder for the generic ballot … or maybe people being happy that Congress passed legislation/Trump hasn’t done or said anything too out of the ordinary in awhile?

harry: I mean, Trump’s approval rating went up, so that’s a pretty decent starting point.

natesilver: I think (i) Trump has been a little quieter; (ii) there’s been more focus on the economy, and the economy is good; and (iii) the tax bill is less of a hindrance to the GOP (I don’t know that I buy that it has been a help).

micah: Is that in order of importance?

natesilver: Not in any particular order.

micah: Anyone want to put those in order?

perry: Frum said the Trump/GOP improvement is about all of these companies announcing bonuses/hiring and Trump trumpeting that. That seems plausible.

I would put economy news at No 1. And No. 2 is that there is no tax bill, health care bill or other piece of unpopular legislation moving through Congress. I’d put Trump’s behavior — which is quieter but has still included some controversy, like the “shithole” incident — at No. 3.

clare.malone: Right, all of the above. The Democrats, given that they hold no chamber of government, are at a disadvantage at this sort of lull time in an election year. They can’t really get any news about initiating legislation, they’re forced into reactive positions like during the government shutdown, and it’s months before primaries heat up and news about congressional races — many of which will have an anti-Trump bent — starts trickling out.

micah: And Democrats sorta messed up the shutdown, no?

natesilver: The tax bill is weird because some of the GOP’s worst numbers all year were when the tax bill was being debated. They hit generic ballot lows and Trump hit his approval rating low basically right as the thing was being signed. So it helps the GOP that the tax bill is becoming less unpopular, but, as Perry says, it maybe also helps that it isn’t as salient right now.

clare.malone: Democrats probably could have been a bit bolder about the shutdown play, given that polling seemed sympathetic to their position on DACA, yes (although the public didn’t favor shutting down the government).

natesilver: I don’t know that the shutdown had a huge effect. But I do think there was a lot of news in January that got partisans on both sides riled up, and that’s sorta good news for the GOP.

Look, lots of swing voters are going to vote Democratic this year. That’s usually how it works in the midterms — the swing voters vote against the president’s party. But what determines trickle vs. wave vs. tsunami will be the relative turnout levels of the parties.

harry: I’m don’t think the shutdown hurt Democrats. At least, there’s not a lot of evidence it did.

perry: I have never seen this many companies announce bonuses, etc. and credit the federal government. I know it’s cynical on the companies’ parts in some ways, but it’s like a Trump-PR blitz sponsored by corporate America. Trump’s White House does not have much credibility, but these companies do. They are selling the tax cut in some ways. That helps.

micah: Yeah, I buy that, Perry.

If you’re a company right now making hires, there are “get in the administration’s good books” reasons to make a big deal of it. And to say it’s about taxes or regulations or whatever.

natesilver: The White House seems to be getting smarter — particularly in its PR strategy.

For example, the thing they did where they convinced everyone that the State of the Union was gonna be super bipartisan, but it was actually quite partisan once you peeled away the rhetoric — that indicated a level of sophistication.

perry: If Trump can get companies to announce in October and November bonuses based on the tax cut, that would help. I doubt that will happen. I think he is in a tax cut/hiring boost that will be temporary, in other words.

So I expect the generic ballot to move back toward the Democrats. Is that what everyone here is saying too?

clare.malone: I saw something from the Pew Research Center the other day that noted that the share of Americans who see the economy as the top priority to be dealt with has been dropping. I wonder if that has any effect going forward, as the election year unfurls.

In other words: Will the economy remain the main, motivating issue of 2018? (Which we presume would be good for Trump?)

It doesn’t necessarily seem like it will be, given the focus on immigration, etc.

harry: Well, that could, in part, explain why Trump’s economic approval rating isn’t pushing up his overall job approval rating, which, in turn, is linked to the congressional generic ballot.

micah: Yeah, I think there are lots of anti-Trump voters who won’t be swayed no matter what the economy does.

natesilver: It will be interesting to see what happens if we move into a Russia/FBI/clusterfark news cycle, as we appear to be moving into now.

Clearly, the more people are focused on the economy, the better it is for Trump and the GOP, both because the economy is pretty good and because all the other storylines are pretty bad for them.

perry: We are talking — in terms of his approval rating, which I understand a bit better — about two different blocs of the electorate, right? The tax cut and policies like that should shore up his numbers among Republicans, getting him close to 90 percent approval among GOP voters. And that will get him close to 40 percent overall. But the more reluctant Trump voters of 2016 and then the rest of the electorate are still a problem, right?

harry: Right. This is from Gallup back in June, but look at these differences by party:

The economy is a pretty decent issue for Republicans, or at least a break-even one.

But to Perry’s point, there’s only so much that a party with a president who has a 40 percent approval rating can improve on the generic congressional ballot.

I also wonder how much of what we’ve seen is simply a reversion to the mean. Yesterday, I took monthly averages of the FiveThirtyEight generic ballot tracker. The Democratic advantage in December was 10.7 percentage points. In January, it was 8.1 points. And the monthly average since July is 8.7 points

So, December was something of an outlier. January was closer to the long-term average.

natesilver: I mean, everything reverts to the mean, but it’s hard to know what the mean is.

harry: I guess what I’m saying is news cycles go up and down.

clare.malone: The Circle Game of the Trumpian era.

natesilver: The abnormal is actually normal.

perry: An atmosphere where Trump is at 40 percent approval and Democrats lead the generic ballot by 6 to 8 points is different than Trump at 37 percent and Democrats up 8 to 11, as we saw for much of the last year. Democrats should be worried about the former, if we think that will be the new “mean.”

harry: Now that is an interesting thought.

natesilver: Yeah, the thing is we’re in the range where there’s large marginal impact. If Democrats went from +5 on the generic ballot to +2, it wouldn’t matter much. But +9 is a pretty different number than +6.

micah: Right. I’ll say this, and this is one reason I do think Democrats should be concerned: The last month or so has shown that if Trump tones it down and Republicans get a few good breaks, then the Democratic advantage will shrink — shrink enough so that (even in a midterm year against a president of the opposite party) taking back the House (let alone the Senate) will be a challenge.

That’s the thing, really: Because of self-sorting/gerrymandering and the bad Senate map, a +6 Democratic advantage on the generic ballot isn’t great.

natesilver: A +6 would make Democrats heavy underdogs in the Senate and slight underdogs in the House.

micah: Right.

clare.malone: So a lot of what we’re attributing the Republican/Trump rise in popularity to is him staying quiet. But I just wonder about the long-term stability of that condition. It’s either (i) the White House has gotten more disciplined and on message or (ii) Trump hasn’t had much to respond to.

micah: I don’t know how much of a factor that is. The economy is a simpler explanation, and the tax debate going away.

natesilver: January was a slow news month — at least, the first half of it was.

clare.malone: I think that once people actually start throwing barbs at Trump during midterm ads, campaigns, etc., he’s more likely to take the bait.

perry: So I think the question of whether Democrats should panic depends on whether we think a generic ballot of +6 or +9 is more likely by, say, September. I expect the Democratic advantage to grow again, but I’m bad at predicting. Also, how much of the Democratic advantage is baked in, by GOP incumbents who maybe could have won re-election instead retiring, anticipating a worse environment than the one that actually exists?

micah: Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how the generic ballot affects the retirement beat.

OK, any final thoughts?

natesilver: Well, I think it’s a little early to be sweating every tick of the generic ballot. With that said, I hope this chart will be a useful corrective to the emerging narrative that a Democratic wave is inevitable. There’s high potential for a wave. And if there is a wave, it could be a large one. But there are also scenarios in which Republicans battle things … not quite to a draw, but to enough of a draw that their geographic advantages let them keep both chambers of Congress.

micah: Here’s my final thought — a proposal for our nautical-themed 2018 midterm terminology:

puddle (Democrats gain 0 to 4 House seats)

trickle (5 to 9)

ripple (10 to 14)

swell (15 to 19)

wave (20 to 24)

flood (25 to 29)

tsunami (30+)

And if the Senate and House have very different results, it’s a “split peak wave.” That’s courtesy of @SurferSalsaDan:

@538politics It’s a split peak wave election. #WaveElection pic.twitter.com/B05KcyUlBR

— Salsadan (@SurferSalsaDan) January 19, 2018

natesilver: Oh, see, you’re totally conceiving of the problem wrong with those seat ranges.

micah: Waddya mean?

natesilver: It’s way too narrow a range

micah: There’s a + sign at the end.

natesilver:

anti-wave (Democrats lose House seats)

trickle (Democrats gain 0 to 10)

swell (Democrats gain 11 to 24)

wave (Democrats gain 25 to 35)

flood (35 to 50)

tsunami (50+)

perry: I think if the generic ballot stays in this range for a few months, Democrats should be panicking. But I don’t think they should panic now. I don’t know exactly what caused Trump and Republicans to make gains, but assuming that it’s the good economic news, is there a way for the GOP to keep touting this news, keep generating news about the economy? That will help their political standing. Also, we didn’t mention Russia or Mueller much here. More indictments/controversies on that front will basically drown out any good economic news.

micah: Yeah, that seems right.

