#this is just a customer service job rebranded i think

[arcaneyouth]

being a moderator is an. enlightening experience

[md3artjournal]

This past week i realized that all my mom's kids have art degrees. Yet, I'm the one thought of as the art major.

My brother once told me my mom got upset, because the relatives they were giving money towards their education, said they wanted to study art. He made it sound like my choice of the studio arts major put a bad taste in her mouth, so she just might stop sending them money if they chose art too.

But if my mom is upset at my financial unsuccess compared to my siblings, it's not because I was an art major. Heck, my sister was a theater major---backstage craft degree. My brother ended up doing nothing with his math degree, spent extra money to attend culinary school, and now he's a cook. ALL HER KIDS HAVE ART DEGREES.

The only difference with me is i had depression. My art degree didn't make me a failure. I'm just too wrought with mental illness to do anything successful. And yes, I've gotten a better, but I'm still too anxious to do anything. I've been too scared to even get any official diagnosis. But i know i think about suicide less, I've certainly had less suicide attempts, and i haven't self harmed in a long time. So do i really need to go get a diagnosis evaluation, that i likely can't afford? I'm making tiny steps of progress on my own.

I really hope i can open an online shop before the year ends. But the idea of any type of money transactions online, makes me so anxious. I cant even buy things online without hyperventilating or shaking. Though i think while recently buying my scanner, i had it down to just really repetitive self talk...though that was after weeks of procrastination and avoidance. That's why i think a "print on demand" service might work best for me. I'm still struggling to order stickers and open an Etsy shop. But if i sign up for Redbubble, they'll handle any scary customers and all the shipping. The big problem being that I'm better at crafting 3d objects than illustration. That's why I've been working to hone my drawing, by at least trying monthly drawing challenges daily. The other problem being that most of my illustrations are fanart, while Redbubble warns i only post original art. But i recently discovered that my witch original characters look nice, so i just have to keep up with this month's Witchtember challenge. And last January's flower sketching challenge gave me 31 good original drawings too. I just have to finally decide on some rebranding...and get some executive function for all the steps in between, towards finally opening a shop!😭😵‍💫

Then there's always the motivation, or rather, pressures of: having already reported a prediction that I'd make a profit this year; plus knowing if i end up needing to return to a non art job, I'll probably end up self destructive and inexplicably thinking about wishing for death again---just like what happened in my last non art job. 😵

[coeurdastronaute]

Either/Or: WWC

“Jess?” 

“Yes, Ms. Luthor?” 

Squinting behind her glasses, the CEO peered at her schedule on her computer screen and furrowed as she read, but failed to comprehend the words under the seven o’clock time slot that seemed to take up majority of her evening. There should have been nothing there. She carefully kept track of every second, trusted her secretary to do the same, and suddenly, she had to be somewhere on a night when she could have been home. 

Leaning back in her chair, Lena Luthor scrolled and clicked on the offending task highlighted in a deep forest green. National City FC. 

National City Fire Council?

National City Financial Committee?

National City Freedom Conference?

“What the hell is National City FC, and why is it taking up 3 hours of my evening?” 

“The team you had us buy a few months ago. It’s their home opener.” the secretary explained, filing a few things in the drawer in the closet in Lena’s office. 

She didn’t bat an eye at such questions. It was her job to know those things, to take care of things, like when her boss came in with a circled article from her ride into the office, and told Jess to fix it. This somehow included a struggling council measure to bring another sports team to the city and help the underfunded women’s program develop. 

There were no follow up questions to how it got done, as Lena was immediately onto the next thing, but for Jess, there were hours spent meeting with officials and the in-house entertainment division to see how accumulating a women’s soccer team would diversify their holdings. This meant weeks pouring over spreadsheets and crunching numbers until the small team that was created for just this singular task, that again, came from a circled three inches of newspaper print, developed a plan to make it a success. 

“What did I do?” Lena asked, looking up from her computer as her assistant continued her work of pulling and rearranging to prepare for end of month reports. 

“You gave me an article about how the city wanted a team but couldn’t drum up the money to commit, and they were going to lose the bid for an expansion team.” 

“That sounds somewhat familiar.”

“You said that expansion and bringing professionals into the city was how we continued to grow.” 

“I’m sure I did.” 

Quickly, Lena googled the team and found a few headlines praising the companies initiative to help grown equality within the sport, to bring jobs and joy to the community, to expand programs for children and sports, to bring a championship to the city. It was all news to her but still made her smile. 

“I put together a team who did everything from polling to scouting locations to permits and projections,” Jess explained as Lena scrolled. “You helped pick out the colors and design the logo.” 

“I did?” 

“No,” she chuckled. “I did all of that. It’s been my pet project. I played in college, you know.” 

The webpage was green, deep and royal. A white logo with the crest of the city and an outline of a roaring bear over it sat in the corner. The banner had the team picture with rows of tough and smiling girls looking back. A schedule followed and links to tickets. It was an actual thing. 

“You did all of this?” 

“I delegated,” Jess explained, handing over a folder. “Take a look at this so you have your talking points.”

“This got past the board?” 

“A bit of community outreach, your name on the field, the logo on the jerseys, community services, tax breaks, and city-wide gratitude. It went a long way, and was a sound investment, set to see returns as early as six years.” 

“Are you sure you don’t want that promotion?” 

“I’ll just take another raise,” the secretary smiled as her boss looked over the papers in the folder. 

“This still doesn’t explain why it’s on my schedule though,” Lena decided, closing it and laying it back on her desk. 

“It’s the inaugural game. You have to go show your support.” 

“I don’t like sports,” she reminded her. “That’s why I created an entire division of this company to manage such things.” 

“You wanted more photo ops, and I’m creating that moment for you.” 

Jess was right, which was something Lena still wasn’t particularly fond of admitting. Ever since her brother’s implosion and her ascendence to help the company two years ago, it felt as if her full-time job wasn’t being a CEO but rather a figure head looking to make people believe that she was just as strong, just as capable, just as, if not moreso, credible as the leader of a multi-billion dollar organization. 

Lena looked back at the file on her desk and sighed, invariably giving in. 

“Fine, but I’m not going to wear a jer--”

Smiling, Jess held up her personal jersey with DANVERS printed in big white letters over the number eleven. She wiggled her eyebrows and tried to hide her amusement. 

“It’s to support the team.” 

“That’s not even my name.” 

“You don’t play for them, just own the team. You don’t get your own name on it.” 

“I couldn’t get a custom one? I don’t even know who that is.” 

“This is your star player, Kara Danvers. Got her in the expansion draft. She’s amazing. Led the league in scoring the past three years, only been in it for four.” 

“This is soccer, right?” 

With a heavy sigh, Jess tossed the jersey across the desk. 

“Keep reading. I’ll have the car here at six.” 

Lena smiled to herself as she held up the jersey, happy to have her name on it anyway with the logo of the rebranded L Corp. She never got used to seeing that, her accomplishments come to fruition. Somehow she accidentally bought a sports team, and though she wasn’t thrilled about having to spend her evening not at home on the couch, she was excited to see what her assistant created, excited to have done something for the city she grew to call home. 

Not the biggest sports fan on the planet, Lena looked back at the screen with the team on it and found number eleven and gulped slightly, deciding that sports couldn’t be that bad. 

XXXXXXXXX

The music blasted in the headphones, so loudly that nothing else could be heard, not even a thundering heartbeat or heavy breathing. The world and its honks and horns and yelling and voices and city chatter completely disappeared to nothing outside of the stadium, outside of the pitch of fresh grass. 

Before the first fan would be welcomed, before they thrust open the grates on the concession stands, before the lights were tested and left on, a single player began her routine, sitting in the stands alone and taking in the world around her, as soon it would be chaos-- screaming people on the sidelines, lines calling changes and plays in the heat of the moment, chirping from those coming to disrupt her home. The soccer player’s head nodded to the beat of the song as she prepared, washing the rest of it away and focusing, centering herself. 

