#split pdf without internet

[happyzombieapex]

Offline PDF Split Tool for Fast Document Splitting

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Shifting $677m from the banks to the people, every year, forever

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

"Switching costs" are one of the great underappreciated evils in our world: the more it costs you to change from one product or service to another, the worse the vendor, provider, or service you're using today can treat you without risking your business.

Businesses set out to keep switching costs as high as possible. Literally. Mark Zuckerberg's capos send him memos chortling about how Facebook's new photos feature will punish anyone who leaves for a rival service with the loss of all their family photos – meaning Zuck can torment those users for profit and they'll still stick around so long as the abuse is less bad than the loss of all their cherished memories:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

It's often hard to quantify switching costs. We can tell when they're high, say, if your landlord ties your internet service to your lease (splitting the profits with a shitty ISP that overcharges and underdelivers), the switching cost of getting a new internet provider is the cost of moving house. We can tell when they're low, too: you can switch from one podcatcher program to another just by exporting your list of subscriptions from the old one and importing it into the new one:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

But sometimes, economists can get a rough idea of the dollar value of high switching costs. For example, a group of economists working for the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau calculated that the hassle of changing banks is costing Americans at least $677m per year (see page 526):

https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_personal-financial-data-rights-final-rule_2024-10.pdf

The CFPB economists used a very conservative methodology, so the number is likely higher, but let's stick with that figure for now. The switching costs of changing banks – determining which bank has the best deal for you, then transfering over your account histories, cards, payees, and automated bill payments – are costing everyday Americans more than half a billion dollars, every year.

Now, the CFPB wasn't gathering this data just to make you mad. They wanted to do something about all this money – to find a way to lower switching costs, and, in so doing, transfer all that money from bank shareholders and executives to the American public.

And that's just what they did. A newly finalized Personal Financial Data Rights rule will allow you to authorize third parties – other banks, comparison shopping sites, brokers, anyone who offers you a better deal, or help you find one – to request your account data from your bank. Your bank will be required to provide that data.

I loved this rule when they first proposed it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/10/getting-things-done/#deliverism

And I like the final rule even better. They've really nailed this one, even down to the fine-grained details where interop wonks like me get very deep into the weeds. For example, a thorny problem with interop rules like this one is "who gets to decide how the interoperability works?" Where will the data-formats come from? How will we know they're fit for purpose?

This is a super-hard problem. If we put the monopolies whose power we're trying to undermine in charge of this, they can easily cheat by delivering data in uselessly obfuscated formats. For example, when I used California's privacy law to force Mailchimp to provide list of all the mailing lists I've been signed up for without my permission, they sent me thousands of folders containing more than 5,900 spreadsheets listing their internal serial numbers for the lists I'm on, with no way to find out what these lists are called or how to get off of them:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/22/degoogled/#kafka-as-a-service

So if we're not going to let the companies decide on data formats, who should be in charge of this? One possibility is to require the use of a standard, but again, which standard? We can ask a standards body to make a new standard, which they're often very good at, but not when the stakes are high like this. Standards bodies are very weak institutions that large companies are very good at capturing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Here's how the CFPB solved this: they listed out the characteristics of a good standards body, listed out the data types that the standard would have to encompass, and then told banks that so long as they used a standard from a good standards body that covered all the data-types, they'd be in the clear.

Once the rule is in effect, you'll be able to go to a comparison shopping site and authorize it to go to your bank for your transaction history, and then tell you which bank – out of all the banks in America – will pay you the most for your deposits and charge you the least for your debts. Then, after you open a new account, you can authorize the new bank to go back to your old bank and get all your data: payees, scheduled payments, payment history, all of it. Switching banks will be as easy as switching mobile phone carriers – just a few clicks and a few minutes' work to get your old number working on a phone with a new provider.

This will save Americans at least $677 million, every year. Which is to say, it will cost the banks at least $670 million every year.

Naturally, America's largest banks are suing to block the rule:

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/cfpbs-open-banking-rule-faces-suit-from-bank-policy-institute

Of course, the banks claim that they're only suing to protect you, and the $677m annual transfer from their investors to the public has nothing to do with it. The banks claim to be worried about bank-fraud, which is a real thing that we should be worried about. They say that an interoperability rule could make it easier for scammers to get at your data and even transfer your account to a sleazy fly-by-night operation without your consent. This is also true!

It is obviously true that a bad interop rule would be bad. But it doesn't follow that every interop rule is bad, or that it's impossible to make a good one. The CFPB has made a very good one.

For starters, you can't just authorize anyone to get your data. Eligible third parties have to meet stringent criteria and vetting. These third parties are only allowed to ask for the narrowest slice of your data needed to perform the task you've set for them. They aren't allowed to use that data for anything else, and as soon as they've finished, they must delete your data. You can also revoke their access to your data at any time, for any reason, with one click – none of this "call a customer service rep and wait on hold" nonsense.

What's more, if your bank has any doubts about a request for your data, they are empowered to (temporarily) refuse to provide it, until they confirm with you that everything is on the up-and-up.

I wrote about the lawsuit this week for @eff@mastodon.social's Deeplinks blog:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/no-matter-what-bank-says-its-your-money-your-data-and-your-choice

In that article, I point out the tedious, obvious ruses of securitywashing and privacywashing, where a company insists that its most abusive, exploitative, invasive conduct can't be challenged because that would expose their customers to security and privacy risks. This is such bullshit.

It's bullshit when printer companies say they can't let you use third party ink – for your own good:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-ceo-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-fights-viruses/

It's bullshit when car companies say they can't let you use third party mechanics – for your own good:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

It's bullshit when Apple says they can't let you use third party app stores – for your own good:

https://www.eff.org/document/letter-bruce-schneier-senate-judiciary-regarding-app-store-security

It's bullshit when Facebook says you can't independently monitor the paid disinformation in your feed – for your own good:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

And it's bullshit when the banks say you can't change to a bank that charges you less, and pays you more – for your own good.

CFPB boss Rohit Chopra is part of a cohort of Biden enforcers who've hit upon a devastatingly effective tactic for fighting corporate power: they read the law and found out what they're allowed to do, and then did it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

The CFPB was created in 2010 with the passage of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which specifically empowers the CFPB to make this kind of data-sharing rule. Back when the CFPA was in Congress, the banks howled about this rule, whining that they were being forced to share their data with their competitors.

But your account data isn't your bank's data. It's your data. And the CFPB is gonna let you have it, and they're gonna save you and your fellow Americans at least $677m/year – forever.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/01/bankshot/#personal-financial-data-rights

[samueldays]

The Supreme Court and Affirmative Action at Universities

There has been quite a bit of uproar about the recent USA SCOTUS decision in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard; also v. University of North Carolina, et al. People are sending me links to shitty fourth-hand commentary, "look at this Epic Dunk about what a journalist said about what Biden said about what SCOTUS said about", so I figured I'd read through the decision first-hand, comment, and invite people to follow along.

Here is the SCOTUS decision. Get a drink, it's two hundred pages. But they're more like half-pages with the amount of margin and padding and whitespace.

My summary: the majority opinion flinched and gave Harvard only a slap on the wrist, the minority opinions were still very upset about getting their privilege dented.

The first eight pages of that PDF are someone else's summary (Syllabus). Then comes the full length stuff which I'll quote here. This is a long post, but still shorter than the court opinion. :)

Chief Justice Roberts, writing the majority opinion,

from page 9 spends the next several pages recapping the context of the lawsuit: university history, race as admissions factor, plaintiff's specific charges (violation of 14th Amendment and Civil Rights Act), lower court decisions, the history of the 14th Amendment, et cetera.

Roberts points to Brown.

Since Harvard and universities are admitting students on a racially discriminatory basis, this case should be a slam dunk if you ask me. The opinion could have been shorter. But I'm an internet commenter and Roberts is a Supreme Court Justice, so he has to be professionally Wall-Of-Text. :)

These decisions reflect the “core purpose” of the Equal Protection Clause: “do[ing] away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.” Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U. S. 429, 432 (1984) (footnote omitted).

He is insistent and repetitive about it.

Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. And the Equal Protection Clause, we have accordingly held, applies “without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality”—it is “universal in [its] application.” Yick Wo, 118 U. S., at 369.

It still does not convince the minority justices, so I'm left wondering who Roberts is trying to convince. The less than 1% of people who read the opinion in full, and the less than 1% of those who are just enough on the fence to be swayed by the fifth restatement of the same point? Maybe he just likes writing rants. I know I like writing rants sometimes.

Roberts then starts flinching.

For all his insistence on the unconstitutionality of racial discrimination, he starts carving out a (supposedly) very narrow exception where some racial discrimination can be allowed if it passes the strict scrutiny test. Translated from lawyer: 'if this is something that needs to be done, and also racial discrimination is necessary to do it'. You can stretch the loophole in that first clause wide enough to drive a truck through, because who determines what needs to be done? The lawyer term for this is a compelling interest, and it passes the buck to people saying "Such-and-such is a compelling interest".

Roberts gets into the legal history of Bakke, Grutter, and other cases about previous racial discrimination where the court tried to split the baby and allow a little discrimination but only in a good sort of way. Bakke was a muddled mess.