And I’ll sign onto that nomenclature, Nate.

harry: My final thought is essentially this: It’s always great chatting with everyone. You make me laugh and smile. And thank you, reader, for reading.

[okkrist-blog]

SOME LESSONS FROM BRICS FOR NIGERIA

In 2010, South Africa was invited to join BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and many wondered why Nigeria was not

picked ahead of South Africa, considering its population size, abundant oil and gas resources and strong growth prospect. Today, BRIC has become BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), a group of five newly industrialised or developing economies which sought to have closer economic, financial and political ties among themselves and to use their combined influence to shape the world’s socio-economic and financial narratives. The countries of BRICS are drawn from four continents, namely, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and they are the largest or among the largest economies in each of their regions.

Indeed, Nigeria could have learnt and benefitted a great deal from membership of the association, particularly in the area of taxation. Only recently, BRICS’s tax authorities signed a taxation cooperation memorandum. Among other things, the agreement is expected to foster greater cooperation among members on taxation efficiency, capacities, policies, collection, improving consultation procedures on taxation, and encouraging information exchange on taxation. These are areas Nigeria could have gained critical insight and knowledge.

Nigeria continues to struggle with its tax system and administration. The country’s tax authorities are still burdened with obsolete tax laws, dearth of technology in tax administration and consequently inefficiencies in tax collections and poor compliance levels. The Nigerian tax system, according to experts, is still largely “characterised by complex distortions and inequitable taxation laws” fostered by a “multiplicity of rates and unnecessary exemptions.” Many of the country’s tax laws are obsolete and out of tune with current reality. It is not surprising therefore that the country’s tax-to-GDP ratio is a mere six per cent. BRICS’ economies, on the other hand, earn an average tax-to-GDP ratio of 24 per cent (Russia’s tax collection is 19.5 per cent of its GDP, China 20 per cent, India 17.7 per cent, South Africa 26.9 per cent, and Brazil 34.4 per cent). PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) tagged Nigeria’s six per cent “abysmal”.

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However, Lagos State seems to have taken a few pages out of BRICS’ tax book and the state is reaping the benefits. Aside from the deployment of technology, the state is working with its House of Assembly to upgrade its tax laws for simplicity, equity, certainty, relevance, and efficiency. Recently, a public hearing was held by the state House of Assembly on a bill to repeal the 17-year-old Land Use Charge Law and enact a new one that will consolidate all property taxes in the state (tenement rate, neighbourhood improvement tax, land rates) into one tax, the Land Use Charge Law.

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The legislators promised at the hearing to undertake an impact assessment of Lagos State tax laws with a view to amending and or enacting new ones, where necessary, to meet the present and urgent tax needs of the state. The new Land Use Charge Law was comprehensive enough to satisfy the basic requirements of a good tax. By collapsing the multiple property tax law in the state into one law, the government has simplified the law. The new law will be equitable and standardised; assessment of tax due is to be calculated based on the property type and the market value, unlike the old law where valuation is arbitrary and the taxpayer is not certain of his tax obligations. All this, coupled with deployment of e-filing, is expected to help the efficiency of the law.

Lagos already boasts of about 30 per cent tax compliance rate. This is far better than the country’s six per cent and even higher than BRICS’ average of 24 per cent. It is expected that the new tax administration, with up-to-date tax laws, will further boost this compliance figure and provide the Lagos State Government with additional resources to tackle its developmental agenda.

But most importantly, there appears to be a clear trust by residents in the state government to deploy tax revenue judiciously. For long, Lagos residents, and indeed Nigerians, had complained that the impact of government was hardly felt. That is no longer the case in Lagos. The state government has demonstrated good faith and has shown that it can be trusted with taxpayers’ money to deliver people-oriented and impactful projects. The government is investing in a modern and efficient transport system: rail (Okokomaiko-Marina; Iddo Terminal-Alagbado); Automated Guideway Transit (Ikoyi-VI-Ajah line); Bus Rapid Transit plying routes across the state; channelisation of the waterways (construction of jetties and provision of ferry services); road rehabilitation, upgrades and maintenance. It is equally investing heavily in social infrastructure; upgrading schools, health facilities and working hard to protect the environment.

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Compliance remains a major challenge to unravel for Nigeria. At the 2017 Stanbic IBTC/Standard Bank West to East Africa Investors’ Conference, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, told the audience that the country’s “tax burden is not being shared fairly… being carried by those who are least able to afford it.” According to Adeosun, the country “only has 14 million taxpayers out of about 70 million people that are economically active.” And even at that, a “majority of that 14 million are people who have their taxes deducted at the source, largely lower income workers.” Very few voluntarily file tax returns.

The hallmark of a strong tax system/administration includes its simplicity for citizens to understand their tax obligations; equitability: relevance to reflect current realities; efficiency; enforceability, with mechanisms for compliance; and transparency, free from ambiguities and uncertainties. The country’s tax system, unfortunately, fails many of these basic criteria. The BRICS’ economies have very dynamic tax systems that are constantly reviewed to ensure relevance. As well, they deploy functional electronic filing systems to ensure standardisation and efficiency.

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The World Bank/PwC report, Paying Taxes 2018, which analysed and compared tax systems in 190 countries, shows that Nigeria has a lot to gain by learning from the BRICS’ economies in terms of consolidation of its taxes to remove multiplicity and extensive use of technology for efficiency, which will no doubt help boost compliance. Paying Taxes 2018 shows that businesses in China pay taxes on a total of nine items, including profit tax, labour tax, and other tax payments. In Russia, it is nine taxable items; South Africa seven items; Brazil 10 items; and India 13 items. In Nigeria, businesses contend with a whopping 59 taxable items. The Director of Research and Advocacy of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dr Vincent Nwani, at a forum organised by the Initiative for Public Policy Analysis, revealed that his group counted “up to about 80 different types of taxes” in some sectors. The effect, Nwani said, is to force many businesses (and individuals) to evade tax payments by going “invisible”.

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Expectedly, the average hour spent on filing tax returns on the many taxes in Nigeria is equally high; it takes 360 hours or 15 days. In Russia, 168hrs/seven days is all a taxpayer needs; 207hrs/8.6 days in China; 210hrs/8.7 days in South Africa; and 214hrs/8.9 days in India.

At 59 taxable items, Nigeria has one of the highest tax charges in the world. This is a major contributor to its regular poor performance in the yearly Ease of Doing Business index. Thus, an urgent reform is needed to consolidate the multiple taxes and streamline them for convenience and simplicity.

The method of computing many taxable items in the country’s tax system is often opaque and needs to be standardised. Many state and local council levies have no standard rate or valuation method; the charges are often arbitrary. For instance, tenement rates, ground rents, and property taxes are often charged without recourse to the property in question. Thus, a commercial property and another residential one in a neighbourhood may be charged similar property rates or two properties of equal status in a neighbourhood may attract different rates.

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[abeerabutaliba]

PEST Analysis:

Political Factors:

Ecological/Environmental factors are an important point for my design studio to hold ethical and environmental values and it's very important that the studio is seen to act responsibly.

FSC certified paper (Forest Stewardship Council, 1993) is almost standard now and recycled stocks and vegetable inks are extras which could help a design studio to take this issue further.

Recycling paper, card and ink cartridges and responsibly disposing of old equipment are examples of where my studio can act considerately within the studio environment itself. It would be good if this was widely recognised by our clients as well as our competition.

Copyright matters:

In terms of my employees, I should make clear in their contract of employment that the copyright of any work they produce belongs to me, their employer. (Copyright breach, as it needs to be in writing).