The stadium was beginning to breathe again, with works appearing, setting up for the sell-out crowd. By the time the first few teammates began to filter out to warm up, Kara was warming up, making her way from side to side with a light jog, stretching muscles and coming back from her solitary centering. 

“Are you getting nervous yet?” Nia asked as she sat on the ground, working hamstrings into something more tenable. 

“I’m getting excited,” Kara corrected. 

She was a leader on the team, and she took the responsibility very seriously. That included measuring her responses for the younger teammates, making sure that she was always on. It also meant that she played her heart out and left every ounce of energy on the field. She was going to lead the league again. She was going to keep her national team spot. She was going to accomplish great things, just as her parents always told her. 

“I’m getting nervous,” her teammate confessed. “Sarah Lance is a terrifying defender. And Foster is a sniper.” 

“But you’re Nia Nal,” Kara smiled, helping to pull her goaltender up. She didn’t let her escape though. She held her shoulders in her hands and gave her an intense look. “You are a brick wall. You are unstoppable. You are a fortress. That’s your goal, and no one is going to score today.” 

“I know.” 

“I don’t think you do,” the captain disagreed, grinning a little wider now. “Hey, Allen, tell Nal what she is.” 

From over her shoulder another teammate immediately chimed in. 

“Nia Nal is a force to be reckoned with! She’s not allowing one point this entire year.” 

“See that?” Kara grinned, turning back to her goalie. “Everyone already knows it.” 

“I know,” Nia nodded, a little less worried and a little more serious. 

“Good. Let’s run some drills. I’m no Foster, but I’ll try to make it hard for you.” 

Leadership was a role Kara felt both thrust upon her and eager taken up, as if it were second nature. She didn’t think about it, not directly, but often her time was spent planning her moves within the team to make them successful. It showed on the field. 

On the pitch though, Kara was completely untouchable. She was focused on her goals and she was ready for anything. She was the captain, the heart, the everything for her team, and she gave her all because for so long it was all she had. 

“Danvers, lets go,” the coach’s voice called as the player finished getting ready, completing the final tasks of her routine. “I need you for some press stuff.” 

“I thought that was after,” Kara furrowed as she trotted over to Cat Grant as the rest of the team finished up in the locker room. 

“Opening day means a lot of parading around,” she explained as they walked through the corridor. “You know this team is precarious at best. We have to do everything we can to appease the money bags.”

“I was going to do some appeasing on the scoreboard. Try to put on a show.” 

“If you could do both, I’d appreciate it.” 

“You know I can.” 

With a comparable grin, Cat nodded and tugged open a door that led to a lobby area, where post game interviews would be held, where the team would meet before the huddle, only this time it was nearly empty save for two women. 

“Ms. Luthor,” Cat held out her hand as she approached the striking woman that Kara was stuck staring at. “It’s an honor to have you out here to see our first game.” 

“I’ve heard you’ve done amazing things. I’m excited to watch,” she smiled back, clasping Grant’s hand with both of hers. 

Dimples were there, right on her cheeks. There was also red lipstick. Cherry red and full on the lips. And her eyes. The green of the jersey was absolutely perfect for making her eyes seem like never-ending forests. Kara cleared her throat when she remembered to swallow and looked away from her face quickly, afraid of gawking too long, though her own cheeks grew a bit warm with the observations. The problem was that looking anywhere else was just as bad. Skin-tight black jeans betrayed hips, and the jersey was enough to not hide her chest, and Kara wanted to pluck out her own eyeballs. 

While she introduced her assistant, Kara looked helplessly at the door and shifted on her feet, hoping to avoid the weird feeling in her chest and head. 

“This is one of our stars, Kara Danvers. She’ll be doing some press with you after the game, so I thought it’d be better to look as if you’ve met before.”

“Good thinking,” Lena smiled and held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Kara nodded, curt and polite enough, the handshake not lasting very long. 

“I will confess I don’t know much about soccer, but I’ve done my research on you,” the money explained. “Jess was telling me how brilliant you are, and I’m excited for you to share your talent with the city.” 

“Me? Yes, um. I am as well. Excited. I love this city. My second home it is.”

With a funny look on her face, Lena just nodded and turned back to the coach, her glance following a beat later as Kara looked away, her cheeks full firetrucks. 

“I wont interrupt anymore of your prep time,” Lena explained. “Thank you Cat.” 

“Enjoy the view from the owner’s box.” 

“I get one of those?” Lena asked, her voice going a little low as she asked her assistant. 

Kara lingered for a moment as her coach made her way back toward the lock eroom to prepare. She met Lena’s lok and offered another shy smile before hurring to turn around. 

“See you later,” she offered and cringed as she turned around. 

The entire walk back to the locker room, Kara hung her head, oddly confused about the very short but very weird meeting. She didn’t know what to do or what she had done, just that she had a game to win and now knew that Lena Luthor existed. 

XXXXXXXXXXX

“Good evening National City!” the CEO cheered from the edge of the pitch, a giant television of herself played just behind her for everyone to see in the sold out crowd. 

The sun was beginning to set behind the city, the stadium sitting on the edge of the water with a view of the skyline and the lake behind it. It was all so new and clean and nice, that Lena took a little bit of pride in the fact hat she had some hand to play in it all even if she wan’t acutely aware of it. 

“I am so happy to introduce you to your National City FC!” 

The crowd roared again as she smiled into the microphone and surveyed the edge of the field with the waiting players and their tiny equivalents. 

“It has been an honor to be part of bringing the next great franchise to our wonderful city, and I know these women are going to make you all so proud!” 

The cheering was awfully addicting, and Lena was going to try to figure out how to get twenty thousand people to follow her around and agree with everything she said. 

“What do you say we get this inaugural season underway?” 

Lena smiled and waved, handing over the microphone to the emcee. The deep voice began to introduce the team as the owner walked off of the field toward her assistant who smiled, much too knowledgeable about the fact that her boss was actually having fun despite her inability to admit it. 

“You looked good out there,” Jess nodded as Lena stood beside her, shielding her eyes from the squint of the sun as she looked at her team. 

“Sports aren’t that bad,” Lena shrugged. 

Despite herself, the CEO found Kara Danvers in the lineup, a little girl standing before her as they did the anthem and introductions. Even though everyone was quiet and preparing for the game, the little girl was antsy. Kara held her hands and lifted her up slightly, swinging her a bit, her shoulders and biceps straining. Lena swallowed as she watched Kara giggle with the little girl, and wondered how someone could exist that was insanely hot and also a big old goober. It didn’t seem fair. 

“Let’s get to the box,” Jess offered, interrupting the absolute dehydration Lena was experiencing and hoping to hide. “We can go over some of the basics and I can finish explaining the strategy.” 

“I trust your judgement, but I should learn a few things for press. This is going to take a lot more of my face than previous expected, I guess?” 

“I was hoping a few showings of your face, and if we win, we’ll solidify the team. National City is lacking a prestigious championship caliber team.”

On the field, Kara hopped slightly before stretching out her legs and getting out the jitters. Hair pulled back tightly, her armband meant she was the captain, and she commanded her team with precision. 

“Is this our first championship team?” 

“I think so.” 

“This is a much more enjoyable investment than all those property deals and some of those research labs I have to hear about.” 

“Says the engineer?” 

“It pains me to admit it.” 

The whistle blew and Kara sprinted out, capturing the ball and immediately making her way toward the other goal. Lena’s heart jumped into her throat at the sheer force and speed of it all before she allowed Jess to tug her back to her box. 

“How much do you know about Kara Danvers?” Lena asked, hoping it as subtle enough to be taken as small talk. 

“It’s all in the folders.” 

The CEO nodded as the elevator ascended, and she didn’t dare to chance a look at her secretary. 

XXXXXXXXXX

No matter how many times she played, the adrenaline from a game was still mildly addicting. No matter how many goals she scored, the elation of scoring another was a fix that Kara Danvers chased perpetually. Nothing compared to it. 