In a hypothetical utopian court reform, I would like to see some kind of "toss it back to the legislature" option where a court gives a one-off stopgap ruling on the case at hand, gives an order not to treat this ruling as precedent because of how much it's exploitable in both directions, and gives the legislature a nudge to rewrite the law with more clarity on this point. But that's not available here.

In the years that followed our “fractured decision in Bakke,” lower courts “struggled to discern whether Justice Powell’s” opinion constituted “binding precedent.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 325. We accordingly took up the matter again in 2003, in the case Grutter v. Bollinger, which concerned the admissions system used by the University of Michigan law school. Id., at 311. There, in another sharply divided decision, the Court for the first time “endorse[d] Justice Powell’s view that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions.” Id., at 325.

The muddled mess continues. Here's that compelling interest I mentioned, applied directly to diversity. This touches on another muddled mess: what is a university for? what is a Harvard for? Education is the obvious answer, but also credentialing (in a good sense of recognizing existing knowledge), credentialing (in a bad sense of buying permission slip), signaling, networking, and now "student body diversity", apparently. University is for diversity.

Which gets us into a philosophical sort of mess: the indeterminately recursive nature of law. The definition of a word is written in terms of other words. The 14th Amendment has an exception for strict scrutiny; the strict scrutiny requires a compelling interest; one of the compelling interests is diversity; so - what's a diversity? Well...

(if you were about to write an answer in reply, you have misunderstood.)

Twenty pages in and Roberts is flailing around, trying to draw up a solid rule which explains why this racial discrimination is allowed but that one isn't.

To manage these concerns, Grutter imposed one final limit on race-based admissions programs. At some point, the Court held, they must end. Id., at 342. This requirement was critical, and Grutter emphasized it repeatedly. “[A]ll race-conscious admissions programs [must] have a termination point”; they “must have reasonable durational limits”; they “must be limited in time”; they must have “sunset provisions”; they “must have a logical end point”; their “deviation from the norm of equal treatment” must be “a temporary matter.”

Bluntly, the majority opinion is haggling itself down to saying that the 14th A doesn't apply and racial discrimination is allowed if you promise to end it later. Jam tomorrow.

The importance of an end point was not just a matter of repetition. It was the reason the Court was willing to dispense temporarily with the Constitution’s unambiguous guarantee of equal protection. The Court recognized as much: “[e]nshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences,” the Court explained, “would offend this fundamental equal protection principle.”

Does a century-long justification for racial preferences not offend this fundamental equal protection principle? 🙄

The majority opinion, by my count, has made four exceptions so far to the rules about no racial discrimination: you can racially discriminate if it's to help compensate specific people, or if you have a really good reason, or if it's temporary, or if you're only doing a little of it. But sometimes it has to be at least two of these at once.

This is why I accuse Justice Roberts of flinching and wrist-slapping. He is a vainglorious coward. He likes the image of being a defender of law and constitution against racial discrimination. He had the opportunity to boldly write that the racial discrimination stops now, end of story. He chose instead to write that the racial discrimination must stop eventually and Harvard didn't say when they'll stop so Harvard loses this specific case on narrow procedural grounds.

Twenty years later, no end is in sight. “Harvard’s view about when [race-based admissions will end] doesn’t have a date on it.” Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, p. 85; Brief for Respondent in No. 20–1199, p. 52. Neither does UNC’s. 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 612. Yet both insist that the use of race in their admissions programs must continue.

Also, he protests that Harvard didn't do race science in coming up with its race groupings used in the race quotas for admissions.

Some of them are plainly overbroad: by grouping together all Asian students, for instance, respondents are apparently uninterested in whether South Asian or East Asian students are adequately represented, so long as there is enough of one to compensate for a lack of the other. Meanwhile other racial categories, such as “Hispanic,” are arbitrary or undefined.

This strikes me as stolen valor, I am confident Roberts would also be pissed if Harvard did do race science to come up with more precise categories and subgroups and tried to check admissions for this.

It goes back and forth like this for a while.

“One of the principal reasons race is treated as a forbidden classification is that it demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities.” Rice, 528 U. S., at 517. But when a university admits students “on the basis of race, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that [students] of a particular race, because of their race, think alike,” Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 911–912 (1995)

Roberts will brandish a principled rhetorical flourish, then carve out an exception. Instead of saying Harvard must cut this shit out now, he'll say that Harvard has overstepped and done too much too blatant racial discrimination. Implied: you can get away with a little.

On page 39 of the linked PDF, labeled 31 internally, we get some concrete numbers on how Harvard has been maintaining its racial quotas in admissions.

This is a quota system in action, for lengthy reasons. Once again, Roberts gets bombastic about it...

The problem with these approaches is well established. “[O]utright racial balancing” is “patently unconstitutional.” Fisher I, 570 U. S., at 311 (internal quotation marks omitted). That is so, we have repeatedly explained, because “[a]t the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class.” Miller, 515 U. S., at 911 (internal quotation marks omitted).

...and a little later, Roberts flinches.

At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. See, e.g., 4 App. in No. 21–707, at 1725–1726, 1741; Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 10.

Harvard is small enough that their quasi-quota on blacks can easily be replaced with a quasi-quota on people discussing how they were racially discriminated against (for being black) because Harvard & co can make up shit like "It Means Prejudice Plus Power" to define whites and yellows out of the running.

Thus ends the majority opinion on page 48.

I will pause here to offer a contrary viewpoint from a reactionary friend I discussed this with: Roberts isn't flinching, he's powerless, he writes this because it's the only thing he could write and preserve [the presentation of] the Supreme Court. If he tries to outright strike down AA, the universities ignore him and the media-industrial complex overrides him, and the Court is shown to be illegitimate because powerless. If he tries to outright uphold AA, his black privilege ruling is contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment which even commoners can read and have an interest in, and the Court is shown to be illegitimate because lying. Pretending to strike it down while letting it continue was a forced move.

Justice Thomas, concurring,

starts on page 49. (I'm going by PDF page number, because the printed number restarts from 1 in the concurrence.)

Blah blah Civil War blah blah Fourteenth Amendment blah blah yet another history recap, I'm pretty sure the sort of people who read Supreme Court concurrences don't need to be told this.

In the period closely following the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification, Congress passed several statutes designed to enforce its terms, eliminating government-based Black Codes—systems of government-imposed segregation—and criminalizing racially motivated violence. The marquee legislation was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, ch. 114, 18 Stat. 335–337, and the justifications offered by proponents of that measure are further evidence for the colorblind view of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Blah blah Slaughter-House cases blah blah Plessy, Thomas goes on like this at length. On page 65 he finally starts getting to a point.

Despite the extensive evidence favoring the colorblind view, as detailed above, it appears increasingly in vogue to embrace an “antisubordination” view of the Fourteenth Amendment: that the Amendment forbids only laws that hurt, but not help, blacks. Such a theory lacks any basis in the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Thomas is more principled than Roberts. Instead of trying to excuse just a little bit of discrimination for abstract causes like diversity, where the exception is likely to swallow the rule, he argues for a stricter standard of race-aware policy only if they're combating specific racial discrimination where the victims are identified by race.

Several additional federal laws cited by respondents appear to classify based on race, rather than previous condition of servitude. For example, an 1866 law adopted special rules and procedures for the payment of “colored” servicemen in the Union Army to agents who helped them secure bounties, pensions, and other payments that they were due. 14 Stat. 367–368. At the time, however, Congress believed that many “black servicemen were significantly overpaying for these agents’ services in part because [the servicemen] did not understand how the payment system operated.” Rappaport 110; see also S. Siegel, The Federal Government’s Power To Enact Color-Conscious Laws: An Originalist Inquiry, 92 Nw. U. L. Rev. 477, 561 (1998). Thus, while this legislation appears to have provided a discrete racebased benefit, its aim—to prohibit race-based exploitation—may not have been possible at the time without using a racial screen.

This rule is much harder to stretch to cover a Harvard quota system.

Several of the justices argue in both the main text and the footnotes.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR argues otherwise, pointing to “a number of race-conscious” federal laws passed around the time of the Fourteenth Amendment’s enactment. Post, at 6 (dissenting opinion). She identifies the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1865, already discussed above, as one such law, but she admits that the programs did not benefit blacks exclusively. She also does not dispute that legislation targeting the needs of newly freed blacks in 1865 could be understood as directly remedial.

Getting back to the main decision, here's Thomas with his concurrence, mostly with Roberts but stricter as mentioned.

Three aspects of today’s decision warrant comment: First, to satisfy strict scrutiny, universities must be able to establish an actual link between racial discrimination and educational benefits. Second, those engaged in racial discrimination do not deserve deference with respect to their reasons for discriminating. Third, attempts to remedy past governmental discrimination must be closely tailored to address that particular past governmental discrimination.

Bold mine. Harvard quotas are not this.

Thomas notes that there's the legal precedent of a compelling interest in student body diversity, and he is not impressed.