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is responsible for intellectual property matters in the UK. The IPO website contains comprehensive information on copyright issues. *guideline*

Just in case, I should be prepared to assign my rights in my original work to our clients, or licence them to use it while retaining ownership. This is something to be agreed between me and the client and should be clearly set out in any contract between us.

Funding & Stationary:

A good idea to look at places that offer non-repayable grants. This would be useful once I present a sound business plan to show how I would use the capital. Such places include; The Arts Council, The Princes Trust, National Enterprise Scheme.

Networking can present opportunities that could lead to me obtaining investment. Perhaps from venture capitalists for example. (Awards shows, competitions, events, galas, exhibitions, etc. Anything that requires me traveling and meeting people/designers/investors from different places and sectors.

In terms of stationary, once my completed letterhead and other business stationary are completely designed, I need to remember that certain company details must by law be included on things like letterheads, order forms and other formal documents. (More on the Companies House website).

Health & Safety: 

First and foremost, i need to make sure that with my employees, I comply with health & safety legislation which covers all aspects of work place health and safety.

Employers have a duty to ensure the health and safety at work of all their employees and those with more than five employees must prepare a written health and safety policy statement - this wouldn't affect my studio in the beginning if we start small but it's something I would need to bear in mind if we expanded.

Fire Safety: All employers must comply with fire safety regulations - this means carrying out a fire risk assessment at your premises and putting in place fire precaution measures. These could include fire alarm systems and extinguishers as well as clearly signed escape routes. Once studio location is determined, this can be assessed accordingly.

NOTE: I would be held responsible not only for the safety of my staff but also of anyone who might be on my premises, like clients or suppliers.

Disability Legislation:

As an employer and head of studios, I need to make sure that the whole studio does not treat a disabled employee or job applicant less favourably than someone else accessing goods and services.

I must also sure that disabled people are not treated less favourably and that they can access any services I provide. I may need to make physical changes to your premises to ensure this is the case.

Economic Factors:

Home economy/overseas economy (?)* (revisit)

Many other economies around the world have suffered similarly to the UK over the past few years and have recovered at widely varying rates. - Graphic designers often work on projects that involve overseas clients and if we were to be targeting certain clientele in other countries, then their economic climate may well affect their spending upon promotional services such as graphic design.

Interest/Exchange Rates: Both interest and exchange rates have fluctuated vastly as a result of the recent economic downturn which will have impacted heavily upon all business types.

Seasonality Issues: Graphic design is in demand all year round but certain holiday periods for example are likely to increase demand further within particular areas of the industry. At the same time, many businesses also see the start of a new year as the opportunity to undertake a re-brand or to step up their promotion.

In many current graphic design studios, they seem to try and offer potential clients the 'whole package' of a range of different services so covering as many areas of design as possible would be beneficial. However, it is also highly likely that certain clients will be searching for highly specialised design services and so how we pitch ourselves in the market will be key to attracting the desired customer base. Being a studio with a specialised skills set could prove to be a great selling point for our company.

Sociological Factors: 

Lifestyle Trends: Graphic design is impacted upon heavily by emerging lifestyle trends but graphic design itself can be responsible for setting lifestyle trends. Keeping up to date with trends within the industry will be important in maintaining a confident and contemporary edge to the business.

Trends and buzzwords come and go very quickly regardless of which sector of design you work in and you can't really fail to notice them once they are around. Playing on these things are risky as the company could quickly become outdated when trends move on to other things. BARK. being a modern in-house studio, this needs to be read up on and kept up with.

It's also very important to retain a distinctive style that is unique to our business so that customers can recognise us for being a quality firm in the areas that we are specialists in.

Demographics: The demographics that designers can produce work for ranges across the ages but, for our business, we were looking to gain clients that are small to medium size businesses and from the not-for-profit sector. This may involve a younger clientele with small start up businesses which are looking to grow and are perhaps more likely to allow a little more creative freedom for whoever produces the identity and promotional material.

Brand/Company:The way in which a graphic design company brands and promotes itself is one of the most important aspects of the business as we are essentially showing other people what we are capable of doing for them.

Building a professional body of work and promoting ourselves are also key steps to establishing our own brand. If a good reputation is built within the industry then recommendations and past work should draw in a large volume of work.

Advertising/Publicity: The work that graphic designers produce is often meant to be out there in the public domain and to attract attention or promote something for example. Therefore it is of high importance that anything produced does not offend ethnic or religious groups or certain demographics of the general public. This is avoided by being informed about what we are doing through conducting thorough research on the background of each project.

Graphic design is also something that has power to persuade public opinion and so with that must come a responsibility to fully consider what we produce and the effects it may have, although of course some work is intended to shock etc.

Technological Factors:

Competing Technology: As a small design studio that is just starting up we may find ourselves facing competition from more established businesses that have greater resources and better equipment. We will also be reliant on the technology that we decide to use keeping itself at the head of the market, however since the Adobe package is industry standard then this shouldn't become an issue.

Research funding: Resulting from research visits are wider factors to think about such as travel costs, eating out with clients and purchasing samples for example. Also visits to cities, galleries, museums or the purchase of books, magazines or journals should be considered.

Licensing/Patents. (Trademarking, etc). (?) * (Revisit)

Intellectual Property Issues: Intellectual property rights can cover ideas and inventions which can the be patented. There is an intellectual property office which deals with matters surrounding this.

[ramialkarmi]

TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS BRIEFING: GM's Maven attracts millennials — Ford and Domino's test self-driving delivery vehicles — Amazon's impact on logistics software market

Welcome to Transportation & Logistics Briefing, a new morning email providing the latest news, data, and insight on how digital technology is disrupting transportation and delivery, produced by BI Intelligence.

Sign up and receive Transportation & Logistics Briefing free to your inbox.

Have feedback? We'd like to hear from you. Write me at: jcamhi@businessinsider.com.

GM’S MAVEN CAR-SHARING SERVICE TARGETS MILLENNIALS: GM’s Maven car sharing service, which launched early last year, has found some modest success among urban millennials, with 80% of its users falling between the ages of 18 and 34. That's according to comments from Julia Steyn, Maven’s vice president of mobility, in a recent interview with Business Insider. The service is still very young, with only around 75,000 users in 17 North American cities. However, GM hopes to expand the service to become its answer to the major disruption in car ownership rates that is anticipated in the coming decades with the advent of autonomous vehicles.

That disruption in car ownership is already beginning in urban areas, with car sales declining in major cities, according to Steyn. That is being driven by accelerating urbanization, particularly among younger generations, and the advent of on-demand rides provided by services like Uber and Lyft.

A Reuters survey released earlier this year found that 9% of the 584 US respondents who had sold their car in the previous year had not replaced their vehicle with a new one, and instead used ride-hailing services as their primary means of transportation.

Additionally, 9% of 566 US respondents who planned to get rid of their car in the year said they will use ride-hailing services instead of buying a new car.

Even though more people are choosing on-demand ride services over buying a new car, it will take a long time for declining car ownership to really hit the auto industry. That’s because the average length of car ownership has been increasing — it hit a record of 6.6 years at the end of 2015, according to research firm IHS Markit. That means that about 15% of the car-owning population is trading in a car each year. If only 9% of those are choosing ride-hailing over buying a new car, as Reuters survey suggests, then about 1% of the population has ditched their cars for ride-hailing in the past year. That longer car ownership rate is being driven by higher-quality vehicles that last longer. Since consumers are holding on to their cars longer, it would be long even by optimistic projections for on-demand mobility services to become the chief transportation mode in the US.

Automakers, including GM, are responding to this early trend by exploring services centered around car-sharing, ride-hailing, and delivery. However, that is leading to increasing competition in these areas. At this stage, Maven still has far less users than Daimler’s and BMW’s older Car2Go and DriveNow car-sharing services, which boast 2.7 million and 1 million, respectively. And all of these car-sharing services are dwarfed by the largest ride-hailing services, including Uber, Lyft, and China’s Didi Chuxing. Once they put self-driving cars on the road, more automakers will likely launch ride-hailing services that will compete directly with these giants.  

FORD AND DOMINO’S PARTNER ON DELIVERY TESTS WITH SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES: Ford and Domino’s are testing delivering pizzas with self-driving Ford Fusions in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Tech Crunch reports.