After the final whistle blew though, after the game ended and there was nothing left to give, she found herself full of these things, and no matter how tired her muscles and body became, the high was slow to come down from. It did make everything happen quicker though, and somehow, not long after winning, and a hat trick under her belt, Kara found herself seated in the media room with the team logo behind her and her new owner beside her. 

“You must be fairly happy with the game tonight,” one reporter began, “any worries about the team as a whole that you will be working on this week at practice?” 

“We’re always looking to be better, and I can’t say we were flawless, but I’m so excited for where we’re at as a team, that I’m just going to bask for the evening before we get back to work in the morning.” 

The group chuckled slightly as the PR director called on the next hand. 

“Ms. Luthor, how important was it for this team to get a win tonight? Was it validation for your involvement? Vindication maybe for all the naysayers who were against the expansion?” 

“I can honestly say I haven’t paid any attention to anyone who was against this project,” Lena smiled as she earned a laugh from the audience. “It’s important to win as many games as possible for any team, let alone this team. We have a lot to prove as the new kids on the block, but I think Ms. Danvers is right, and we should celebrate and come back ready to continue in the morning.” 

For the life of her, Kara wasn’t sure why the mention of her name or the corresponding look from Lena made the tips of her ears burn, but she smiled awkwardly and tried to ignore it. 

“Ms. Luthor, what made you invest in this team and this  opportunity?” 

“The excitement in my advisor’s face when she talked about the team,” the CEO explained, nodding to the woman Kara didn’t remember officially meeting. “I can’t take credit for doing much more except being completely taken with Kara.” 

The player snapped to look at the CEO for the pause that seemed to last much too long. 

“Wait,” Lena shook her head and laughed. “Kara and her team. The sport really. The little girls that come out with the team. My advisor was one of those little girls, and she is now one of the most admirable and driven people I have ever met. If a team like this can give her joy and hope, imagine what it can do for all of the other little girls.” 

“How does it feel to have the most powerful woman in the world behind you, Kara?” 

“I’m quite taken by it,” she offered humbly with a smile, earning a laugh from the group and Lena in particular. “To be honest though, it is a truly empowering fact. To have someone with such kindness and tenacity as an example, it’s amazing.”

The pair shared a smile, and Kara looked back at the crowd, preparing for the next question.

next

[antoine-roquentin]

Now, from the point of view of many on the Labour left, the entire Brexit issue was a distraction: a way to change the subject from the bread-and-butter issues of austerity, wages, health, education, and public services that had immediate effects on voters’ lives to scapegoating and symbolism. Some were convinced the entire project was a charade; the Tory leadership had no intention of breaking with the European Union in any meaningful sense at all—as some pointed out at the time, during the entirety of May’s tenure as prime minister, her government had not seen fit to hire or retrain a single new customs official.

What they did not at first understand, but became all too apparent as time went on, was that in Brexit the right had discovered an almost perfect political poison, not only dividing British society into two hostile camps, but bringing out the absolute worst in both of them. Each side ended up hurling bitter invective against each other, much of which was true. Remainers insisted that many Brexit campaigners were overt racists, and that the Leave campaign was—much like Trumpism—normalizing forms of racist expression that would have been considered outrageous only a few years before. They were right. Reports of racist hate crimes, for instance, increased dramatically after the vote. Leavers countered that many of the most vociferous Remainers were overt elitists, and were likewise normalizing expressions of contempt for small-town or working-class England that would have once been considered equally outrageous. They were right, too.

It might seem odd that the ultimate beneficiary of all this was Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, an Eton-educated upper-cruster whose main occupation, before he turned his hand to politics, was as a columnist and occasional television personality notorious for his contempt for immigrants, single mothers, and the poor. But to understand what happened, I think, one must consider the broader situation of what has come to be known as “right-wing populism.” Ever since the economic crash of 2008, the left had tried to make villains of the bankers. Yet despite the fact that the City (London’s financial hub) was indeed largely responsible for the collapse of the economy and resulting austerity, this approach gained little traction. The right instead tried to make villains of the bureaucrats—of migrants, too, as they definitely did appeal to simple bigotry, but the immediate emphasis was on bureaucrats. And at least among middle-aged swing voters, this succeeded spectacularly. Why?

The answer, I think, lies in the emerging structure of class relations in societies like England, which seems to be reproduced, in one form or another, just about everywhere the radical right is on the rise. The decline of factory jobs, and of traditional working-class occupations like mining and shipbuilding, decimated the working class as a political force. What happened is usually framed as a shift from industrial, manufacturing, and farming to “service” work, but this formulation is actually rather deceptive, since service is typically defined so broadly as to obscure what’s really going on. In fact, the percentage of the population engaged in serving biscuits, driving cabs, or trimming hair has changed little since Victorian times.

The real story is the spectacular growth, on the one hand, of clerical, administrative, and supervisory work, and, on the other, of what might broadly be termed “care work”: medical, educational, maintenance, social care, and so forth. While productivity in the manufacturing sector has skyrocketed, productivity in this caring sector has actually decreased across the developed world (largely due to the weight of bureaucratization imposed by the burgeoning numbers of administrators). This decline has put the squeeze on wages: it’s hardly a coincidence that in developed economies across the world, the most dramatic strikes and labor struggles since the 2008 crash have involved teachers, nurses, junior doctors, university workers, nursing home workers, or cleaners.

One might speak of the beginnings of a veritable revolt of the caring classes, global in scale. If so, the obvious question is: Why has the global left, which has always stood for the promise of a more caring society, not been the ones to profit from this development? Why is the radical right instead everywhere on the rise? How is it possible that this could lead to the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn, a man who even his enemies would begrudgingly admit was a caring and empathetic human being, at the hands of a Tory candidate so utterly narcissistic and lacking in human feeling that he famously refused to even look at a picture of a feverish child marooned on an overcrowded hospital’s floor? The answer lies once again in the curse of centrism.

As Thomas Frank has pointed out, as early as the 1970s, formerly leftist parties from the US to Japan made a strategic decision to effectively abandon what remained of their older, working-class base and rebrand themselves primarily as parties representing the interests and sensibilities of the professional-managerial classes. This was the real social base of Clintonism in the US, Blairism in the UK, and now Macronism in France. All became the parties of administrators. (In the UK, of course, this included those endless legions of lawyers and accountants.)

Whereas the core value of the caring classes is, precisely, care, the core value of the professional-managerials might best be described as proceduralism. The rules and regulations, flow charts, quality reviews, audits and PowerPoints that form the main substance of their working life inevitably color their view of politics or even morality . These are people who tend to genuinely believe in the rules They may well be the only significant stratum of the population who do so. If it is possible to generalize about class sensibilities, one might say that members of this class see society less as a web of human relationships, of love, hate, or enthusiasm, than, precisely, as a set of rules and institutional procedures, just as they see democracy, and rule of law, as effectively the same thing. (This, for instance, accounts for Hillary Clinton’s supporters’ otherwise inexplicable inability to understand why other Americans didn’t accept the principle that if one makes bribery legal—by renaming it “campaign contributions” or half-million-dollar fees for private speeches—that makes it okay.)

The peculiar fusion of public and private, market forces and administrative oversight, the world of hallmarks, benchmarks, and stakeholders that characterizes what I’ve been calling centrism is a direct expression of the sensibilities of the professional-managerial classes. To them alone, it makes a certain sort of sense. But they had become the base of the center-left, and centrism is endlessly presented in the media as the only viable political position.

For most care-givers, however, these people are the enemy. If you are a nurse, for example, you are keenly aware that it’s the administrators upstairs who are your real, immediate class antagonist. The professional-managerials are the ones who are not only soaking up all the money for their inflated salaries, but hire useless flunkies who then justify their existence by creating endless reams of administrative paperwork whose primary effect is to make it more difficult to actually provide care.