Even in Grutter, the Court failed to clearly define “the educational benefits of a diverse student body.” 539 U. S., at 333. Thus, in the years since Grutter, I have sought to understand exactly how racial diversity yields educational benefits. With nearly 50 years to develop their arguments, neither Harvard nor UNC—two of the foremost research institutions in the world—nor any of their amici can explain that critical link.

Since Harvard hasn't shown their work, they don't get the benefit of the doubt in their racial quotas. Saying "diversity" is not sufficient argument.

Two white students, one from rural Appalachia and one from a wealthy San Francisco suburb, may well have more diverse outlooks on this metric than two students from Manhattan’s Upper East Side attending its most elite schools, one of whom is white and other of whom is black. If Harvard cannot even explain the link between racial diversity and education, then surely its interest in racial diversity cannot be compelling enough to overcome the constitutional limits on race consciousness.

You've probably heard that before, but Harvard wasn't listening, so Thomas says it again. Then he goes on ten more pages of history recap with a side of Racial Discrimination Is Bad, Actually. There is more arguing in the notes.

more broadly, universities’ discriminatory policies burden millions of applicants who are not responsible for the racial discrimination that sullied our Nation’s past.

You get the idea. He goes on like this. His concurrence is long.

Justice Gorsuch, concurring,

starts on page 107.

For many students, an acceptance letter from Harvard or the University of North Carolina is a ticket to a brighter future. Tens of thousands of applicants compete for a small number of coveted spots. For some time, both universities have decided which applicants to admit or reject based in part on race. Today, the Court holds that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not tolerate this practice. I write to emphasize that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not either.

His concurrence is a bizarre sort of talking-down-to-idiots but scaled up for smart people.

The key phrases in Title VI at issue here are “subjected to discrimination” and “on the ground of.” Begin with the first. To “discriminate” against a person meant in 1964 what it means today: to “trea[t] that individual worse than others who are similarly situated.”

He is very much focused on what the law says, and explaining the meaning of what it says, and telling people not to invent a new meaning and retro-project that into the law. Use the meaning as it was written when it was written. This is sometimes called "originalism" by people who don't like it. I call those people "treacherous" and I don't like them.

Gorsuch notes the race sorting boxes used in applications.

The available choices are American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; Hispanic or Latino; or White. Applicants can write in further details if they choose.

Like Roberts, he complains that this is unscientific, but I'm quite sure he'd also be unhappy about scientific race sorting. Imagine the African-American group split into something like Berber, Copt, Pygmy, Sudanid, Congolid, Omotic, Bantu, Khoisan. (In rough order of north to south African origin.)

Where do these boxes come from? Bureaucrats. A federal interagency commission devised this scheme of classifications in the 1970s to facilitate data collection. [...] That commission acted “without any input from anthropologists, sociologists, ethnologists, or other experts.” [...] Recognizing the limitations of their work, federal regulators cautioned that their classifications “should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature, nor should they be viewed as determinants of eligibility for participation in any Federal program.” […] Despite that warning, others eventually used this classification system for that very purpose

Still, his extensive knowledgeable citations are good.

Gorsuch recaps a lot more, including admissions stuff that was already recapped. He argues with other justices. He recaps arguments made in the lower courts. It's all very long for a decision, though short if you think of it as trying to summarize the entire legal history that led here.

To be sure, the parties’ debates raise some hard-to-answer questions. Just how many admissions decisions turn on race? And what really motivates the universities’ raceconscious admissions policies and their refusal to modify other preferential practices? Fortunately, Title VI does not require an answer to any of these questions. It does not ask how much a recipient of federal funds discriminates. It does not scrutinize a recipient’s reasons or motives for discriminating. Instead, the law prohibits covered institutions from intentionally treating any individual worse even in part because of race.

Gorsuch argues the interesting point that the majority opinion here of strong and expansive anti-discrimination protections without loophole abuse is of the same sort as majority opinion that he wrote in Bostock, and the dissenters in this opinion concurred with that opinion and vice versa. He doesn't quite say "so if you think about it, I'm the only principled judge here" but that's the impression I get.

Justice Kavanaugh, concurring

from page 132 strikes me as deeply uninteresting.

I join the Court’s opinion in full. I add this concurring opinion to further explain why the Court’s decision today is consistent with and follows from the Court’s equal protection precedents, including the Court’s precedents on race-based affirmative action in higher education.

"the decision I concurred with is right, and here's why" has very little to add that wasn't in the main decision. At least it's relatively short (8 pages) by supreme court opinion standards.

Justice Sotomayor, dissenting

along with Kagan and Jackson, page 140, gets off to a bad start.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines a guarantee of racial equality.

Bzzzt! Wrong! No, it enshrines a guarantee of equal protection of the laws. She's trying to pull a fast one by shifting to "equality" in the abstract, a frequent sleight of hand by people wanting equal outcomes, or equal incomes, or equal representation, or equal Some Other Thing That Isn't Law.

The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society. Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.

"the vision of equality" is the first of many rhetorical flourishes. She'll later go on about "equality of opportunity", and "racial equality", and "ability to participate equally", and so on, in very general terms. But even the "equality of opportunity" is at odds with the case matter that some people are being given more opportunity, at the expense of others who are therefore getting less opportunity, because of their race. So she's also conflating "equality of opportunity" with something like (my term) population-proportionality of results.

And what is a "racial equality", anyway? The implication from usage seems to be something like blacks are entitled to a 10-15% share of Harvard degrees.

Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits. In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter. The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.

"endemically segregated" seems a gross exaggeration

"entrenching racial inequality", it's telling Harvard to back off on the racial discrimination in admissions

"the very foundation of our democratic government", cool rhetorical flourish, please get back to the case facts.

Then she does some lengthy historical recap, like several previous justices, about how education helped blacks rise up from slavery. Blah blah slavery, blah blah racism, blah blah Reconstruction, etc.

Simultaneously with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress enacted a number of race-conscious laws to fulfill the Amendment’s promise of equality, leaving no doubt that the Equal Protection Clause permits consideration of race to achieve its goal.

This is the part Thomas was disagreeing with above, cf. that section. Sotomayor says the Freedmen's Bureau was created by a racially targeted law for helping blacks, so racial discrimination does not violate the 14th. Thomas counters that the Freedmen's Bureau was helping ex-slaves and refugees from the South, who were overwhelmingly black, but neither defined by blackness in theory nor all black in practice. Then we get a digression on HBCUs, before it's back to Sotomayor's side of the long argument with Thomas.

TLDR: Thomas wants the government to help compensate people who were specifically discriminated against, so the government has to make Harvard stop discriminating. Sotomayor wants the government to help compensate groups that are worse off as a result of being collectively discriminated against, so the government should engage in (positive) discrimination. Repeat for twenty pages.

[...] indifference to race “is not an end in itself ” under that watershed decision. Id., at 440. The ultimate goal is racial equality of opportunity.

Sotomayor, summarized: "humans are equal, so if they had equality of opportunity, they'd be getting equal outcomes. they are not getting equal outcomes, therefore there isn't equal opportunity and we must put a thumb on the scales to fix this problem." Thomas, summarized: "humans are equal before the law, not equal in height. we should encourage indifference to race, because that's what equality of opportunity is. putting a thumb on the scales is discrimination, which is what we are supposed to stop."

Repeat ad nauseam.

Justice Jackson, dissenting

and joined by Kagan and Sotomayor from page 209 is relatively short at only 30 half-pages.

Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens. They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations. Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in which this great country falls short of actualizing one of its foundational principles—the “self-evident” truth that all of us are created equal.

I feel like I heard this already in Sotomayor's dissent. Start with some American principle like equal protection of the laws, or equal before the throne of Almighty God, drop the clause to talk about "equal" in some vague sense, sleight again to "equal wealth".

Imagine two college applicants from North Carolina, John and James. Both trace their family’s North Carolina roots to the year of UNC’s founding in 1789. Both love their State and want great things for its people. Both want to honor their family’s legacy by attending the State’s flagship educational institution. John, however, would be the seventh generation to graduate from UNC. He is White. James would be the first; he is Black. Does the race of these applicants properly play a role in UNC’s holistic merits-based admissions process? To answer that question, “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.”

We don't need a volume of logic. The answer is: No.

But Jackson, after having complained of her interlocutor's verbosity, then spends ten pages on the history of slavery, Reconstruction, Dred Scott, Plessy, sharecropping, the Homestead Act, FHA, rhetorically insisting she won't talk about [things she talks about with footnotes], Jim Crow, the wealth gap again, the degree gap, etc, before finally getting back to her fictional applicants,

Most likely, seven generations ago, when John’s family was building its knowledge base and wealth potential on the university’s campus, James’s family was enslaved and laboring in North Carolina’s fields. Six generations ago,

only to recap history yet again.

[itsallsotiresome.jpg]

UNC considers whatever information each applicant submits using a nonexhaustive list of 40 criteria grouped into eight categories: “academic performance, academic program, standardized testing, extracurricular activity, special talent, essay criteria, background, and personal criteria.”

Jackson tries to minimize the role of race at UNC's admissions, which is at odds with the alleged importance of weighing race.