The tests aim to illustrate how customers will react to and interact with autonomous vehicles. Domino's customers will be randomly selected to participate in the test, and then can opt in to have their pizza delivered by one of the autonomous vehicles. The delivery vehicles will transport the pizzas in individual containers that customers can unlock with a code sent to their smartphones.

Ford plans to incorporate any insights from the test into its autonomous vehicle development, as it plans to launch a commercial delivery service using self-driving vehicles in the coming years. The tests with Domino’s should help Ford figure out ways to improve the delivery experience for customers through new design features and functionality.  

Ford has stated that it plans to put an autonomous vehicle on the road by 2021, with the goal of building out fleets of autonomous ride-hailing and delivery vehicles. Its research team at Greenfield Labs in Palo Alto is working on how to redesign self-driving cars for these use cases. With no need for a driver, seats, or an instrument panel, self-driving delivery vehicles could actually be smaller and still have more room for packages. That will also lead to radical changes in the exterior design of the car. For example, Einride, a Swedish startup, unveiled a new concept for an electric autonomous long-haul truck earlier this year that featured a unique aerodynamic design with no seats or windows.

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AMAZON GIVES LOGISTICS TRACKING SOFTWARE MARKET A BOOST: Amazon’s free, two-day Prime shipping program is driving higher interest in companies that provide software platforms for tracking goods in-transit, The Wall Street Journal reports. Amazon has turned fast and free shipping into a competitive advantage, and other retailers, suppliers, and logistics companies are moving quickly to catch up.

Asset tracking software platforms can help these companies improve delivery times by providing real-time location data about shipments, and alerting companies to possible delays caused by weather or traffic. That has led to increased interest and funding in companies offering these platforms:

Convey, a startup that specializes in tracking last-mile deliveries, closed $8.25 million in Series B funding this week led by Techstars Venture Capital Fund. Convey’s software is used by Walmart’s Jet.com, and the company plans to use the funding to build out its offerings for international supply chains. 

Earlier this month, supply chain software firm Descartes Systems Group acquired MacroPoint LLC, which provides a platform for tracking long haul and medium haul trucking shipments. This will help Descartes build out its tracking software portfolio, which already offered solutions for tracking air and ocean freight.

Target also acquired Grand Junction, which provides a platform for tracking and managing last-mile deliveries, earlier this month to expand a same-day delivery test it had been running in New York City to other markets.

The retail industry shifts towards same-day and time-window (within one or two hours) deliveries will only increase retailers’ focus on tracking goods and tightening their supply chains. For example, Walmart introduced new penalties last month on suppliers that failed to deliver goods on time. This trend will make real-time visibility into shipments a competitive advantage for retailers’ suppliers and logistics partners, increasing adoption of technologies that can provide such visibility.

In other news...

China-based DJI, the world’s largest drone manufacturer, overhauled its data security and privacy practices after it discovered a third-party developer was collecting customers’ private information. The data privacy issue arose from a third-party extension, called JPush, to DJI apps that provided app notifications to users when their drone footage was successfully uploaded to DJI’s SkyPixel sharing service. DJI discovered that the extension was collecting unnecessary user information, including what other apps users had installed on their phones, without any disclosure. DJI said that it has now blocked the extension, and is reviewing other plugins for its apps for any similar data collection problems. It also started a bug bounty program that offers between $100 to $30,000 for the discovery of any bugs in the company’s software. DJI clearly hopes these moves will help demonstrate that it’s serious about protecting customers’ information to help defend its leading position in both the consumer and commercial drone markets.

Skydio, a three-year-old drone manufacturing startup, raised $40 million in Series B funding. The company aims to build a technologically advanced drone that can fly itself with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), but has yet to unveil its first model. Its early prototypes leverage cameras and computer vision technology to avoid obstacles and track their environment. The drone manufacturing market is dominated by DJI, which controls 50% of the entire North American drone market. DJI’s scale has allowed it to slash prices and invest heavily in research and development, which has helped it keep competitors at bay. However, drones remain a niche product right now, and drones that are easier to fly thanks to better autonomous capabilities could open up the market to new consumers.  

Toyota and Mazda are working together to develop a Linux-based connected car platform, dubbed Entune, that could provide navigation and infotainment apps. Entune’s core apps include Bing search, Pandora, iHeartRado, and restaurant booking service OpenTable, as well as Toyota’s own app for news and weather updates. Toyota and Mazda reportedly decided to team up on this effort because of a lack of software developers in Japan focused on connected car services. The platform will eventually come to the US in Toyota’s 2018 Camry, and will then compete with Google’s Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay connected car platforms. However, Apple’s and Google’s platforms are well embedded in the US auto industry at this point, as the two tech giants have each scored partnerships with several automakers to put their platforms in dozens of vehicle models.

Join the conversation about this story »

[ds4design]

Professor Hendryx vs. Big Coal

Blasting in an open cut coal mine. (Photo: CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Professor Hendryx vs. Big Coal” (You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

What happens when a public-health researcher deep in coal country argues that mountaintop mining endangers the entire community? Hint: it doesn’t go very well.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript.

*      *      *

Many of you have already subscribed to our other podcast, Tell Me Something I Don’t Know – and if you haven’t, now’s a good time to do it, since our new season starts February 19th. We’ll be putting out 30 episodes this year – so if you subscribe – on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts — you won’t miss a one. And: come see us live! In March, we’ll be in Washington, D.C., Boston, and New York. In April we’ll be in Chicago. Even better, sign up to be a contestant when we’re in your town. Big thanks to our producing partners WAMU in D.C., WBUR in Boston, and WBEZ in Chicago. And remember: new episodes of Tell Me Something I Don’t Know will start coming your way on Sunday, February 19th.

*      *      *

You wouldn’t think it’s a good time to make a bet on coal. As recently as the early 2000s, more than half of the electricity in the U.S. came from burning coal; now it’s only a third. One big reason is competition from cheap natural gas. But also coal, due to its environmental costs, has become heavily regulated over the past couple decades. And yet: coal is suddenly having a bit of a renaissance. A recovery in the price of coal has a number of mining firms looking to go public. The election of President Trump also helped; he called for a revival of the industry, and he criticized President Obama’s “War on Coal.” Indeed, just a couple weeks into his administration, Congress reversed a coal-mining regulation that Obama pushed through in his final days, and Trump is expected to sign it.

[MUSIC: Christopher Norman, “Lines” (from Process)]

Today on Freakonomics Radio: we go down a coal wormhole and we discover a surprising fact: one of the biggest hazards of the modern coal industry was a result of efforts to modernize the coal industry. Also: what it feels like for an academic who studies this issue to testify before a pro-coal congressional hearing:

John FLEMING: You should be embarrassed to be here with a study like this!

*      *      *

I’d like you to meet Michael Hendryx.

Michael HENDRYX: I’m a professor in the Department of Applied Health Science in the School of Public Health at Indiana University.

Stephen J. DUBNER: And Applied Health Science means that you, your discipline and your PhD. and so on, are in what?

HENDRYX: My PhD is originally in psychology. I’ve had a long route to where I am now. I was trained originally in research methods and research design, but for much of my career I applied that to other kinds of health services problems. It was only fairly recently that I started to get interested in environmental issues and in the health problems that the people in the mining communities were experiencing.

Fairly recently being around 2006, when Hendryx landed a job at West Virginia University, in the heart of coal country. He’d come from Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington – wheat country. His research there was focused on mental-health services.

HENDRYX: When I first decided to take the job, I didn’t really have any plans to pursue research interests related to coal. It was something that came about after I moved there.

Hendryx immediately found that West Virginia was different from Washington state in many ways – culturally, politically, and of course geologically.

[MUSIC: Jonathan Headley, “In The Hills”]

Crystal GOOD: My name is Crystal Good and I am a poet, an advocate, and entrepreneur.

Tammy NICHOLS: My name is Tammy. I’m 50 and I am from Summersville, West Virginia.

GOOD: Coal is a part of the fabric of West Virginia.  It doesn’t matter if you’re directly in the mines, there’s an ancillary business that we all benefit from or are connected to.

NICHOLS: This is a rich state, okay? And there is things out there in the mountains and everything that could really make money and jobs for people.

GOOD: Whether that’s my mom unloading a coal truck at DuPont or whether that’s my basketball team being sponsored by Friends of Coal or, you know, however. Everybody’s in some way connected to the industry.

That connection extended to Hendryx’s new university.