This central class divide now runs directly through the middle of most parties on the left. Like the Democrats in the US, Labour incorporates both the teachers and the school administrators, both the nurses and their managers. It makes becoming the spokespeople for the revolt of the caring classes extraordinarily difficult.

All this also helps explain the otherwise mysterious popular appeal of the disorganized, impulsive, shambolic (but nonetheless cut-to-the-chase, get-things-done) personas cultivated by men like Trump and Johnson. Yes, they are children of privilege in every possible sense of the term. Yes, they are pathological liars. Yes, they don’t seem to care about anyone but themselves. But they also present themselves as the precise opposite of the infuriating administrator whose endless appeal to rules and demand for additional meetings, paperwork, and motivational seminars makes it impossible for you to do your job. In the UK, the game of Brexit politics has been to maneuver the Labour left into a position where it is forced to identify itself with that same infuriating administrator.

This was true from the start. The original Leave campaign took aim at immigration, but, even more, it took aim at distant and uncaring Brussels bureaucrats. And the fact that both major parties, Tories and Labour, were profoundly split over the issue—and even more, over what to do about it—led to an endless drama of legal and legislative warfare that allowed Leavers to argue that Remainers in Whitehall were using every sort of procedural trick in the book to thwart the popular will. For those in the movement to democratize the Labour Party, this was an insoluble dilemma. Most of the new, young Labour activists had enough experience with genuine directly democratic practice to understand that a 52/48 vote is effectively a tie; if it is a mandate for anything, it is for some sort of creative compromise.

This is precisely what Corbyn first attempted to do. He accepted the result of the referendum, but proposed to negotiate a deal whereby the UK would remain within the Common Market on much the same terms as Norway. The approach worked well enough in 2017 to prevent May from making the election exclusively about Brexit, and to allow Labour to make substantial gains; but as soon as the election was over and a hung parliament resulted, the centrist counter-offensive began. The most important role here was played by Alastair Campbell, Blair’s one-time press czar and crucial strategist of the People’s Vote Campaign to demand a second referendum, who immediately smelled blood. The “moderate” elements in the party pounced. Rallies and marches were organized, Remainer MPs—of both parties—threatened to jump ship if Labour did not join in calls for a second referendum, either to join the staunchly Europhile Liberal Democrats or to form a new centrist party.

At one point, several MPs, from both sides of the aisle, actually did begin setting up a centrist alternative, called (with a remarkable lack of self-awareness) Change UK—sparking the fear that disgruntled Remainers might begin a mass exodus. Since the activist youth base of the party was overwhelmingly pro-Europe, the Labour leadership eventually saw no choice but to change its position and call for a second vote in which Brexit might be reversed.

Corbyn has been widely criticized for maintaining a “wishy-washy” or indecisive position on Brexit, but from the point of view of the larger movement he represented, his position was about the only one he really could take. The Labour Left, after all, was trying to bring about dramatic social reforms, in much the way Attlee had in 1945 when he called for the creation of the NHS. Ultimately, they were revolutionaries: they aimed to set the ball rolling in the direction of the democratization of all aspects of British society. But they also knew this could only happen if they came into power in informal alliance with more radical, “extra-parliamentary” street movements pushing them ever further to the left. Taking a hardcore Remain position would mean even if they did come into power (which was by no means guaranteed), it could only be in alliance with politicians who ardently opposed this larger project, and, if Brexit was indeed reversed, that they would also be faced with radical street movements not of the left but of the right—outraged Brexiteers and outright fascists pushing in exactly the opposite direction.

The last thing Corbyn would ever want was to be forced into a position where he would have to send in riot police to control protests against the suppression of a democratic decision. This was the real reason for the initial dilemma. But eventually he had to come around to support a second vote.

At the same time as the Labour leadership was being threatened and cajoled into making common cause with militant Remainers, the Conservatives were heading in exactly the opposite direction. Boris Johnson—or, to be more precise, his strategic mastermind, Dominic Cummings—immediately filled his cabinet with hard-right Brexiters, purging Remainers first from the Cabinet and then from the party itself. He then began a heavy-handed and seemingly incompetent attempt to bludgeon some kind of Brexit bill through the House of Commons. To the casual observer, his first weeks in office appeared a combination of costume drama and slapstick comedy. Johnson lost every vote he put forward and missed his own loudly trumpeted Brexit deadline; his attempt to suspend Parliament not only failed in court but left him open to accusations of having lied to the Queen; former Tory prime ministers declared their intention to openly campaign against him; his own brother resigned from the cabinet in disgust.

Corbyn, meanwhile, began to win grudging praise from the guardians of established opinion for his willingness to coordinate the resistance. Yet this was, precisely, his undoing. Cummings’s plan had always been to win by losing. The point of the parliamentary drama was to reduce Corbyn—whose entire appeal had been based on the fact that he did not look, act, or calculate like a politician—into someone who did exactly that, and to paint the only movement in generations that had genuinely aimed to change the rules of British society as the linchpin of an alliance of professional-managerials united only by their willingness to deploy every legalistic or procedural means possible in order to reverse the results of a popular referendum and keep things exactly as they were.

If the results of the 2019 election mean anything, they reveal an overwhelming rejection of centrism. Particularly instructive here are the fates of the rebels who broke from Corbyn’s Labour to form Change UK, including Chuka Umunna, who was widely billed as Britain’s future answer to Barack Obama. On realizing that there was virtually no support for another centrist party, they ultimately joined the Lib Dems. Though the Lib Dems did increase their share of the overall vote (slightly), doing so largely served to knock out their ostensible Remainer Labour allies in close races. Not one of the defectors managed to win a seat.

Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem candidate for prime minister, who had somehow convinced herself it would be a winning formula for the Lib Dems to run as a single-issue anti-Brexit party while also making clear that under no conditions would they ever form an alliance with Corbyn’s Labour, failed to win her own district and is no longer an MP. Labour lost fifty-four seats to the Tories—fifty-two of them in Leave-voting districts. But, as James Schneider, Corbyn’s director of strategic communications, confirmed when I showed him a draft of this piece, only three (Dennis Skinner, Laura Pidcock, and Laura Smith) were from the radical left of the party. Dozens of “moderates” had, effectively, blown themselves up.

The same, incidentally, is true for the Tories: not one of the twenty-one purged Remainers who ran for their old seats as independents returned to Parliament.

The center of British politics has become a smoldering pit. The country is now being governed by a hard-right government placed in power by its oldest citizens, in the face of the active hatred of its increasingly socialist-inclined youth. It’s fairly clear that for the Johnson team, Brexit was never anything but an electoral strategy, and that they don’t have the slightest idea how to translate it into economic prosperity. (It is an unacknowledged irony of the current situation that the people most likely to profit from the Brexit process are, precisely, lawyers—and, probably secondarily, accountants. For everyone else, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where they will improve their current situation, and quite easy to imagine Johnson being remembered as one of the most disastrous prime ministers in British history.)

[digitalagencybranding]

Brand Strategy Consulting Services Agencies Battle

When Landor was tasked with its rebranding, their model strategist took an altogether solitary method. Interestingly, he did not take aviation as a supply of inspiration. His chalkboard concept was to go for something extra earthen and elegant - the windswept sand dunes of Abu Dhabi. And therefore the windswept patterns on the golden desert sand enveloping the Moresque structure of the town grew to become the canvas for the brand strategy consulting service follow the link.

Once you’ve obtained your reporting and communications sorted, you'll be able to concentrate on the important half–getting to work and building robust relationships together with your purchasers, partners and stakeholders. It can also be helpful to visualize every phase concurrently, to compare the similarities and variations between every section. This might help consultants identify gaps and opportunities within the shopper’s product and processes. For example, the aim of your marketing brochure could be to e-book more service consultations. The messaging in your brochure would then be focused in direction of educating about your providers.