SFFA’s complaint about the “indefinite” use of race-conscious admissions programs, then, is a non sequitur. These programs respond to deep-rooted, objectively measurable problems; their definite end will be when we succeed, together, in solving those problems.

But the objective measurable problems that Jackson has presented here are outcome gaps. again, the "equality" sleight of hand from equal opportunity. she goes on like this at length about "equality" switching between the Equal Protection Of The Laws clause and the "vision of equality" and the "true equality" frequently.

The only way out of this morass—for all of us—is to stare at racial disparity unblinkingly, and then do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together, collectively striving to achieve true equality for all Americans.

I Don't Think You Want To Go There.

[pdfden]

Unlock Limitless Productivity with the Best PDF Editor Online

In today’s lightning-fast digital world, time is currency—and you can’t afford to waste it wrestling with outdated, clunky software just to edit a simple PDF. Whether you’re a student, entrepreneur, or corporate powerhouse, your workflow deserves a turbocharged solution that gets the job done without the hassle. Enter PDF DEN, the ultimate PDF editor online designed to revolutionize how you manage documents.

If you're still downloading bulky desktop programs or fumbling with limited free tools, stop. You're missing out on the most powerful secret weapon of productivity-savvy professionals: a sleek, intuitive, and lightning-fast PDF editor online that works from anywhere, at any time, on any device. That’s the magic of PDF DEN—and it’s changing the game for everyone who touches a document.

Why Settle for Less? PDF DEN Redefines What a PDF Editor Online Should Be

Let’s be blunt—most so-called “online PDF editors” barely scratch the surface. They offer minimal features, slap you with watermarks, or worse, crash mid-edit. PDF DEN isn’t just another tool. It’s a full-fledged command center for your documents.

Here’s what you get when you choose PDF DEN:

Instant Editing: Make changes to text, images, and formatting directly within your browser—no downloads, no delays. Just pure, uninterrupted flow.

Secure File Handling: Military-grade encryption keeps your data safe. You control who sees your documents, and for how long.

All-in-One Toolkit: Merge, split, compress, convert, sign, annotate—PDF DEN does it all in a few clicks. No juggling multiple tools or wasting time on clunky processes.

Cloud-Based Freedom: Edit from your phone, tablet, laptop—anywhere there's an internet connection, your document hub is right there with you.

Why limit your productivity to office hours or your work desktop? The future is fluid. PDF DEN puts an entire document powerhouse in your pocket.

Beat the Clock: Time-Saving Features You Didn’t Know You Needed

Imagine turning a 30-minute PDF edit into a 3-minute task. That’s not an exaggeration. PDF DEN’s intuitive interface, lightning-fast load times, and smart automation features shave minutes—even hours—off your workday. From auto-fill forms to one-click digital signatures, you’re no longer wasting brainpower on routine tasks.

Need to merge five contracts into one file before a critical meeting in 10 minutes? Done. Got a last-second correction before hitting “send” on a proposal? Easy. Want to annotate a client’s feedback on a shared PDF in real-time? Absolutely.

When every second counts, PDF DEN delivers. Don’t just keep up—blow past your deadlines.

Trusted by Thousands—and Growing Fast

You’re not alone. PDF DEN is already the go-to PDF editor online for thousands of users across industries. From lawyers to marketers, educators to engineers, professionals of all stripes trust PDF DEN to handle their most important documents with speed and precision.

What’s driving this explosive growth? Simple: PDF DEN works. It’s smooth, reliable, and loaded with the tools real people actually need. No fluff. No bloat. Just results.

Your Competition Is Already Using PDF DEN—Are You?

Here’s the truth: in today’s hyper-competitive environment, whoever moves faster, wins. If your competitors are using PDF DEN to streamline their workflows, close deals faster, and impress clients with polished documents, where does that leave you?

PDF DEN doesn’t just help you keep up. It helps you leap ahead. With every document you edit faster, every contract you sign sooner, every form you convert with ease—you’re gaining an edge that compounds over time.

The best part? You don’t need to be a tech expert to use it. PDF DEN’s user-friendly design makes it accessible for everyone—from tech-savvy pros to digital beginners. It just works.

Limited-Time Opportunity: Take Control of Your Documents Now

Ready for the kicker? PDF DEN is currently offering exclusive access to its premium features for a limited time. That means you can experience the full power of the best PDF editor online without spending a dime—yet.

But opportunities like this don’t stick around forever. As demand grows, so will the gatekeeping. Get in while you still can and claim your spot among the forward-thinkers who’ve upgraded their document game.

Don’t Just Edit PDFs. Dominate Them.

PDF DEN is more than just a PDF editor online—it’s a digital arsenal for people who demand excellence. It’s about more than editing; it’s about working smarter, moving faster, and looking sharper. So ask yourself: are you still struggling with the same clumsy tools from a decade ago? Or are you ready to embrace the future with PDF DEN? Stop settling. Start dominating. Head to pdfden.com and experience the power of true PDF freedom. The clock is ticking. Don’t get left behind.

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Split PDF Online for Free: Fast and Private Solutions

Are you in need of a quick and secure way to split your PDF files? Look no further! With the help of online tools like PDFSplitOnline, you can effortlessly divide your documents into individual pages or separate files without any hassle. In this article, we will explore the benefits of splitting PDFs online, how to do it effectively, and why choosing a reliable platform like PDFSplitOnline is crucial for your privacy and convenience.

Why Split PDFs Online?

Splitting PDFs online offers a wide range of benefits compared to traditional methods. Here are some reasons why you should consider using an online tool for this task:

Convenience:

Gone are the days of downloading and installing bulky software on your computer just to split a PDF. With online tools, you can access them from any device with an internet connection, making the process quick and convenient.

Privacy:

When you split pdf online, you don't have to worry about your files being stored on your computer or shared with third parties. Platforms like PDFSplitOnline ensure your privacy by securely processing your documents and deleting them after the split.

Speed:

Time is of the essence, especially when you have urgent documents to split. Online tools offer fast and efficient solutions, allowing you to divide your split pdf online within seconds without any delays.

How to Split PDFs Online

Now that you understand the benefits of splitting PDFs online, let's walk through the simple process of using PDFSplitOnline:

Visit the PDFSplitOnline website at pdfsplitonline.com.

Click on the "Choose File" button to upload the PDF you want to split.

Select how you want to split the PDF - by pages, by bookmarks, or by size.

Click on the "Split PDF" button and wait for the splitting process to complete.

Download your split PDF files and save them to your desired location.

It's as easy as that! With just a few clicks, you can divide your PDFs seamlessly and efficiently using PDFSplitOnline.

Why Choose PDFSplitOnline

PDFSplitOnline stands out as a reliable and user-friendly platform for splitting PDFs. Here's why you should trust this online tool for all your splitting needs:

Free of Charge:

One of the biggest advantages of PDFSplitOnline is that it offers its services for free. You can split your PDFs without any hidden costs or subscriptions, saving you money in the process.

No Registration Required:

Unlike other online tools that may ask for your personal information, PDFSplitOnline does not require you to create an account or register. Simply upload your PDF and split it hassle-free.

Secure and Private:

Your privacy is a top priority at PDFSplitOnline. All uploaded PDFs are securely processed and deleted after the split, ensuring that your information remains confidential and protected.

Conclusion

In conclusion, splitting PDFs online is a fast, convenient, and secure solution for dividing your documents with ease. Platforms like PDFSplitOnline offer a reliable and free-of-charge service that prioritizes your privacy and efficiency. Next time you need to split a PDF, remember to turn to online tools for a seamless experience. Give PDFSplitOnline a try today and streamline your PDF splitting process effortlessly.

[rajuerra-blog]

Revolutionizing Digital Document Management: With an Online PDF Store.

Welcome to onlinepdfstore.com Document management is now one of the primary activities maligned by time in today’s dynamic world of technological innovations. Whether they are learners in school or employees in different organizations, they require a clean and efficient instrument to work with PDF files. Meet OnlinePDFStore.com; we have created a unique website that will help you to work with digital documents much easier. Whether you need to combine multiple files into a single PDF document, convert the format of your files, compress the size, or encrypt data, OnlinePDFStore.com is your source for everything you need for PDF files. What is OnlinePDFStore.com? OnlinePDFStore.com is aimed at presenting an effective difference in an easy-to-use, efficient, and flexible approach to the PDF files. This website is easily navigable and provides loads of options for both personal as well as commercial users. Using the principles of the use of both simplicity and state-of-the-art technology, the client of the OnlinePDFStore.com does not need to have specialized knowledge or expensive applications for all the PDF work. The Features of OnlinePDFStore.com The stand of OnlinePDFStore.com lies in the extent of the offered services. Here’s a look at some of the standout features:

Visit: onlinePDFStore.com

PDF Conversion: Save and convert Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and images to and from PDF formats.

Preserve all formatting, and do not alter the structure and quality of your documents beyond your sources.

Merge and Split PDFs:

Merge one file to another conveniently to make a single PDF.

Create new files from the overall document, which will help to divide a huge file into a small one, but it will contain all the data of the initial file.

Compress PDF Files:

Shrink your PDF size without the loss of quality so that files can be easily shared and stored.