HENDRYX: West Virginia University would have their annual Coal Bowl football game, the game between West Virginia and Marshall every year, just as one example. And they had a research center for coal and energy on the WVU campus. Politicians were always quick to support and defend the coal industry if they wanted to get reelected. Very pro-coal environment there.

DUBNER: And it sounds like you were at least a bit of an environmentalist when you came to West Virginia. 

HENDRYX: Well, I loved the outdoors. I learned how to fly-fish and hiking and backpacking and such, yeah. That’s true.

DUBNER: Which is not to align you with any political movement, because we know there are naturalists and environmentalists across all political spectrums. But I am curious what your views were on coal, per se, coming into WVU.

HENDRYX: You know, I really knew almost nothing about it. I was one of those people that didn’t know how the lights were turned on or what the energy sources were. I was educating myself at about that time. I happened to come across a book, it was written by a journalist, Jeff Goodell, called Big Coal. And he was doing stories about the important and kind of quiet role that coal played in American life, and he was describing some of the stories of people that lived in these mining communities. And that’s what got me, kind of the first knowledge I had about this as a potential issue.

DUBNER: And then that led you to think, “Hey, I should take a look at public health implications of coal mining”?  Was it as direct a line as that?

HENDRYX: Yeah. It’s as simple as that. It seemed like a logical next step.

Now, we should back up here and say that coal mining had changed a great deal in the past few decades. As we noted earlier, the industry has been in serious decline, with production falling substantially and, with it, employment. Especially in a place like West Virginia. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which groups together mining and logging jobs, shows that sector has fallen roughly 40 percent in West Virginia in just the last five years. Again, there are several reasons for this decline – especially the natural-gas juggernaut – but it’s also related to something that happened decades earlier, in Washington, D.C.

President George H.W. BUSH: Thank you all very much. Thank you.

In 1989, at the White House, President George H.W. Bush made a major announcement.

PRESIDENT BUSH: First I’d like to lay on the table my proposals to curb acid rain and cut urban smog and clean up air toxics. And second, I want to call upon all of you to join me in an acting into law a new Clean Air Act this year.

The original Clean Air Act dated from 1963, and it had been amended several times. Bush’s new amendments, which took hold in 1990, directly affected the coal industry and coal-fired power plants. Sulfur dioxide, a byproduct of burning coal, lowered air quality generally and contributed to what was known as acid rain. The new amendments capped sulfur-dioxide emissions and established the first large-scale cap-and-trade program. Michael Hendryx again:

Michael HENDRYX: The Clean Air Act, it has been successful at reducing acid rain pretty significantly and at improving air quality from power plants. There’s no question about that.

But there was an unintended consequence of the new Clean Air Act.

HENDRYX: Economically, it became more attractive to try to mine coal that before maybe wasn’t attractive to mine.

This type of coal had lower levels of sulfur. And it was especially plentiful in the mountains of central Appalachia. To get it, miners turned to a process known as mountaintop coal removal. Rather than burrowing deep beneath the ground for seams of coal, mountaintop removal is a technique that involves literally blowing up mountains.

The health hazards of underground mining – both immediate and long-term – are substantial and well-established. But what about the health hazards of mountaintop removal?

HENDRYX: People that work in surface mining — even though there’s some evidence that they may suffer some respiratory issues over time as well — the evidence is that that’s less dangerous than underground mining.

Statistics from the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety, and Training show that surface mining is indeed much less dangerous than underground mining. At least for the miners. But what about everyone else — the people living near the mountains that were being blown up? For Michael Hendryx, a public-health researcher, that seemed a natural question to ask when he arrived in West Virginia.

[MUSIC: Planes on Paper, “Iron Boat” (from The Ruins)]

DUBNER: So at the time mountaintop removal mining was viewed as how in terms of environmental impact, and let’s say, public health impact?

HENDRYX: I think there was always concern about its environmental impacts. I mean, you’re using explosives to literally blow hundreds of feet off the mountaintops around where people live. There’s large-scale deforestation of existing forests in these areas. There’s permanent valley fills that permanently buried several thousand miles of streams in this region.You would hear stories from residents about the health concerns that they had, but nobody seemed to be investigating the public-health impacts of this form of mining until we started this line about ten years ago.

Hendryx began by reading the literature on the effects of open-mining sites and he was surprised to find there wasn’t much.

HENDRYX: And so I thought, “Well, one way or the other, this is an area where I can make a contribution.”

Hendryx began with mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control. It was specific enough that he could identify causes of death at the county level, and for specific population groups.

HENDRYX: So we would merge those data with other data. So we used, as a key source, information from the Department of Energy on the amount of coal that was mined in different counties. And we could merge these together, along with other kinds of demographic and behavioral risks, to try to understand whether people who lived in areas with heavier mining had higher mortality rates.

To find an answer, there was a fair amount of statistical maneuvering to be done.

HENDRYX: The people in these communities, as a general statement, tend to have lower levels of income, they tend to sometimes engage in less-healthy behaviors, smoking rates are higher. So we had to try to account for those somehow. But there are very well-established statistical approaches to be able to do that. So as we looked at it more and more, the evidence became, in our view, stronger, that there really was an independent association of being in mining communities that was related to a variety of poorer health outcomes. And it was an effect that was most pronounced in areas where surface mining takes place, especially mountaintop removal mining. And the health effects were present for men and for women, and for some children’s outcomes, which made us think that it’s more of a community-wide issue and not just an occupational exposure issue.

DUBNER: And talk me through, for a moment, the mechanics by which you believe mountaintop removal, and perhaps other coal mining, actually increases mortality, and the specific ways, I guess, in which it has an ill effect on the health of, as you described it, men, women, children, and I guess in-utero children as well.

HENDRYX: Sure. When we first started doing these studies, we did not have direct measures of environmental conditions. We only had these correlational studies that showed poorer health outcomes in these communities in ways that were not explained by other measures. So that was a limitation of the earlier studies. And more recently, we have been going out and collecting environmental data from communities where mining occurs, as well as control communities where it does not. We found evidence for a variety of environmental problems in these communities.

For example?

HENDRYX: For example, levels of silica, crystalline silica, which we think are coming from removing the rock and soil to reach the coal, which is done through the use of heavy machinery and through explosives, raises dust levels in these communities, and silica levels in particular are known to be a toxicant to lung tissue. They’re known to be a contributing factor to lung cancer, and that’s one of the most consistent health problems that we’ve seen in these communities. We’ve also seen evidence for elevations in some organic compounds in air samples. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are coming in part from, again, from the coal itself and from the rock and soil around the coal, we think, as well as potentially from some of the diesel products that are used in the machinery and in the explosives. So we think the air is a transport route for the health problems that exist. We’ve also measured the particle size in these communities, and we found, somewhat to our own surprise, that the most pronounced difference, when you compare mining communities to similar rural communities in West Virginia that don’t have mining, the primary difference is in very small particles that are called ultrafines that can penetrate deeply into lung tissue, that are known to be a particular health hazard, and those were the particle sizes that were the most pronounced. We’ve done some limited water quality testing, and we find some evidence, as well, for some coal-related contaminants in some groundwater samples. Higher levels of conductivity in water—we don’t know exactly what’s causing that, but there’s evidence for some water impairments, too, that are related to the chemicals that are used in the coal extraction and processing activities.

[MUSIC: Jetty Rae, “Another Town” (from Can’t Curse the Free)]

In a nutshell: a whole heap of bad news. Michael Hendryx and his colleagues would go on to publish more than 30 peer-reviewed studies that, to Hendryx at least, reached a clear conclusion:

HENDRYX:We’re convinced that surface mining in central Appalachia, especially mountaintop removal mining, is an independent significant risk to public health.

The paradox, of course, was that the problem stemmed, in part, from the success of the Clean Air Act:

HENDRYX: The principal unintended consequence of the Clean Air Act was to encourage the development of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, and there is strong evidence that this form of mining is harmful. It’s harmful not only to public health, but it’s harmful environmentally, and the people who live in these communities have had to suffer so that others can enjoy cleaner air.

Coming up on Freakonomics Radio: Professor Hendryx goes to Washington — which doesn’t go quite as planned.

HENDRYX: Well, to tell you the truth, I was pretty naïve.