Battle Of The Manufacturers: How Digital Is Driving Massive Changes To B2b Brand Technique

Webby Central follows industry greatest practices and methodologies, but our staff is versatile to work along with your standards and methodologies to deliver the optimum service. We have been rated 4.eight out of 5, with ninety four% client satisfaction by over 250 purchasers globally. We assist to tug-off persistent business prosperity via efficient, proficient, and detailed enterprise evaluation. By supplying lecturers with instruments to foster conversation in regards to the importance of kindness, we are making a distinction on the earth, one classroom at a time.

At Vert, brand technique is woven into nearly each marketing campaign we execute, no matter where it’s being executed. Want to study more about our method to brand messaging strategy and discuss leveraging our staff for brand technique consulting assist on your next marketing campaign? Symphysis employs brand technique consultants that can assist your corporation develop a brand persona that's distinctive from opponents and attracts a large . Our branding strategies are integrated throughout numerous social media platforms and digital advertising media. We have experience in world branding for small companies looking to diversify their advertising by starting an e-commerce enterprise.

To provoke a dialogue or learn extra about our marketing and branding providers, please use the contact kind. While marketing consultants are strategic, advertising agencies are usually more tactical—except they particularly provide strategic consulting services, which we’ll get to later. Many small business house owners favor to work with a marketing consultant prior to enlisting the help of promoting companies.

As an established corporate brand strategy consulting services firm, we use client and worker perception to establish the proper goal and the right message to make sure your brand outperforms opponents. Here at Digital Marketers Chicago, we offer strategic recommendations to help build a brand that will drive client engagement and foster optimistic experiences at each source of contact. Our brand strategy consulting company has the instruments, data, and experience to bring your model to life and advance enterprise growth.

Many drinks and an incendiary curry later, we had hashed out a foolproof seven-point system for figuring out shit model consultants before they'll take your money and/or lead you astray. Understand and Target your Ideal Market — To have a profitable, highly effective brand, it’s important to be taught everything there's to learn about your goal market. Appealing to your key demographic is the most effective approach to enhance enterprise growth and conversion charges. After we now have collected a plethora of conceptual knowledge, we move onto forming a creative visual framework of your model.

You need to understand what you can count on to realize for the speed that you simply’re paying. Essentially, there’s a bit of groundwork you have to do earlier than working with a social media advertising advisor. But, ultimately, it’ll make your work collectively that much more successful.

As a lot as we would like to think that individuals read every word we write in a proposal, we know that isn’t true. At CMG, our tradition is rooted in two basic areas – our individuals and growing collectively – collectively, we focus on these two areas to guide us. I just keep moving forward in my vision and it’s all happening in abundance. The people I have attracted now are of higher high quality than I actually have ever attracted.

Unfortunately, firms can not just copy the way Apple executes their business branding. The greatest that they can do is copy the basic method and have interaction an professional to help them- this is the place the role of brand name consultants come into the picture. Present in most nations around the globe, the corporate's success may be attributed to their philosophy.

Explore how we’ve helped healthcare companies leverage model to resolve complicated challenges, including CVS Health, Bristol Myers Squibb, Centrient and Mount Sinai. Our digital promoting providers deliver clients and income to your corporation. As increasingly transactions originate on-line, attracting clients by way of digital is more and more more necessary for achievement. Successful inbound advertising depends on the use of instruments and technology.

We are able to work with you to develop branding methods that are match for your business. We know you could have been working hard to get where you might be, and we are excited to affix you on the journey to the heights of on-line success. Our objective is that will help you align your digital advertising methods with the vision and mission of your company. With us, each technique price contemplating should have a timeline and measurable results. That is why we put plenty of emphasis on aim setting and efficiency measurement.

OK that is partially a joke, but it's worth mentioning that you simply do get what you pay for. The finest marketing consultants provide worth that may last for years, and sometimes their fees typically reflect that. While hourly charges are often nonetheless in consideration, that is merely one approach to measure the hassle put in direction of the project at hand. Full disclosure, the author of this blog is a marketing consulting firm, so in fact, we consider that you must pay as much as possible. A lack of belief in corporate America fueled by the financial meltdown and its aftermath has led to an unprecedented demand for authenticity and consistency throughout the complete model expertise.

We take the headaches out of managing your day-to-day advertising needs. Search engine marketing and search engine marketing are fundamental elements to today’s advertising strategies. If you’re not benefiting from SEO and SEM opportunities, your model’s digital presence will endure. Brafton consultants perceive how sales and marketing efforts assist each other. They devise advertising methods that generate qualified leads while leveraging sales data to inspire your subsequent profitable advertising marketing campaign. We also take into account the most recent modifications and updates to the digital marketing landscape.

Holistic Advertising Campaigns

An skilled model strategist could command higher charges but additionally work sooner, have more-specialized areas of expertise, and deliver larger-high quality work. Rates can vary because of many components, including experience and experience, location, and market conditions. Once you have a clear idea of the kind of brand strategist you’re in search of, it’s time to show these ideas into a job submit. Provide enough element for a contractor to know in the event that they’re the proper fit for the job. Our objective is to encourage perception in your brand both internally and externally.

That’s why we take great satisfaction within the quantity of customization we put into every technique we craft. In our advertising consulting companies, we at all times create the methods to align with your small business’ unique wants and objectives. The reason is because digital advertising encompasses so many areas including social media management, Google advertising, e mail advertising and extra. That’s why it’s so essential to us that our advertising consultants are specialised in each area. With a LYFE marketing consultant, rest assured that our experience and steerage can lead you to the outcomes you want. In truth, customers will decide whether or not to trust your corporation or not within the first 3 seconds after your website masses. Keep them glued to your web site by having a consumer-friendly and intuitive web design!

As the healthcare industry expands, they are shifting to implement contingent workforce programs that broaden their reach and supply sustainable development. We help these efforts through workforce administration applications that provide the seamless integration of skilled independents into their ecosystem.

In fact, administration consulting corporations are inclined to spend a higher proportion of income on advertising than companies in other professional companies industries, like accounting and AEC. Since you’re typically promoting experience and recommendation, it’s important that you simply assist your audiences understand exactly what kind of advice and experience you offer. As a leading brand consulting agency, we mix the principles of perception, id and innovation to assist shoppers in building brands. This entails establishing an innovation technique, figuring out opportunity areas, and growing new services, whereas enhancing model equity. Different varieties and shapes, makes use of of shade and graphic kinds are included in a design language. It contains methods for typography, pictures and illustration.

[travisfbxw182]

Programmers

Content

Augmented Reality Application.

Why Should You Make Use Of Devteam Area To Employ Freelance Application Developers?

Company News, Suggestions & Reviews.

Peerbits Declared As One Of The Top Iphone Application Programmers In U.s.a. By Topdevelopers Co!

Individual Experience Style.

You'll continuously carry out research and get client responses throughout the process. You can invest months or possibly years refining the application as well as investing hundreds of countless dollars to create it. The system is super clean and actually simple to make use of, especially for novices. Follow my overview, and also I'll show you the most budget-friendly means to create your very own application if you don't have the funds to pay someone else to do it.

Competence in and experience with numerous significant shows languages such as HTML, C++, Java, Python, etc . If the candidate reveals a full understanding of your long and temporary goals, they're suitable for your task. After that there are platforms such as Gun.io and also X-Team, who do choose and also vet their profiles. yet are extra for companies with bigger budgets and also little working with knowledge. And also, you can't actually interview people from these 2 websites yourself, so you need to trust their management when it pertains to choosing the appropriate candidates.

By clicking Accept Cookies, you accept our use cookies as well as various other monitoring technologies according to our Cookie Policy. Permits DOM breakpoints and also supplies the capacity to profile your JavaScript code execution time. jQuery mobile calls for jQuery and jQuery UI for DOM control, whereas Sencha Touch has no exterior dependencies. jQuery Mobile supplies lots of 3rd party extensions and is inherently made to be extremely extensible, whereas Sencha Touch is currently a lot more of a "shut" structure. Remember to utilize the appropriate filters to preclude SQL query injection that could otherwise jeopardize the safety of your site as well as web server. 60% of mobile internet individuals say they anticipate a website to fill on their smart phone in 3 seconds or less. Remember to confirm ahead of time that the performance you're searching for is sustained throughout the tool landscape that your customers are most likely to be using.