Secure PDFs:

Users should put passwords on their documents to increase security measures in regards to their documents holding sensitive information.

Passwords from PDFs should be stripped off the moment security is no longer necessary.

Edit PDFs:

Insert text, annotations, and images to your PDF documents comfortably.

Switch between different pages or remove the material that is no longer relevant.

JPEG and PNG Conversion:

Read PDF files and save them in high-quality JPEG or PNG format.

Convert pictures to PDFs with high image quality and resolution.

Why Should You Buy PDF Assignments from OnlinePDFStore.com?

In a market flooded with PDF tools, OnlinePDFStore.com sets itself apart by offering:

Accessibility:

One great feature of the platform is the fact that it is web-based and does not require the user to download or install anything. It is fully portable and can be accessed at any time at any location with an internet connection.

User-Friendly Interface:

Ensuring that the concept of use of the tools is simple and convenient from careful arrangements, the application can easily be worked on by first-time users.

Affordability:

Get advanced functionalities that come at cheap charges relative to the classic PDF software. Some of the tools are open source, but most of them come with additional features if you are willing to pay for them.

Security and Privacy:

It is of utmost importance to OnlinePDFStore.com that user data is kept safe and secure. Documents uploaded are secured, then deleted after the file is processed to avoid cases of data leakage.

Speed and Efficiency:

By using such strong servers, functions like file conversion, compression, or editing occur in a matter of seconds and, in the process, help one save a lot of time.

Which People Will Benefit from the Site Located at OnlinePDFStore.com?

OnlinePDFStore.com is a versatile platform suitable for a wide range of users:

Students and educators:

Print lecture notes as PDFs, reduce the size of the files to share, and organize several resources into one.

Business Professionals:

Protect documents, agreements, and corporate belongings; sign documents; and record signatures and other critical values expeditiously.

Freelancers and Creatives:

Organize portfolios, invoices, and project documents with ease, as well as establish a polished look at every client touch point.

Personal Users:

File electronic papers such as books, receipts, or copies of records to suit the convenience and protection needed.

The Future of OnlinePDFStore.com

As an online platform, OnlinePDFStore.com not only offers the technologies of document retrieval but is a vision for the future’s document management. The team behind the platform works to ensure it is always being updated and more services are being added. Plans are already underway to introduce:

Cloud Integration:

Integration with more often used cloud storages such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive is also smooth. (Currently not available)

AI-Powered Features:

First, the technology that allows the automation of routine processes, identification of mistakes, and improvement of documents’ quality. (Currently not available)

Mobile App:

The powerful tool to get to all the features of the platform on your finger tips with a mobile application well calibrated for productivity from your smart phone. (Currently not available-coming shortly)

How to Get Started

Using OnlinePDFStore.com is as simple as 1–2-3:

Visit: onlinePDFStore.com

Select the tool that is required from the simple menu.

Submit your file, view changes, and download your file.

The majority of functionality can be accessed without registration, which makes it really easy.

Final Thoughts

As established through its platform, OnlinePDFStore.com, it is revolutionizing the handling of writable PDFs. This makes it stand out in the world of PDF management tools as it comes with new features, is easy to use, and respects the user’s privacy. Whether it is a student who needs to sort notes or a businessman who wants to store contracts safely and on the end—this is what has to be done here—it is all sorted here.

No more spending days trying to work through complex software programs; get ready to organize your documents with ease. Thousands of amazing PDFs are just one click away; check out OnlinePDFStore.com today and look into the future!

[jamesblog7069]

PDF Merger

In the modern digital landscape, Portable Document Format (PDF) files have become the gold standard for document exchange. Their ability to preserve formatting across different devices, platforms, and operating systems has made them an essential tool for professionals, students, businesses, and casual users alike. However, managing multiple PDF files can quickly become cumbersome, especially when you need to combine several documents into one seamless file. This is where a PDF merger comes in handy.

Whether you’re working on a project that requires merging invoices, reports, presentations, or contracts, a PDF merger tool can save you time and streamline your workflow. This guide will explore everything you need to know about PDF merging, including its benefits, various methods of combining PDFs, tools available, and some tips for optimizing your use of this feature.

What is PDF Merging?

PDF merging refers to the process of combining multiple PDF documents into a single, unified file. Instead of dealing with multiple PDFs that are difficult to manage or share, merging them into one file can simplify the organization, improve file-sharing efficiency, and provide a more cohesive viewing experience. This is especially useful for professionals who frequently work with large volumes of documents.

Merging PDFs allows you to:

Combine related documents, such as reports, invoices, or contracts, into a single file.

Eliminate redundancy by organizing documents in a specific order.

Create one document for easy sharing or printing.

Maintain the formatting and layout of the original files, as the merger does not alter the content of the individual PDFs.

When Should You Merge PDF Files?

Here are some scenarios where merging PDFs can be incredibly beneficial:

Creating a Single Report: If you are compiling different sections of a report or presentation, merging PDF files can help you consolidate the entire document into one file. This is ideal for projects where you need to compile data, research, and notes from various sources.

Invoices and Receipts: For businesses, especially those dealing with multiple invoices or receipts, merging PDFs ensures all the documentation is in one easy-to-access file. This simplifies record-keeping and minimizes errors when sending financial documents to clients or auditors.

Client Contracts: Lawyers, consultants, or freelancers who manage contracts often work with multiple files. Merging these contracts into a single PDF ensures that clients receive all relevant documents at once, making it easier to review and sign agreements.

Education and Academic Research: Students and researchers may need to combine lecture notes, research papers, and other study materials into one PDF. Merging ensures that the content is easy to follow, and it helps reduce the number of files students need to manage.

Presentations and Proposals: Business presentations often involve different sections that may have been created as separate files. Merging them into one file allows the presentation to flow seamlessly from one section to the next.

How to Merge PDFs: Methods and Tools

1. Online PDF Merger Tools

The easiest and most convenient method of merging PDFs is to use online PDF merger tools. These platforms allow you to upload your PDF files, arrange them in the desired order, and download the merged PDF. Popular online PDF merging tools include:

Smallpdf: A user-friendly tool that offers drag-and-drop functionality for merging PDFs quickly. Smallpdf also offers additional features like file compression and PDF editing.

PDF Merge: A simple web-based tool that enables users to upload and merge multiple PDFs without registration.

ILovePDF: In addition to merging PDFs, ILovePDF offers other tools such as splitting, compressing, and converting PDF files.

The key advantage of using online tools is that they are accessible from any device with an internet connection. However, they may have limitations on file size and the number of files you can merge for free.

2. Offline Software Applications

For those who prefer not to rely on the internet, desktop software provides a more robust solution for merging PDFs. Many PDF editors offer merging features, including:

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC: Adobe Acrobat is one of the most popular and powerful tools for working with PDFs. It allows users to merge, split, and organize PDF files effortlessly. Adobe also provides options for editing, converting, and securing PDFs.

PDFsam (PDF Split and Merge): A free, open-source desktop application for merging and splitting PDF files. It’s simple to use and supports batch processing for merging multiple PDFs at once.

Foxit PDF Editor: Foxit is another popular alternative to Adobe Acrobat that offers a wide range of PDF editing tools, including merging, splitting, and organizing PDFs.

Offline software generally provides more security and flexibility, especially for large files or sensitive documents. However, they may come with a price tag for advanced features.

3. Command Line Tools and Scripting

For tech-savvy users or developers, command-line tools and scripts can provide a customizable way to merge PDF files. Software like pdftk and Ghostscript can be used to automate the merging process, especially when dealing with large volumes of files or when integrating PDF merging into a software development workflow.

4. Built-in Features of Operating Systems

Some operating systems also come with basic PDF merging functionality. For example, on macOS, Preview allows users to combine PDF files by simply dragging and dropping pages from different documents into one PDF file. While the functionality is limited compared to dedicated PDF merger tools, it’s a useful option for users who need a quick solution without installing additional software.

Best Practices for Merging PDFs

While merging PDFs is a straightforward task, there are several best practices to consider in order to ensure that your merged document is organized and professional:

Ensure Correct Order: Before merging PDFs, double-check the order of the files to ensure that they are combined in the right sequence. This is particularly important for multi-page reports or presentations where the flow of information matters.

Compress the Merged File: Merged PDF files can become large, especially if you’re combining high-resolution images or lengthy documents. Consider compressing the final PDF to reduce its file size without sacrificing quality. Many online PDF merger tools also provide an option to compress the output file.

Remove Unnecessary Pages: Before merging, review each document and remove any redundant or unnecessary pages. This will make the final PDF more concise and easier to navigate.

Label Files Clearly: When naming your merged PDF, choose a clear and descriptive name that will make it easy for you and others to identify. Avoid using generic file names like "MergedDocument1" — instead, use something like "QuarterlyReport_2024" or "Client_Contract_Signed".

Test the Merged File: After merging your PDFs, open the new file and review it to ensure that all content has been correctly merged, no pages are missing, and the formatting is intact.