*      *      *

 [MUSIC: Planes on Paper, “Monolithia” (from The Ruins)]

The public-health researcher Michael Hendryx had discovered an unfortunate chain reaction: the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 did clean up the air, substantially, but they also incentivized a boom in mountaintop coal mining — which, his research showed, led to widespread public-health hazards. Not just for the people involved in mining, but for anyone living nearby. The fact is, almost any regulation or piece of legislation will have some unintended consequences. Environmental regulations seems particularly susceptible.

[MUSIC: Lerin Herzer and Andrew Joslyn, “Mister Moon” (from The Dead of Winter)]

About a decade ago, the United Nations began offer a generous bounty to manufacturers for destroying their stockpiles of a pollutant – HFC-23 – that is a byproduct in the manufacture of a common refrigerant. The U.N. was hoping the manufacturers would be grateful enough to collect their money from the stockpiles and switch to making a different refrigerant. Instead, factories in China and India doubled down, making even more of that refrigerant in order to create even more of the byproduct and get more of the money the U.N. was handing out. Or consider the Endangered Species Act. It is meant, of course, to protect species under threat – but there’s a good possibility, as one environmental economist puts it, “that the Endangered Species Act is actually endangering, rather than protecting, species.” Why? Because a species is often declared endangered months or even years before its “critical habitats” are officially designated. This allows time for public hearings – and it also allows time for developers and foresters to rush in and pave over those critical habitats before it’s illegal to do so. So perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that a law meant to clean up the air from coal pollution … has led to a different kind of coal pollution. That said, what should be done about it? Based on his research, Michael Hendryx went on record saying the appropriate policy would be a ban on mountaintop coal removal. Some people we spoke with in West Virginia supported this idea.

Casey LITZ: My name is Casey Litz and I am the singer of The Company Stores.

[“Pocket Change” by Company Stores: “Benjamin Franklin, I’d really like to thank him, because he paid all my bills with a smile on his face, and…”]

LITZ: Living in West Virginia this is an issue that is brought up all the time. You know, it pollutes our waters, it’s killing our mountains. We have a lot of other ways that we can create electricity, It should absolutely be banned.

But that view is hardly universal.

Brennan ZERBE: Brennan Zerbe. I’m 26. On the one hand, as like an everyday citizen living here I can say I at least dislike mining because it has a negative impact on my own life. But on the other hand I can’t speak to the need that some people have to work. The need for miners to make a living. And I can’t, you know, in total equanimity say that it should be totally banned.

HENDRYX: Well, to tell you the truth, I was pretty naïve when I first started.

Michael Hendryx again.

HENDRYX: I was coming from this position of being a rational, objective person, and in my naiveté, just moving to West Virginia, not yet really understanding the nature of coal in the state or the political pressures that it could play, I thought people would listen to me and make appropriate responses to the information, and I was quickly relieved of that idea when the first results started coming out and the first efforts from the industry and the politicians were more or less to ignore it, pretend they had never read it, not want to talk about it.  I thought people would listen to these results, and maybe the politicians would even listen, and maybe something could be done, and that was obviously not the case.

In recent years, we’ve learned how different industries – tobacco and sugar, for instance – essentially co-opted academic researchers to produce results favorable to their industries. But here was Michael Hendryx, a newcomer to coal country, putting out academic research that made the coal industry look bad – and complicated his relationship with his university.

HENDRYX: And I know that even though West Virginia University, to their credit, never pressured me to stop directly, I think that some of the upper-level administrators probably received some pressure to try to make me stop, but that was never an issue for me. I was always allowed to do the work that I felt I wanted to do.

Which didn’t mean it wasn’t tricky.

HENDRYX: It would be much easier for me to simply not talk about it and do something else. Because I have felt under considerable pressure to be very careful about what I would say to journalists, and be very cautious about what we would right in the papers.   

DUBNER: When you say you feel the pressure, what do you mean by that? You felt it how and from whom?

HENDRYX:  It was self-imposed, maybe, more than anything, but I knew that my department chair and upper-level administrators at the university were nervous about this work. They wanted me to be really careful. Whenever I would have an interview with a journalist, I would  have someone from the media office, if it was an in-person interview, by my side, to listen to what was being said. My chair would caution me on a regular basis to be careful, be careful and I would always try to do that, because I knew that it was — after I had gotten over my naiveté — I knew that it was a really charged issue and that I was threatening a vested interest, and so I felt that. I felt the stress from it.

One tool that industry groups use to challenge academic work they find unflattering is a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request. In the academic community, Hendryx came to be cited as a prime example of how FOIA can facilitate harrassment.

HENDRYX: We were subject to two very large FOIA requests. And the attorneys for the industry wanted essentially every scrap of paper that existed, every email that went back and forth, every draft of a manuscript, computer codes for the analyses, everything. And the attorneys for West Virginia University, to their credit, fought it as a way to protect academic freedom, and the case was ultimately heard at the West Virginia Supreme Court, and decided in favor of the university, that it was a request from the industry that was designed basically to intimidate, to freeze academic freedom, and to require me, essentially, just to waste a lot of time chasing down documents that they really didn’t need to see.

And then there was the time Hendryx was called to testify before Congress about his research. Under consideration was a proposal concerning mining permits and water-quality protection.

REP. DOUG LAMBORN: The Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources will come to order.

DUBNER: Can you talk about that experience?

HENDRYX: Yes. I was one of—

DUBNER: Or would you rather not?

HENDRYX: It’s all right. It wasn’t the most rewarding experience, ultimately, but I was one of four witnesses who was asked to testify before a committee for Congress—a committee, of course, controlled by the Republican majority. The other three speakers were supportive of the coal industry.

Hal QUINN: I’m Hal Quinn, the president and CEO of the National Mining Association. The Coal Industry strongly supports HR 1644.

HENDRYX: So I was  the lone voice there, and  I felt like the quality of the discussion was pretty infantile.

Rep. John FLEMING: So I would have to say to you, sir, I’ve seen fifth-grade science projects that were more scientific than this.

HENDRYX: You know, I came here not to be insulted.

FLEMING: Yeah, I’m sorry, sir, but–

HENDRYX: This paper when through peer-review. There are 30 of them…

FLEMING: I’m sorry, sir, but I have the time. The time is mine. And I’m sorry, but you’re–I didn’t ask you that question.  

HENDRYX: It can be pretty stressful sometimes.

FLEMING: You should be embarrassed to be here with a study like this!

DUBNER: Did you know pretty much what you were being set up to do?

HENDRYX: No; again, I’m just naïve, I guess. I thought there would be a dignified discussion and I would have a chance to present my views, and others would present theirs, and I didn’t realize that it would turn into this little, insulting little exchange.

FLEMING: You want us to set policy and damage jobs, take away job opportunities from people based on nonsense science here! And–

HENDRYX: Is that a question?

FLEMING: –and, I’m not asking you a question, sir. I’m making a statement.

DUBNER: I know that Representative John Fleming of Louisiana basically treated you as if you were defending your dissertation on how to conduct statistical analysis of public health records.

FLEMING: You control for those? How do you control for that?

HENDRYX: It’s a common statistical analysis to control for other risk factors.

FLEMING: So you use statistical analysis to control for the difference?

HENDRYX: Of course.

FLEMING: Okay.

HENDRYX: Yeah, he clearly knows nothing about analysis himself. He just had some predetermined question or two that one of his aides wrote for him, probably, that he flung out at me. We’ve published, like, 30 papers on the health problems related to this form of mining, and he chose one of them. One of our health surveys that was a published paper, maybe not one of our strongest efforts, but a published paper that documented the health problems in mining communities, and chose to take a couple of potshots at that one paper, as though that was going to make some grander statement about the weight of the evidence as a whole. But he knows nothing about research. He doesn’t even seem to understand basic control issues of how you measure covariates. He knows nothing.

DUBNER: I understand he objected to your reliance on self-reported data, said your sample size was too small. Let’s pretend for a moment that he’s on the other line, and how would you just explain how your research actually stands on its own?

HENDRYX: Well, the sample size for that study was several hundred people. It wasn’t too small. If it had been too small, we maybe would not have been able to find the differences that we had seen. The fact is, we did find big differences in health status across a variety of dimensions, and the sample size was certainly adequate enough to detect those. Self-report is one valid, well-recognized form for collecting health data. There’s plenty of evidence that people are, in fact, able to report their own health status accurately. I’m certainly not the only one who does analyses or writes papers based on self-reported health data.