Increased Reality Application.

You can get even more ideas and also support on just how to hire a mobile app designer in this article. Principally at Apple, I have actually worked on native iphone and also macOS applications for the past 6 years in a specialist capability. I am likewise highly skillful in full pile development, and also can lead a job from perception to QA to manufacturing. Check out my profile at lindytech.io I am an iOS programmer with a concentrate on service.

Mobile applications ought to utilize the complete variety of smartphone functions, which is much easier claimed than done. A terrific useful short article about mobile application growth firm in the UNITED STATES. This would certainly be excellent for brand-new company owner that are thinking of creating apps for their organization. Considering that 2010, Core Lab has been making, creating as well as supplying mobile and also internet applications that increase business capability, produces good brand name, and beats competitions from the business rivals.

Why Should You Utilize Devteam Room To Work With Freelance App Designers?

I have actually gotten on both sides of the table and also recognize precisely what customers want and also require. Not just do I offer top quality development yet also conscientious service that is transparent, concentrated and also diligent. I have actually released manufacturing grade apps which have been utilized by over 100,000 people world vast. From concept to growth yashna infotech - androiddevelopers.co to manufacturing as well as beyond, my years of experience are at your service. I am punctual, trusted and also prepared to assist you reconcile your concept. App home builders are best for existing entrepreneur who intend to utilize a mobile application to enhance their firm. A company has a wonderful suggestion for a product, or in your instance, a mobile application.

If you recognize the premier mobile application designers in the USA besides over 25, please reference in the remark box. The firm obtained associated with the customer at each action of the mobile app development process to provide top-notch and also feature-rich outcomes. The former customers are Century Fox, PepsiCo, ABInBev, Synchrony Financial, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Alliant Cooperative Credit Union, National Geographic, and Regal Cinemas. So, to make you devoid of studying, we have actually done a thorough research on the most effective mobile applications on developers in the U.S.A. as well as detailed out all in this article.

Agicent offers top quality mobile app advancement services to start-ups, entrepreneurs, and also growing companies throughout the world. We assign you a committed designer for your task, regardless of just how little or big job it is to make sure that you have full control and also never have communication gap. We have been the preferred selection as a modern technology seeking advice from partner for software application advancement for SMBs and also Startups. Being an AWS Qualified, Microsoft Partner, ISO Licensed, INTUZ works long-term with clients seeking Web, Mobile, IoT, Blockchain and also Cloud application growth experts.

Business News, Suggestions & Endorsements.

SemiDot InfoTech is an excellent mobile application advancement and also internet site layout company satisfying start-ups, SMB's and business. We are a coolest and also experienced group that does extremely well to fulfill your software program requires through newest innovative IT Technologies. Going for quality, we supply what your clients imagine as well as past that. If you are reading this, it can be safely presumed that you are wanting to have a mobile application for your business or have a company built upon it.

The firm works with a key objective to please the customers with a high quality project job under customer friendly environment. Working with VC-Funded Startups as well as Enterprises consisting of Google, Citi, as well as Red Bull, we offer expertise in iOS, Android, and also online mobile applications. As a worldwide venture with offices throughout in the UNITED STATE, South America & India, Raindrops InfoTech has the knowledge, site growth bench, as well as mobile app services to range to fulfill virtually any kind of service need. FATbit Technologies is a web services company with a worldwide client base, giving digital business and turnkey marketplace options.

Peerbits Proclaimed As One Of The Leading Iphone Application Developers In United States By Topdevelopers Co!

Because its facility in 2009, offering solutions to small as well as big entrepreneurs in web advancement, digital marketing, and SEO. MobileCoderz has actually developed itself as a first choice of small as well as tool size Company in the wheelchair space within a short period of time. We have a young & skilled team of mobile strategists, UX/UI designers and also Application Programmers. We have client base that spreads out across arising startups to little & medium dimension Company around the world. MobileCoderz has actually assisted in the advancement of World Class mobile apps for 50+ clients, working together with its group of 30+ geeks.

Furthermore, they have a system for picking the ideal expert android, Swift, and other types of developers whom they associate with via their platform.

Mobile application development services hold an enormous chunk in the economic situation, approximated to be valued over $6 billion by 2023.

Each has its own benefits, but mobile web applications will frequently represent your most reliable development (and therefore time-to-market) choice.

The firm will certainly provide you a possibility to do your tasks right into truth in the most sensible cost.

A number of versions are constructed from the exact same fundamental application that can be read by different sorts of tools, such as cell phones, tablet computers as well as personal computers.

Launch new adverts and engage with your customers - an all-in-one platform that advertises your brand and also builds interaction.

The group of 30+ developers produces products for a selection of markets, including financial as well as organization solutions, consumers, education, health, and retail. Established in 2005, Invemo is a tech firm headquartered in Santa Monica with an additional area in IST, Turkey. Their team of 4 supply mobile application development, UX/UI style, IT technique, and app innovation solutions to clients. Sileria is a mobile application, IoT, as well as AR/VR advancement business in Los Angeles that introduced in 1994 as well as rebranded in 2001. The seasoned 10+ group prides itself on supplying improved electronic products that permit companies to outperform their competition. They have workplaces in Ukraine, the UNITED STATE, Norway as well as a group of over 100 experts. They are concentrated on indigenous mobile advancement, web growth, IT technique, website design, arising innovations, and also cross-platform services.

Customer Experience Design.

The third selection for becoming a mobile app designer entails a combination of our last 2 options. For those of you who want to construct apps for various other services, app structure tools such as this provide you the choice to deal with numerous design templates all on the very same system. If you want to become a mobile application designer, finding out to code is your very first option. Or you can simply stick to familiarizing yourself with the very best devices for mobile application designers. SoftwareWorld is a software program evaluation system that showcases leading software remedies ideal for various markets, offering an extensive review service by contrasting the most effective software remedies available on the marketplace. The system creates honest checklists of the top software program remedies by classification, aiding companies find the right service for them.

[tisfan]

Tony Stark Flash Bingo

December Flash Bingo 014 - Feasts

A/n - based on conversation at my dinner table, the Jurassic Park fusion that nobody asked for.

The man who sat down across from Tony looked like a high tech cowboy, down to the boots and up to his hat. “So, you’re the new hire,” he said. “I’m Peter Quill.”

“Tony--”

“I know who you are,” Quill said. “I hired you.”

“You did-- I thought--”

“So, what we have here is a grand case of misdirection to protect company secrets. I’m sure you can understand that.”

Tony could. He’d recently lost control of his company, been pushed out by people he’d wrongfully trusted because he didn’t want to make weapons anymore. Well, now Obie had the company, rebranded it, and was making more weapons than ever.

“You need a new start, to try to rebuild your empire, or at least, eat for the next few years, I understand that,” Quill was saying and Tony tried to pay attention. The job had come with a lot of caveats and NDAs and addendums. But the pay was good; more than good, really. A few years and he might be able to have enough seed money to build a few prototypes, get back into the game.

“So, here’s the deal, I lost my last IT guy, and he was good, I’m telling you, really good, but he’s gone now, and I need help. There’s only a few of us who work here, but we’ve got a good lab, a good workshop, I can get you pretty much anything you want or need, both for business and for-- your own personal stuff. But it’s a little bit… not what you’re expecting. You ready to see the place?”

He’d been flown out to a remote island in the middle of the south Pacific and hadn’t seen much more of the place than the helicopter landing pad and the building where he was now sitting, talking to Quill in something that looked like a break room.

“Sure.”