Conclusion

Merging PDFs is an essential skill in today's digital world, whether for personal, academic, or business purposes. It helps improve document organization, reduces file clutter, and facilitates easier sharing and printing. By using the right tools, whether online or offline, you can efficiently combine multiple documents into a single cohesive PDF.

Remember to follow best practices such as reviewing file order, compressing large files, and testing the output to ensure that your final merged PDF is polished and ready for use. With a PDF merger tool at your disposal, you’ll have one less thing to worry about in your document management routine, allowing you to focus on more important tasks.

[priteshwemarketresearch]

5G IoT Market Demand, Key Growth, Opportunities, Development and Forecasts to 2024-2034

5G IoT market: Transforming Industries with Faster Connectivity and Smarter Solutions

The 5G IoT market is rapidly evolving, marking a pivotal shift in the way industries operate and individuals interact with technology. As the world moves toward smarter, more connected environments, the convergence of 5G technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) is set to unlock an array of new possibilities. By offering ultra-fast data speeds, low latency, and enhanced connectivity, 5G is poised to revolutionize the IoT landscape across sectors ranging from healthcare and manufacturing to smart cities and automotive.

Request For Sample Copy:

https://wemarketresearch.com/reports/request-free-sample-pdf/5g-iot-market/1596

What Is the 5G IoT market?

The 5G IoT market refers to the integration of 5G wireless technology with the Internet of Things (IoT), enabling a new generation of high-performance, ultra-reliable, and low-latency connected devices. While IoT networks already allow devices like sensors, wearables, and smart appliances to communicate, the capabilities of 5G will take this interconnectivity to unprecedented levels.

5G, the fifth generation of wireless technology, offers significantly faster speeds (up to 100 times faster than 4G), low latency (below 1 millisecond), and the ability to support a massive number of connected devices simultaneously. These advantages make 5G an ideal enabler for the Internet of Things, where millions of devices need to be connected efficiently and in real-time.

How 5G Is Changing the IoT Landscape

The integration of 5G technology with IoT systems is unlocking new opportunities in a wide range of industries. Here’s how 5G is enhancing the performance and potential of IoT devices:

1. Faster Data Transfer and Increased Speed

With 5G’s blazing-fast download and upload speeds, IoT devices can send and receive large volumes of data almost instantly. This is critical for industries that require real-time data analysis, such as autonomous vehicles, healthcare monitoring, and industrial automation.

For example, in autonomous driving, 5G networks enable vehicles to communicate with each other and with infrastructure (such as traffic lights) in real time, drastically improving safety and traffic management.

2. Low Latency for Real-Time Decision Making

The ultra-low latency of 5G networks (less than 1 millisecond) allows for near-instantaneous communication between devices. This is essential for applications where split-second decisions can make a difference, such as in remote surgeries or industrial robots operating on factory floors.

In healthcare, 5G allows for high-quality video streaming, remote monitoring of patients, and the use of wearable devices that send continuous data to medical professionals. This opens up the potential for telemedicine and more efficient, timely interventions.

3. Supporting a Massive Number of Devices

5G’s ability to handle an enormous number of simultaneous device connections is a game changer for the IoT market. While 4G networks could support around 50,000 devices per square kilometer, 5G can support up to 1 million devices in the same area. This is crucial for the smart city concept, where everything from streetlights to waste management systems is connected.

Smart cities and smart homes will benefit from this increased capacity by allowing a vast number of sensors and devices to operate simultaneously without slowing down the network. This enables smart grids, improved traffic management, and better waste disposal systems, among other innovations.

4. Improved Network Reliability and Coverage

5G networks provide superior reliability and extended coverage, ensuring that IoT devices stay connected, even in remote or rural locations. For agriculture, this means deploying sensors in fields to monitor soil moisture, weather conditions, and crop health. Similarly, 5G networks support the extensive use of IoT in transportation, logistics, and supply chain management, ensuring that critical assets are constantly tracked and managed.

Key Drivers of Growth in the 5G IoT market

The 5G IoT market is witnessing rapid expansion due to several factors:

1. Growing Adoption of Smart Devices

With the increasing adoption of smartphones, wearables, smart home products, and connected vehicles, the demand for reliable, high-speed connectivity is at an all-time high. The need for faster, more efficient communication between these devices drives the demand for 5G-enabled IoT systems.

2. Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation

The rise of Industry 4.0 is driving the adoption of IoT devices in manufacturing and industrial applications. With 5G, factories can deploy a wide range of connected devices, such as sensors, cameras, and robotic systems, that can communicate in real-time to optimize production lines, reduce downtime, and improve efficiency.

3. Increased Need for Automation and Remote Monitoring

The demand for automation across industries like healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation is driving the need for 5G-enabled IoT solutions. 5G’s ability to support high-density networks and ultra-low latency is crucial for enabling real-time remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, and automation of complex processes.

4. Smart Cities and Infrastructure Development

The development of smart cities is another key factor driving the growth of the 5G IoT market. IoT devices deployed in smart cities are designed to enhance urban living by improving public safety, reducing traffic congestion, conserving energy, and enabling efficient public services. With the speed, scalability, and reliability of 5G, cities can deploy smart systems that can handle large amounts of data and facilitate seamless communication between devices.

Key Challenges in the 5G IoT market

While the 5G IoT market holds immense potential, several challenges remain:

1. High Infrastructure Costs

The deployment of 5G networks requires significant investment in infrastructure, including new cell towers, fiber optics, and network equipment. This high upfront cost may limit the adoption of 5G in certain regions, particularly in developing countries.

2. Security Concerns

As more devices become connected to the internet, the potential for cyberattacks and data breaches increases. Ensuring robust cybersecurity for 5G-enabled IoT systems is critical, particularly in sectors like healthcare and autonomous vehicles where the stakes are high.

3. Interoperability

The IoT ecosystem consists of a wide range of devices, technologies, and protocols, which may not always be compatible with 5G networks. Achieving seamless interoperability between devices, networks, and platforms is a challenge that requires standardization and collaboration across the industry.

Future Outlook of the 5G IoT market

The future of the 5G IoT market is incredibly promising. As the deployment of 5G networks continues to expand globally, more industries will leverage the technology to drive innovation, improve efficiency, and enhance customer experiences. The development of advanced applications in healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, and smart cities will be particularly transformative.

Furthermore, with advancements in edge computing, which allows data processing closer to the source of data generation, the full potential of 5G IoT will be realized. This will enable even faster decision-making and further reduce latency.

Conclusion

The 5G IoT market is set to redefine industries by enabling faster, more reliable, and scalable connectivity for billions of devices. From smart cities and healthcare to manufacturing and automotive, the fusion of 5G and IoT will unlock a world of possibilities for businesses and consumers alike. While there are challenges to overcome, such as infrastructure costs and security concerns, the long-term impact of 5G-enabled IoT will be profound, driving digital transformation and creating new opportunities for innovation and growth. As 5G networks continue to expand and mature, the future of IoT looks brighter than ever.

[sajuseoblog]

Unlock the Power of Efficiency with Online PDF Tools

In today’s fast-paced digital world, efficiency and convenience are paramount. For many professionals and individuals alike, managing and manipulating PDF documents efficiently can significantly streamline workflows and enhance productivity. Enter the realm of online PDF tools — a suite of powerful, user-friendly solutions that cater to a multitude of PDF-related needs. Here’s why online PDF tools are essential for anyone who deals with documents regularly.

Why Choose Online PDF Tools?

1. Accessibility from Anywhere

One of the most compelling advantages of online PDF tools is their accessibility. Whether you’re in the office, at home, or on the go, these tools are available right at your fingertips. As long as you have an internet connection, you can access, edit, and manage your PDF files from any device — be it a computer, tablet, or smartphone. This flexibility ensures that you can stay productive and handle important documents regardless of your location.

2. No Software Installation Required

Unlike traditional PDF software that requires installation and often comes with hefty system requirements, online PDF tools operate directly in your web browser. This means you can avoid the hassle of downloading and installing software, saving valuable storage space and time. Additionally, many online PDF tools offer free versions with basic functionalities, making them an economical choice for occasional users.

3. Versatility and Functionality

Online PDF tools offer a wide range of functionalities that can cater to various needs:

Conversion: Easily convert PDFs to other formats like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, and vice versa. This is particularly useful for editing or repurposing content without losing formatting. -Editing: Modify text, images, and links within your PDFs. Add annotations, highlights, and comments to make collaborative work more effective. Compression: Reduce the file size of your PDFs to facilitate easier sharing and quicker uploads without compromising quality. -Merging and Splitting: Combine multiple PDF documents into a single file or split a large document into smaller, more manageable sections. Security: Protect your documents with password encryption and redaction to ensure sensitive information remains confidential.

4. User-Friendly Interfaces

Most online PDF tools are designed with user-friendliness in mind. With intuitive interfaces and simple navigation, even users with minimal technical expertise can perform complex tasks effortlessly. Many tools offer drag-and-drop functionality, making operations like uploading and rearranging files straightforward.

5. Collaboration Made Easy

Online PDF tools often include features that enhance collaboration. Shared links, comment sections, and collaborative editing options allow multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously. This is particularly beneficial for teams working remotely or individuals needing to review and finalize documents together.