DUBNER: Let’s say, however, I put you in the prosecution chair for a moment and ask you to pick apart the overall thrust of your own argument here, having to do with the relationship between mountaintop removal mining and health of the community. Talk about what you feel are the potential flaws, weaknesses, or unanswerable, let’s say, questions in your thesis.

HENDRYX: So we haven’t been able to make that direct connection within a single study between the health conditions that people have and the environmental conditions that those same people are exposed to. And that’s a limitation, there’s no question about it. We’re trying to do some work now to overcome that. But if you look at the pattern as a whole, and you see 30 papers—more than that now—and they document that the health problems are present throughout these communities. They become stronger as the levels of mining go up, they become stronger as mountaintop removal specifically occurs, they become stronger as people live closer to the sites. They are not due to other conventional confounds like smoking, obesity, education, age, insurance, et cetera. And, independently, we’ve been able to assess that the water quality is in fact impaired, that the air quality is in fact impaired in ways that are consistent with the health problems that we’re seeing in these communities. Even though we don’t have the smoking gun, you know, we don’t have the magic bullet that explains this relationship: at this point in time, with the weight of the evidence, to try to make a statement that we really don’t know, we really can’t be sure, has come to the point in my view that it’s immoral. And we have something in environmental science called the precautionary principle, that if you know there are health problems in communities, and you know that the environmental conditions are impaired, even if you don’t understand all the causal mechanisms, you have to take appropriate steps to reduce harm, and that’s what we should be doing.

[MUSIC: Johnny Fiasco, “Neptune”]

The Congressman who grilled Hendryx in Washington – Louisiana Representative John Fleming – recently left Congress. We reached out for a response to Hendryx’s characterization of him as someone who “clearly knows nothing” about this type of research. Fleming objected. He told us that in addition to serving as a Congressman, quote, “I am also a board-certified family physician who has studied medical literature for many years. As a trained physician, I can easily identify a well-designed or a poorly-designed study when I see one.” Furthermore, Fleming argued that Hendryx was in league with what he called “tree-hugging” environmentalists. “In short,” he said, “Dr. Hendryx attempted to push a personal environmental agenda in the guise of a public health study. That was plain to see as a physician. The conclusions about his ‘study’ were drawn by me, not my staff.” In any case, Hendryx’s testimony, and his research, have not accomplished what he hoped for.

HENDRYX: Well, I wish I could say it had had more impacts. Mountaintop removal is still taking place.

Hendryx says his research did gain some traction during the Obama presidency: the EPA tightened permitting guidelines for mountaintop removal; West Virginia politicians acknowledged the potential for public-health problems; and, Hendryx says, his message may have helped persuade some big-name investment banks to divest from mountaintop mining. But under a Trump Administration that has vowed to be pro-coal, momentum is already shifting. A late-Obama-era Interior Department ruling, intended to protect waterways from coal debris, appears headed for repeal. Hendryx called this “a very bad idea, in my view.” Still, he’s hoping that research like his will convince policymakers to take a more comprehensive view of environmental legislation generally.

HENDRYX: Try to pay attention — not just when it comes to mountaintop removal. But to any energy policy that we develop — pay attention to the full production cycle: to where it comes from, to how it’s produced, to how it’s extracted, to how it’s used, to how the wastes are disposed of. And not just to the consumption portion. We don’t do a very good job of that, and we should do that regardless of the energy source that we’re using.

DUBNER: But what do you do if your bread is buttered by, you know, the industry and maybe you see the potential downside of your activity and maybe you don’t, but people really dig their heels in and find a way to justify or confirm their position based on, you know, how they put food on their family’s table, or how they pay back their shareholders, and so on. That’s always going to be the case. There’s always going to be some industry or institution that, even if the evidence is not in their favor, they’ll make a strong argument and often win because they have a lot of leverage. So is there anything you’ve learned from your interactions on this issue that you could see would be a useful mechanism to kind of breaking that logjam to where we could perhaps align incentives more productively for the greater good?

HENDRYX: Well, you’re absolutely right that people’s self-interest trumps many other considerations, and finding ways to make that work in our favor rather than trying to struggle against it is probably a smart approach. Better incentives to promote clean energy development, for example, would be one thing that I would think would be a good idea, but how do you do that when you have to face the same entrenched political interests that tend to oppose those kinds of changes? We could talk about it in a rational way, but it’s still going to require — I hate to say this, but I think it may require a crisis before we’ll make real change.

DUBNER: But whenever there’s any change there are always winners and there are losers. So in this case, you know, what if the potential loser were somehow given a winning ticket? What if you could go to the coal industry, let’s say, and then say, “We are going to subsidize your clean-energy development to the tune of X, which is we’re giving everyone, plus 10%.” It’s going to be really hard for you to lose money for the next five years. Would something like that work?

HENDRYX: I don’t want to — this is going to sound like I’m trying to claim your idea, but that was something I’ve actually been thinking about, a while back, is that rather than having the West Virginia Coal Association, we should have the West Virginia Energy Association, and there should be incentives for them to develop a more sustainable long-term approach to the energy needs of West Virginia and of the country. So those sorts of incentives, I think, would be really smart to do, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to do them.

DUBNER: Was your idea for the West Virginia Energy Association met with open arms by the West Virginia coal industry?

HENDRYX: Well, it was one I discussed more with colleagues and friends privately; I never approached them about it.

DUBNER: Ah, so you too need to get out of your silo, though, perhaps, Professor Hendryx, right?

HENDRYX: I do, you’re right, you’re right. I’m sure they would have welcomed the idea with open arms.

[MUSIC: Grow and Twine, “Next To You” (from Wind Fool)]

DUBNER: Why are you no longer at West Virginia University?

HENDRYX: Oh, that’s a pretty boring story, too. My wife is a professor, she’s an epidemiologist, and she was at West Virginia University, too, and she got a great job offer here at Indiana that was an important career advancement for her. So we moved here support her career.

DUBNER: So your move from West Virginia wasn’t due to any kind of pressure — indirect or direct — against your research.

HENDRYX: No. I’m sure that’s a quick question that comes to people’s minds. I’ve been asked about it a number of times. But it’s just not the case. It’s just a personal decision.

DUBNER: Well, for those of us who appreciate academic research and freedom, whether from the individual level up to the provost/chancellor level, that’s very, very nice to hear, that you felt like the university really had your back, even though you were producing research that could have made things uncomfortable for them.

HENDRYX: I’m sure it did make things uncomfortable for them in some other ways, and I’m sure there were a few of the administrators who were happy to see me go. But they did allow me to pursue my work, so I appreciate that.

Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio, another story about another industry. But unlike coal, this one has been booming:

Chris DeFARIA: Suddenly visual effects budgets went from let’s say five percent of the budget up into the fifties and sixties.

That’s great news if you run a visual-effects shop in Hollywood, right? Guess again:

Bill WESTENHOFER: We had just received this Academy Award and I worked for a company that at that time was going through a bankruptcy.

In a world where Hollywood movies are visually extravagant–why has the visual-effects industry in Hollywood vanished?

Bryan SINGER: It has everything to do with tax incentives! Come on, who’s fooling who?

That’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky. Our staff also includes Shelley Lewis, Christopher Werth, Stephanie Tam, Merritt Jacob, Eliza Lambert, Alison Hockenberry, Emma Morgenstern, Harry Huggins, and Brian Gutierrez. Special thanks to the band The Company Stores, which we played in the episode. Check out their music at TheCompanyStores.com. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check out our archive, at Freakonomics.com, where you can stream or download every episode we’ve ever made – or read the transcripts, and look up the underlying research.  You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via e-mail at radio@freakonomics.com. Thanks for listening.