“All right, here’s your communicator.” Quill pushed a small box at Tony, which contained something that looked like a round, black sticker with a glowing light in the middle. “Peel it off, stick it under your ear. It’s water proof, and the adhesive lasts about four days. You’ll get a box of 10 every week. Do not lose it. Do not ever ever not be wearing one. The last thing you want here is to be out of communications range. Mantis is our comms expert, she’ll be the sweet voice in your ear. Say hi.”

Tony stuck the dot on his skin as directed. “Hi Miss Mantis,” Tony said, hesitantly. “Is this thing always on?”

“Hi Tony, welcome aboard,” a cheerful voice said. “If you need privacy, tap the dot twice with your index and middle fingers. It works off a bio reading, so you shouldn’t turn it off by mistake. It’s also a tracker, we’ll know where you are at all times.”

“Big sister is watching you.”

“I am protecting you,” Mantis said. 

(more below the cut)

“That’s what they all say.” Tony grinned though, when he said it, because she was probably watching him, too. No need to start things off on the wrong foot for his co-workers. He needed this job. “I’m sure you’ll keep a good watch.”

“So, mostly you’ll be working in the building, which is steel reinforced concrete, and the outside of the building has electric charge capabilities. So, you know, don’t lick the walls.”

“I should think not,” Tony said. “You get a lot of corporate spies around here, or something?”

“Or something,” Quill said, but he didn’t elaborate. “Your room’s down this way, we’ve already moved your bags in.” He selected a door that said Stark on it. From a building to a door. How the mighty have fallen. 

Apartment was more like it. Livingroom, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. It was fully furnished, plain, and good sized. Comfortable, if not luxurious. “You can cook here if you want, but most of us eat in the mess. Nebula is our cook. We’ve got all the streaming services you could want for your TV and if you need something else for entertainment, there’s a budget. We have same game consoles in the break room. That kind of thing.”

“So, what, exactly, is my job?”

“Containment, security, keep the server bank safe from cyberhackers. Technical designs. IT stuff.”

“What happened to your last IT guy?” Because this was a sweet set up, really.

“He--”

“He got sat on by a diplodocus,” a brawny man with no hair said, walking buy. “Quill, that orthi’s loose again.”

“The which? A what?” Tony blustered.

“Drax, Tony. Tony, Drax. He’s our resident butcher. Come on, you’ll be needed for fence repair if she’s on the loose again. Grab a tool kit--” Quill was leading them down the hall at a quick pace. “-- and a tranquilizer gun. Also, do not shoot yourself with this.”

“I slept like a baby,” Drax said, fondly.

“For four days,” Quill complained.

“What are we fighting? Elephants?”

“You wish.” Quill threw open the back door. A half dozen tiny animals ran over, making soft clicking sounds. They were-- feathered? But running on four legs like a cat, not like a bird. “Mussaurus. Late triassic, plant eaters. Very friendly. Make friends with one, they’re good pets and they will warn you if any of the bigger ones get out.”

“What is it?” Tony knelt down to examine the creature more closely. “Is this-- is this a dinosaur?”

“Yep,” Quill said. He was already climbing up a tower around the compound, binoculars at the ready. “We bought some of them from Hammond.”

“The Jurassic park guy? But he’s the only zookeeper in the world for these exotics,” Tony said. He made it up in the tower and grabbed his own set of binoculars, scanning the area. A few long-necked animals were in sight. Brachiosaurus, maybe.

“Oh, we’re not zookeepers,” Quill said. “We’re not trying to keep the kiddies safe while they ooh and ahh and spend money on merchandising. We’re a little rougher than that.”

“Illegal dinosaur trade?”

“Perfectly legal. We work with the restaurant business.”

“What?”

“Welcome, Mr. Stark-- to Jurassic Farm.”

“What?”

“Seriously, have you seen the number of steaks on a brontosaurus?” Quill asked. “We provide exotic delicacies for all over the world. A feast on feet. And sometimes a little game hunting for the overly rich thrill seeker. That comes with a waiver for us. They don’t always get their prey.”

“I can see why,” Tony said, faintly.

A woman with green and purple hair came up next to them. “I found her,” she said. “Let’s just put this one down? She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”

“Gamora, our huntress. Tony Stark, IT.”

“The weapons manufacturer?”

“I got out of that business.”

“If I only shoot dinosaurs with it, will you make me a custom weapon?”

“We can talk about it,” Tony said, giving her a smile. 

“I like him already,” Gamora declared.

“All right, Stark, you ready to go on your first rodeo?”

“No?” Was that even a question?

“Ha, come on,” Drax said, smacking him on the shoulder hard enough that he almost fell over. “It is fun, and we can introduce you to Groot and Rocket on the way.”

“Our botanist and mechanic,” Quill explained. “And that’s the whole team. Yondu’s our pilot, he brings things from the mainland, and delivers the product. You’ve met him already.”

Tony checked the dart gun. He knew the theory, but he’d never actually fired one.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Tony muttered, but followed along, chanting in his head, I need this job, I need this job...

***

“I shot a prehistoric ostrich,” Tony said, looking down at it. About eight feet tall, with a thin neck, only two legs, and wings that were barely functional, except maybe for steering while the dino ran like hell.

“That is a lot of turkey, right there,” Quill said. Which was probably true; if it could be roasted like a bird, the whole thing would be about four feet long, and probably serve at least a hundred and fifty people. And that didn’t even count the neck and tail.

“So, uh, like, does PETA know about this,” Tony wondered. He wiped sweat off his forehead; it had been a long chase, but the Ornithomimus was a plant eater, and not prone to attacking, although Quill had warned that everything on Jurassic Farm was, in fact, dangerous. 

“Part of the reason we need a good internet security guy,” Gamora said. “They keep sending Green Terrorists after us. Shoot the people, save the dinosaurs. Whatever.”

“You want the head for your wall?” Drax offered, pulling out a machete that was practically bigger than Tony was.

“No, I think I’m good,” Tony said. “This was more like big game hunting than farming.”

“Obviously, you have never lived on a farm,” Quill said. “Cows can be real dangerous.”

Gamora laughed, put her arm around Tony’s shoulders. “Come on, Stark, I’ll buy you a drink.”

“No drinking until I get there,” Quill said, pointing a finger. “We still gotta haul this lady over to the butcher’s building. And fix that fence before you go, I don’t need to chase anything else around this farm.”

“All right, Quartermain, we’ll do it your way,” Tony said. He gave Gamora’s arm a friendly squeeze. “Two drinks. In a few hours.” 

[bananasilver90]

Digital Advertising Firm London

TBWA is likewise rated as the most creatively identified network worldwide for three out of the last five years in Creativity magazine's Yearly Awards Report. And in the Gunn Record, TBWA is rated as the 3rd most granted network in the last ten years (the Gunn Report integrates the winners' checklists from every one of the major advertising and marketing award contests on the planet). As well as once more, TBWA was placed 5th on the Advertising and marketing Age's A-List. Finally, TBWA has actually been awarded the most Grand EFFIES of any firm network. TBWA has actually won 12 Grand EFFIEs out of the 32 that have actually ever before been granted since 1980. BJL don't consider the media first, but at business troubles they intend to fix for their customers and also by utilizing fresh and reliable suggestions they move the category and can give genuine commercial results. Currently progressing, The company has rebranded in 2018 as The & Collaboration. 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Best WordPress eCommerce Themes for Bold, Effective Online Shops | Templified

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Best WordPress eCommerce Themes for Bold, Effective Online Shops

You’ve got plenty of options when searching for the best WordPress eCommerce themes..  For many, it can be time consuming to wade through allthese themes to find a real winner.  We’v done the hard work for you.  Our goal in creating this collection of WordPress eCommerce themes was to pick out the best.  Themes that look great and perform even better.