How to Get Started with Online PDF Tools

Getting started with online PDF tools is incredibly simple. Here’s a quick guide:

1. Choose the Right Tool**: Depending on your needs, select an online PDF tool that offers the features you require. Popular options include Smallpdf, Adobe Acrobat Online, PDFescape, and ILovePDF. 2. Upload Your Document: Visit the tool’s website and upload your PDF file. Most tools support drag-and-drop functionality, making it easy to get started.

3. Perform Your Tasks: Use the available features to convert, edit, compress, or manage your PDF as needed.

4. **Download or Share**: Once you’re done, download the updated PDF to your device or share it directly via a link if the tool supports sharing options.

Conclusion

Online PDF tools have revolutionized how we handle PDF documents, offering unprecedented convenience and functionality. By embracing these tools, you can optimize your document management processes, enhance productivity, and focus on what truly matters. Whether you need to convert, edit, or secure your PDFs, the right online PDF tool can make all the difference. Explore the vast array of options available and discover how these tools can transform the way you work with PDF files.

[impdf]

imPDF Free Online PDF Tools That Work Directly in Your Browser

imPDF Free Online PDF Tools That Work Directly in Your Browser.

Managing PDF documents can often be a cumbersome task, especially when you need to convert, edit, or secure them. Traditional tools may require complex software installations, but with imPDF Free Online PDF Tools, you can perform all your PDF tasks directly in your browser—no downloads, installations, or special configurations required. Whether you need to convert, edit, merge, or secure PDF files, imPDF offers a versatile suite of tools to meet your needs, all easily accessible online.

https://impdf.com/

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Create & Convert PDFs imPDF allows you to create PDFs from scratch or convert various file types such as images, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations into PDF format. It also offers the reverse functionality, letting you convert PDFs into editable Word documents or image formats.

Free Online PDF Editing You can edit PDF files online for free and export up to three documents per month without needing to sign up. For users with more extensive needs, imPDF offers flexible payment options, including monthly or annual subscriptions, providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional PDF software.

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Use the tools in the PDF editor to modify your document—whether it’s adding text, inserting images, drawing, or applying annotations.

Save your edited document as a PDF file.

Easy to Use, No Installation Required One of the greatest advantages of imPDF is its ease of use. There’s no need to install software or worry about system compatibility. The entire application runs on imPDF’s secure cloud servers, meaning your system remains unaffected. This also ensures that imPDF works on any operating system or browser, providing unparalleled flexibility.

Security and Privacy Security is a priority for imPDF. Your files are not stored on the server any longer than necessary. Once your editing session is complete, and your files are processed, they are promptly removed from the system, ensuring your data remains private and secure.

Conclusion imPDF Free Online PDF Tools offer a powerful and user-friendly solution for all your PDF needs. Whether you’re converting, editing, or securing PDF files, imPDF provides the tools to do it all directly in your browser, without the hassle of software downloads or installations. With imPDF, you can save time, streamline your workflow, and handle your PDFs with ease—anytime, anywhere. Start using imPDF today to discover just how easy PDF management can be!

[eyestech29]

Free PDF Editor: An Essential Tool for Modern Document Management

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One of the primary advantages of using a free PDF editor is its ability to perform a variety of tasks without any financial burden. Users can add or delete text, merge multiple PDF files, split a single PDF into several documents, and even annotate with comments or highlights. This flexibility ensures that users can tailor their PDFs to meet specific requirements, enhancing productivity and streamlining workflows.

Another significant benefit is the ease of use that many free PDF editors offer. Most of these tools have user-friendly interfaces designed to simplify the editing process. Even individuals with limited technical expertise can navigate these programs with ease, making it possible for anyone to edit PDFs effectively. This accessibility democratizes document management, allowing more people to take control of their digital files.

Moreover, free PDF editors often come with cloud integration features, enabling users to save and share their edited documents seamlessly. This functionality is especially useful for remote teams and individuals who need to collaborate on projects. By storing files in the cloud, users can access their documents from any device with an internet connection, ensuring that important files are always within reach.

Security is another critical aspect where free PDF editors excel. Many reputable free PDF editors include features that allow users to encrypt their documents, set passwords, and restrict access to sensitive information. This added layer of security is essential for protecting confidential data, whether for personal use or business purposes.

Despite the numerous benefits, it is important to choose a free PDF editor from a reliable source. Some free tools may come with hidden costs, such as intrusive ads or limited functionality that prompts users to upgrade to a paid version. Therefore, it is advisable to read reviews and conduct thorough research before selecting a free PDF editor to ensure it meets your needs without compromising on quality.

In conclusion, a free PDF editor is an indispensable tool for modern document management. It offers a range of features that cater to essential editing needs, all while being cost-effective and user-friendly. With the added benefits of cloud integration and robust security measures, free PDF editors empower users to manage their documents efficiently and securely. Whether for academic, professional, or personal use, a reliable free PDF editor can greatly enhance your productivity and streamline your workflow.

[route10archives]

By making material attractive, you risk diluting it. By donating it, you risk people thinking it's "forced" or "prescribed." By dissecting it you risk making it seem fragmented. Knowledge of anything (in this case, ideology) is incapable of defending itself from those unwilling\unable to understand it. That's not it's fault; that's not it's purpose.

In the melee between people defending different ideologies (opposing or simply adjacent), the frontliners mistake trolls for opponents, the commanders mistake philosophy for battle plans, and the entrenched mistake confused refugees for zealots. There is no opportunity to be a bystander or a civilian because there is always a risk of any random action being misinterpreted as an assault.

People who aren't even somewhat acquainted with these schools of thought are subsumed into one side or another based on who accuses them first. They're probably living in a community of generally like-minded people and mistake agreement on one axis for agreement on all of them. The main force for recruitment is the creation of the strawman named "the other side" and the question of "are you like that?"

"did you skip church because you hate jesus christ?"

"naw, man, I was horribly ill."

"oh. I'm glad you still support our conservative values."

"did you hold that door only for that woman to enforce gender roles?"

"that's my coworker. We work the same shifts."

"oh. I thought you were being part of the System."

Even now, I'm making my own damn strawmen just to illustrate my point, drawing from my cursory knowledge of the liberal\conservative split.

It's not a hot take to say "we're too focused on opposing the 'other' to understand what makes us similar" but unfortunately I am not eloquent enough to erase the nuance. My own experience is what's shaping this observation, not any research, authority, or anecdotes. I define myself as a liberal not because I know what a liberal is, but because I am directly opposed to those who hate them. "At least I'm not a conservative" is shorthand for "at least I'm not homophobic, transphobic, uneducated, religious, patriarchical, and trigger-happy." Even just the fact that I thought about adding "fascist" or "supremacist" to that list should show how blatantly uneducated I am on what a republican even is.

I don't know where I stand on every issue, not out of indecisiveness but out of lack of exposure. I just don't know all the issues. All I know is the pseudo-propaganda that's spread via the conflict-centric "news" systems. It's all too easy to see that The Libs are fighting with The Old White Fucks over whether HRT should be legal and automatically align myself. I'm sure there are some progressive republicans out there simply because I've seen my fair share of reactionary liberals (though that may just be seattle). Those seem like oxymorons to me and I don't know which half is due to circumstance and which is due to "morals" (or a lack thereof).

Yes I want to educate myself. I hope I read those pdfs. It does not seem interesting to me but it is without a doubt necessary for me to understand if I am to be trusted in a politically-leaning discussion. I can yell "protect trans kids" all I like, but until I'm able to explain to a dissenter why I think that, I better keep my mouth shut and my fist raised.

I want to educate myself, but it is all too easy to embrace my ignorance and postpone it. I "don't have time" and "have more important things to do right now" and "should sleep soon" and all that. I'm "not in a mentally okay state" and "really stressed right now" and "starting a new medication" n stuff. The excuses do not end. This is not a situation unique to me. I'm just another fuck on the internet saying "I'm not gonna get into all that political stuff just yet" despite most of these theories and practices and historical instances being about everyday things and the access people have to them. Food is not political. Food stamps are. Transport is not political. Vehicle-focused infrastructure is. Eating pussy is not political. Sex work is.

Yeah I understand that people don't exactly "make things political," politics hijacks normal life and forces people to fight proxy wars for arbitrary power. Congratulations, Lavender, you've achieved the bare minimum self-awareness to talk about it. I'm not clever. It's just what happens when you oppose the opposition and have to form an identity out of fucken negation.

This is not my realm of expertise. I don't intend to be listened to. The only reason I've even logged in to this account is because I'm kinda fucking freaking out about other shit right now and I don't trust myself to be alone.

Someone just blokt me for sending them links to free PDFs of anarchist and Marxist theory when they said the only requirement to be a leftist is "not being a jerk." Lol. Lmao, even.

[generalmarketresearch-blog]

Optical Ground Wire Market to Get Explosive Growth

Latest Global Optical Ground Wire Market study with 100+ market data Tables, Pie charts & Figures is now released by HTF MI. The research assessment of the Market is designed to analyze futuristic trends, growth factors, industry opinions, and industry-validated market facts to forecast till 2030. A significant region that is speeding up marketization is used to split the market study. Some of the leading players covered such as Fujikura, ZTT, Tongguang Cable, Shenzhen SDG, Furukawa, LS Cable, Taihan, Sichuan Huiyuan, Elsewedy Cables, Tratos, J-Power Systems.