SOURCES

Michael Shawn Hendryx, professor of applied health science at Indiana University Bloomington School of Public Health

RESOURCES

“Unintended consequences of the Clean Air Act: Mortality rates in Appalachian coal mining communities,” by Michael Hendryx and Benjamin Holland, Environmental Science & Policy, 2016

“Hospitalization patterns associated with Appalachian coal mining,” by Michael Hendryx, Melissa M. Ahern, and T. Nurkiewicz, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, 2007

“Relations between health indicators and residential proximity to coal mining in West Virginia,” by Michael Hendrix and Melissa M. Ahern,  American Journal of Public Health, 2008

“Mortality Rates in Appalachian Coal Mining Counties: 24 Years Behind the Nation,” by Michael Hendryx, Environmental Justice, 2008

“Lung cancer mortality is elevated in coal-mining areas of Appalachia,” by Michael Hendryx, K. O’Donnell, and K. Horn, Lung Cancer, 2008

“Mortality from heart, respiratory and kidney disease in coal mining areas of

Appalachia,” by Michael Hendryx, International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2009

“Mortality in Appalachian coal mining regions: the value of statistical life lost,” by Michael Hendryx and Melissa M. Ahern, Public Health Reports, 2009

“Higher coronary heart disease and heart attack morbidity in Appalachian coal mining regions,” by Michael Hendryx and KJ Zullig, Preventive Medicine, 2009

“Consequences of mountaintop mining,” by Michael Hendryx et al, Science, 2010

“The association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in Central Appalachia,” by Melissa M. Ahern et al, Environmental Research, 1996-2003

“The S02 Allowance Trading System and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990: Reflections of Twenty Years of Policy Innovation,” by Gabriel Chan, Robert Stavins, Robert Stowe, and Richard Sweeney, Harvard Environmental Economics Program, January 2012

“Environmental carcinogen releases and lung cancer mortality in ruralurban areas of the United States,” by J. Luo and Michael Hendryx, Journal of Rural Health, 2011

“Chronic cardiovascular disease mortality in mountaintop mining areas of central Appalachian states,” by L. Esch and Michael Hendryx, Journal of Rural Health, 2011

“Cancer mortality rates in Appalachian mountaintop mining areas,” by Melissa Hern and Michael Hendryx, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Science, 2012

“2015 Statistical Report and Directory of Mines,” West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training, 2015

ETC.

“Pocket Change,” by Company Stores

Testimony of Michael Hendryx, House Committee on Natural Resources, YouTube, 5/14/15

“President Bush’s Clean Air Proposals,” C-Span, 6/13/1989

The post Professor Hendryx vs. Big Coal appeared first on Freakonomics.

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In A Trump Era World, Silicon Valley Has Shifted Its Goal Posts

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“Had a moment of nostalgia today about when we were just fighting to keep racists from giving talks at programming [conferences] and then got real sad,” Leigh Honeywell tweeted on November 29.

A few weeks after that, Honeywell — a security response manager at Slack — Ka-Ping Yee, Valerie Aurora and others organized the Never Again Pledge, a public oath from workers in the technology industry to refuse to participate in the use of tech for racial and religious targeting.

“We have educated ourselves on the history of threats like these, and on the roles that technology and technologists played in carrying them out,” the pledge reads. “We see how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others. We recall the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.”

In the wake of of Trump’s ascendency to the White House, activists within the technology industry are reassessing their priorities. Movements that once focused on proportional representation of marginalized demographic groups in the industry are shifting energies away from diversity work in favor of staving off future complicity in genocide.

Danilo Campos, Technical Director for Social Impact at Github, almost wistfully recalls how, prior to the election, he had been planning on making a fun video about workplace inclusivity and Star Trek, based on a wildly popular talk he had given at a javascript meet-up.

“The year got busy and I didn’t get around to it, and now it just feels so back-burnered, because the stuff we’ve got to worry about runs so much deeper than inclusion now,” said Campos. “We have a president-elect who campaigned on mass deportations and a Muslim registry. And these are all things you could apply technology to.”

In recent years, the movement to diversify tech seemed to make huge strides forward, as tech workers and venture capitalists alike began to speak more openly about discrimination in the industry. Perhaps no clearer sign of the changing cultural tide was the sudden explosion in interest in the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC), a major tech conference by and for women. GHC had been held annually since 1994, but in 2011 it moved to a convention center due to a spike in attendance.

Around the time, people began to reexamine inclusivity in all aspects of the industry: Black Girls Code (founded 2011) seeks to teach programming skills to black girls aged 7 to 17. Code2040 (founded 2012) runs programs to help black and Latinx software engineering students land internships and jobs in the tech industry. The Ada Initiative (founded 2011 by Mary Gardiner and Valeria Aurora, one of the co-organizers of the Never Again Pledge), as part of its mission to support women in open technology, developed anti-harassment codes of conduct for conferences, and lobbied conferences to adopt them.

Today, codes of conduct with anti-harassment provisions are common in the tech industry. Workshops and unconferences organized by the Ada Initiative led to a flowering of other projects, including the San Francisco women’s hackerspace Double Union.

Under Double Union’s auspices, Leigh Honeywell created OpenDiversityData.org, a site that tracks which tech companies have published their internal diversity statistics and which ones have not, as a mode of pressuring the latter to release that information.

Thanks to activism like hers, the release of diversity data rapidly became a widespread practice across Silicon Valley, with giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and more regularly publishing their EEO-1 reports (forms with gender and racial/ethnic data about employees legally required by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from certain companies) for the public to view. The regular publication of EEO-1s became a way for companies set goalposts for themselves, and to vow to do better.

But the push for diversity has seen incremental progress. After Jack Dorsey returned as Twitter’s CEO, the company lost Leslie Miley, its only black engineering manager. By the end of the year, Janet Van Huysee, the company’s VP of diversity, was replaced by a white man.

Meanwhile, Apple, Facebook, and Google all claimed to be moving in the “right direction,” touting improvements such as women making up 21% of new hires, compared to a current population of 19%. Pinterest started out reaching for “ambitious” goals in 2015, then beat a swift retreat, having found that a 30% hiring rate for women engineers was “too aggressive.”

Diversity activism prior to the 2016 election focused heavily on the spread of information — data sets, programming skills, codes of conduct, workplace diversity training — and trusted that the arc of history was long but would bend towards equity.

It’s important for marginalized people to be represented in tech in this moment because of the danger that technology is about to be used to hurt their communities.

But the stakes are suddenly much higher. It’s perhaps no surprise that some of the key figures behind the post-2011 explosion of activism for diversity in tech are now leading the Never Again Pledge: The same problems that existed before November 9 still exist, only now they are magnified.

Perhaps nowhere is this better exemplified than in the fight to “keep racists from giving talks at programming conference” that Honeywell mentioned in her post-election tweet. In 2016, even as the election was playing out on a national stage, the programming community was convulsed with a debate over whether the functional programming conference LambdaConf should rescind its speaking invitation to neo-reactionary ideologue and computer scientist Curtis Yarvin, also known as Mencius Moldbug.

Citing his racist views (for example, he claims that white people have inherently higher IQs, and that some people are better suited for slavery), several speakers and sponsors withdrew from LambdaConf in protest. His supporters saw the attempt to no-platform him as an illegitimate attack on speech, where protesters viewed his talk as contributing to a hostile environment for already-marginalized groups in tech.

But under the new administration, the question of giving platforms to people like Yarvin becomes even thornier. “If the alt-right does have an intellectual forbear, it is … Curtis Yarvin,” James Kirchick wrote in May, in an article about “Trump’s terrifying online brigades.”

The problem of Yarvin is no longer just that he contributes to a hostile professional environment for women or people of color: It’s that his fringe beliefs have fueled a national political movement that is hostile to them in more tangible ways. Prior to November 9, activists merely sought to prevent Yarvin from speaking at conferences. After November 9, they now seek to stop the creation and use of technology in service of his beliefs.

In this way, the work being done in tech circles before November 9 is still relevant — maybe even more so. Campos sees continuing investment in diversity as essential. “What gets complicated is that in addition to all the education stuff, and making space for people, we now need to get active in a political sense that I don’t know was true in the past.” It’s important, he says, for marginalized people to be represented in tech in this moment, because of the danger that technology is about to be used to hurt their communities.

But the mood in Silicon Valley is sour. “I sense apprehension,” says Karla Monterroso, Vice President of Programs at Code2040. “Things feel very uncertain right now. And I don’t know that that is going to be any different than the way we’re going to experience things in the near term.”

For Monterroso, despite living in the deep blue bubble of Silicon Valley, the results of the election were hardly surprising. “There isn’t a woman or woman of color who hasn’t tweeted and has any kind of network presence who is really surprised about what has happened,” she said. “We felt it coming. There was hope, because that’s how you sustain change — hope in the face of the impossible. But the volume of toxicity that existed has existed.”

The Never Again Pledge closed to new signatures on December 21, citing the enormous effort in vetting signatories on an ongoing basis. But before that happened, 2,843 tech workers had signed on. One line, both chilling and powerful, reads: “Today we stand together to say: not on our watch, and never again.”

Sarah Jeong is a journalist specializing in technology and legal issues.

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