Download Sample Report PDF (Including Full TOC, Table & Figures) 👉 https://www.htfmarketintelligence.com/sample-report/global-optical-ground-wire-market

According to HTF Market Intelligence, the Global Optical Ground Wire market to witness a CAGR of 4.09% during forecast period of 2024-2030. The market is segmented by Application (Central Tube Structure, Layer Stranding Structure) by Type (CMOS Image Sensors, EM-CCD Image Sensors, CCD Image Sensors) by Distribution channel (OEMs, Aftermarket) and by Geography (North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, MEA). The Optical Ground Wire market size is estimated to increase by USD 175.09Million at a CAGR of 4.09% from 2024 to 2030. The report includes historic market data from 2021 to 2024E. Currently, market value is pegged at USD 644.5Million

Definition:

OPGW (Optical Ground Wire) is primarily used by the electric utility industry, placed in the secure topmost position of the transmission line where it “shields” the all-important conductors from lightning though providing a telecommunications path for internal as well as third party communications. It is designed to swap the traditional shield or earth wires on overhead transmission lines with optical fibers which can be used for telecommunications purposes. It is capable of bearing the mechanical pressures that are applied to overhead cables by environmental factors such as wind and ice and it also handle electrical faults on the transmission line by providing a track to ground without damaging the sensitive optical fibers inside the cable. The OPGW cable are placed at the ends of high-voltage towers, it safeguards the high-voltage conductors from lightning strikes and its conductive part serves to bond adjacent towers to earth ground. Market Trends:

Increasing Adoption of OPGW Cables by Electric Utility Companies

Development of Smart Energy Management Systems

Market Drivers:

High Demands for Efficient Electricity and High-Speed Internets

Growing the Transmission and Distribution Channel

Market Opportunities:

Increasing R&D Investments for Strengthening Infrastructures

Optical Ground Wire Market Competitive Analysis:Know your current market situation! Not just new products but ongoing products are also essential to analyze due to ever-changing market dynamics. The study allows marketers to understand consumer trends and segment analysis where they can face a rapid market share drop. Figure out who really the competition is in the marketplace, get to know market share analysis, market position, % Market Share, and segmented revenue. Have a question? Market an enquiry before purchase @ https://www.htfmarketintelligence.com/enquiry-before-buy/global-optical-ground-wire-market

Players Included in Research Coverage: Fujikura, ZTT, Tongguang Cable, Shenzhen SDG, Furukawa, LS Cable, Taihan, Sichuan Huiyuan, Elsewedy Cables, Tratos, J-Power Systems

Additionally, Past Optical Ground Wire Market data breakdown, Market Entropy to understand development activity and Patent Analysis*, Competitors Swot Analysis, Product Specifications, and Peer Group Analysis including financial metrics are covered. Segmentation and Targeting: Essential demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral information about business segments in the Optical Ground Wire market is targeted to aid in determining the features the company should encompass in order to fit into the business's requirements. For the Consumer-based market - the study is also classified with Market Maker information in order to understand better who the clients are, their buying behavior, and patterns. Optical Ground WireProduct Types In-Depth: CMOS Image Sensors, EM-CCD Image Sensors, CCD Image Sensors Optical Ground Wire Major Applications/End users: Central Tube Structure, Layer Stranding Structure Optical Ground Wire Major Geographical First Level Segmentation:

• APAC (Japan, China, South Korea, Australia, India, and the Rest of APAC; the Rest of APAC is further segmented into Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, New Zealand, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka)

• Europe (Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Rest of Europe; Rest of Europe is further segmented into Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania)

• North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico)

• South America (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Rest of South America)

• MEA (Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Africa) Buy Now Latest Edition of Optical Ground Wire Market Report 👉 https://www.htfmarketintelligence.com/buy-now?format=3&report=1993

[docstools]

Unlocking The Power Of Online PDF, Image, And Study Tools

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PDFs have become the standard format for sharing and storing documents. Free Online PDF Tools allow users to effortlessly manipulate PDF files without the need for specialized software. With tools like merging multiple PDFs into a single document, converting PDFs to various formats, compressing large files, and splitting lengthy documents into smaller sections, this platform empowers users to tailor their PDFs to their needs. Whether you're a student preparing assignments or a professional managing contract, these tools save time and effort.

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Visual content has gained immense prominence, whether for social media, presentations, or personal projects. Free Image Tools available online enable users to edit, resize, and enhance images without the complexities of traditional software. From removing backgrounds to adding filters, these tools provide a user-friendly approach to image manipulation. They prove invaluable for individuals and businesses alike, allowing them to create visually captivating content without the need for extensive graphic design skills.

Optimizing Study Resources:

Online Study Tools have transformed the way students learn and educators teach. With digital note-taking, flashcards, and interactive quizzes, studying has become more engaging and effective. These tools empower students to organize their notes efficiently, test their knowledge, and collaborate with peers seamlessly. Docs-Tools.com offers a wide array of features, enabling users to create, share, and enhance study materials, ultimately boosting academic success.

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In conclusion, the digital landscape offers a myriad of opportunities to streamline tasks and elevate productivity. Free Online PDF Tools, Online Study Tools, and Free Image Tools epitomize the modern approach to efficiency. Platforms like Docs-Tools.com encapsulate these tools, offering users an integrated and accessible way to harness their power. By embracing these online solutions, individuals and businesses alike can unlock new levels of convenience, creativity, and effectiveness in their daily endeavors.

[elitegymnastics]

Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. 

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz. 

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant. 

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did. 

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen. 

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

[group1blogsite]

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHICS AND LAYOUT

1. Balance

Ø The visual weight of objects, texture, colors and space is evenly distributed on the screen.

Ø Balance is crucial to the success of a design.

Ø The visual weight of objects, texture, colors, and space is evenly distributed on the screen.

a. Symmetrical Balance - Is the order of elements so that they are evenly allocated to the left and to the right, or top and bottom of center.

b. Asymmetrical Balance- Is the order of different objects of the same weight on each side of the page. Color, shape, size, texture and value can be used as balancing elements.

2. Emphasis

Ø An area in the design that may appear different in size, texture, shape or color to attract the viewer's attention.

Ø It shows that you ensemble related objects together, move them physically close to each other so the related items are seen as a united group rather than a group of unrelated things.

3. Proportion

Ø Visual elements create a sense of unity where they relate well with one another.

Ø People without experience usually tend to put text and graphics on the part of the page wherever there happens to be space, without giving concern to any other items on the page.

4. Pattern / Repetition / Rhythm

Ø These are the repeating visual element on an image or layout to create unity in the layout or image. Rhythm is achieved when visual elements create a sense of organized movement.

Ø Repetition aids organize the information and also it guides readers and helps to make parts of the design become more united.

Ø Repetitive elements create a more sophisticated continuity and can make it more complete.

5. Variety

Ø This uses several design elements to draw viewer's attention

Ø The most effective way to add aesthetic interest to a page is through contrast.

Ø It is an important factor and principle to the organization of information; a reader must be able to glance at a document and instantly understand what's happening.

6. Movement

Ø Visual elements guide the viewer's eyes around the screen.

Ø Movement is the art of nothing, and also the absence of text and graphics. Basically it splits in the elements on the page and provides visual breathing room for the viewer’s eye.

ONLINE FILE FORMATS FOR IMAGES AND TEXT

.JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) - this format is the most commonly used by digital cameras and other capture devices and also the most common format when saving pictures on the internet.

.GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) - is an image compression type that allows you to display simple animation. (Displays 256 colors) graphics and pictures in HTML pages on the web.

.PNG (Portable Network Graphics) - this format is a bit of a combination of the two earlier formats, it was originated from GIF for the lossless compression attribute and for the display of pictures on the Internet.

Also displays picture with a transparent background

.PDF (Portable Document Format) - Developed by Adobe, this file format has all the features of a printed document as an electronic image, print, navigate or even forward to other people.

.DOC (Document File) - a format created by Microsoft and used in MS Word.

INFOGRAPHICS

Ø It is a visual image to symbolize information or data such as chart or diagram

Ø It presents a clear message quickly and clearly.

Ø Grabs your attention and deliver an important message or teach you important information.

PIKTOCHART

Ø Makes complex data visually appealing to the average user

CANVA APP

PRINCIPLES OF VISUAL MESSAGE DESIGN USING INFOGRAPHICS

1. Be Unique - make it engaging and memorable with a unique twist on something that everyone can relate to

2. Make it Simple - don’t throw in so much detail and extraneous information that the audience is overwhelmed by everything going on in your infographic.

3. Be Creative and Bold - it’s important to make sure that your main message is bold and obvious.

4. Less is more - Keeping your text minimal will most likely produce more impact than a page full of words.

5. The Importance of Getting it Across - The most important thing you want from an effective infographic is a simple way for people to share it with their friends.