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform anywhere.  It’s dominant and it powers almost one third of the web.  Many of those websites are eCommerce sites.  No matter which eCommerce plugin you use, WordPress can handle the job with ease.  Some folks swear by WooCommerce, some by Easy Digital Downloads.  Some go with Cart66 or the eCommerce Shopping Cart.  That list isn’t exhaustive.  There are tons of other carts available like Ecwid, PayPal, Ecommerce WD or the Selz Cart.  Whatever you choose, this list of themes is going to rock your world. With that  rise in popularity, there’s been a rise in the number of themes available.  You just have to pick the right one.  Some of these themes are useful and  functional.  Some are not so good.  We’ve set about trying to find the  best themes and put them in this collection.

Every one of these themes is responsive and they each offer a little something different.  Style, features, audience, functionality.  There’s a  lot of variety out there.  I hope there’s something for everybody in this incredible collection.

Divi

Divi is a theme that can simply do anything you ask it to do, so we’ve included it in this eCommerce WordPress themes collection.  I couldn’t find a great example in Elegant Themes demo section, so I found one out in the wild.  This is an actual real live use of Divi by a buyer of the theme.  It looks pretty nice as a watch shop, so I’m imagining it’ll look pretty sweet for just about any product.  You’ve probably already heard about how powerful Divi’s drag and drop page builder can be, but page builders can scare some people off.  While the flexibility is nice, it can be intimidating to attempt to design your website from the ground up.  Luckily, there are tons of pre-designed layouts you can choose from if you’re worries you won’t be able to set your eCommerce site up yourself.  This theme is likeable for many reasons, swift support, succinct documentation, handsome designs and the fact that any style website is possible.

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Space

This well built, easy to use, adaptable, modern and stunning theme enables you to contact customers, supervise shipping and your stock, market brand new products, expand your small business and market old products and a lot more.

WordPress is an excellent method to start or rebrand a business online, even if you don’t happen to be a specialist in programming, because it may be straightforwardly adjusted to match your preferences. This modern style looks exceptional on any device since it’s designed to be responsive. If you’re setting up an online business, potential customers are obviously vital and enabling them to gain access to your website at anyplace at any time is crucial.

WooCommerce offers all the equipment that you need to start a business fast and effectively and this eye-catching, well-designed and trendy eCommerce template is the 1st step on a path to developing your own business. No matter if you are selling boots or shoes, clothes, gadgets, downloadable items like films, video, mp3s or software program, this theme is an ideal selection because it’s so flexible.

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MF

Okay, here we go, the highest rated WordPress business theme.  It’s called MF and it’s a clean, corporate style WordPress theme for any sort of business.   MF theme has been  updated often since its initial release.  That means that it has kept up with the times and with recent WordPress changes.  Keeping up to date is  important for a WordPress theme, so MF covers that base.

There are quite a few homepage Styles included.  Each of them has the same flat, corporate style.  But, they all deliver a little different look and feel for your website. Each demo style is easy to install.  It just takes a couple of clicks.  If that’s too much, the developer even offers free theme and a demo installation. That’s a  nice feature that can help you get started with a clean, corporate website.  If you are a beginner at WordPress, it’s worth looking into. I remember the first time I tried to install a theme, I wasn’t sure what I was doing. For many of you, that might not be an issue.  It’s nice to have as a fallback, just in case you should happen to need that service.

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Buyvilla

For folks who are looking to set up an online e-commerce shop, WooCommerce is often the tool of choice. There’s a good reason for that, working with WooCommerce, you can establish any sort of online shopping center that you want. The tools are flexible and dynamic, easy to use and Powerful. Ultimately, you can extend WooCommerce with dozens of different add-ons, giving you all the tools you need to have a truly professional shop. You could spend thousands on a proprietary system, but the free WooCommerce setup is a really nice option, particularly for people who are just beginning the process of setting up a shop.

If you want to see more of the best WooCommerce agency themes, check out our full collection of themes.  The themes in that collection all offer a smooth user experience, they are the absolute top themes that you can download. If you want to achieve your goals, finding a theme that is acceptable is the first step. I believe there WordPress theme is a critical component of any successful business. If you are theme is not well put together, if it is scattered and unpleasant to look at, if it is not adaptable or user-friendly, what good does it do you? The first step is always the hardest, but bringing visitors to your site and showing them unorganized, feature filled website can keep them interested in what you have to offer. Making a fantastic first impression is what these themes are all about, and that is a big part of the battle.

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UX Shop

UX Shop shop delivers a fantastic experience for buyers and sellers alike. This theme, which has a perfect five star rating on ThemeForest by the way, allows you to create a multi-vendor Marketplace. That means you can’t allow visitors to register and sell products on your website, sort of like Etsy or eBay. That’s a new trend over the last few years but it’s growing in popularity.

This responsive business theme is an all-around eCommerce solution with Page Builder and responsive design. This theme support touch sliders, typekit, WC vendors and visual composer two. The awesome design quality of this WordPress theme has the potential to help your website perform better than you could have possibly imagined. Not only is it incredibly clean and easy to use this shopping cart theme, but the development support is fast and friendly too.

The UX Shop WordPress theme as an incredible design places to work from, it has the ability to mold itself too many different styles, so it really doesn’t matter what you are selling with this template. There are product slider images, One Click demo data import, support for type kit, WPML support and content sliders 2. The products list are clean and well-organized, there’s an advanced grid system for your shop and this theme is incredibly developer-friendly too. It’s well-documented, the support is fantastic and I think the same could be used for any purpose.

Well I think this template is very, very attractive, the fact remains that not all themes are perfect for every one out there. We all have different wants and needs and new theme is guaranteed to deliver everything to everyone. That’s why we’ve created so many incredibly large and thoroughly researched theme collections.

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Oxygen

Oxygen is one of the best simple, clean and elegant themes I’ve ever seen. This Oxygen theme can be used for nearly any type of eCommerce site. Fashion or electronic gadgets, hand crafted gifts or jewelry, it hardly matters what kind of product you’re selling. The overall style is so clean and fresh, your products will look incredible.  It’s a very big challenge running your own online store so Oxygen helps you make the most of your precious time by making it whole process of managing your store as easy as possible.  You have tons of options to create a custom look for your store with multiple headers, almost unlimited typography choices, unique layouts and more.  Oxygen has been sold over 3,000 times and it’s rating is 4.86 so you can tell this is a high quality theme.

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Marketify

Marketify was one of the first WordPress multi vendor marketplace themes and it’s still among the very best.  Marketify is the premier solution for creating a bold, daring, professional and well-appointed multi-vendor WordPress marketplace and we’d love to show you what this theme is all about.  With thousands of sales already under their belt, Astoundify (that’s the folks who made the theme) have released version 2.0 and it’s got even more great features.  The responsive layout was completely revamped, the latest EDD extension w06ere updated, security was tightened and a lot more.  Marketify is completely loaded with layout possibilities (they actually use widgets instead of a plugin like Visual Composer), so you still have the flexibility to create more awesome designs.  Easy Digital Downloads is supported of course, with it’s front end submissions, commission settings, reviews, a store wallet system, recommended products and wish lists, just to name a few great features.

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MartFury

Hey there, this is another review of a high quality multivendor WordPress theme that we’ve just discovered.  It’s been around for a while now, but it’s new to me.  It’s name is MartFury.

MartFury is a very popular and highly rated multivendor Marketplace team that was released in early 2018. So far, it’s proven to be among the most popular and well-respected Marketplace themes around. This team has been downloaded well over a thousand times and its rating is almost 4.9. MartFury  is modern, it’s flexible and it harnesses the power of WooCommerce to allow you to create a dynamic and fun Marketplace to sell products. It really doesn’t matter what type of stuff you want to market on your website, MartFury works perfectly. With Dokan, WC Vendors, WC Marketplace or any of the other leading multivendor Marketplace plugins, you can establish professional site quickly.

Here’s what the developer has to say about MartFury.

Martfury is a modern and flexible WooCommerce Marketplace WordPress theme. This theme is suited for multi vendor marketplace, electronics store, furnitures store, clothings store, hitech store and accessories store… With the theme, you can create your own marketplace and allow vendors to sell just like Amazon, Envato, eBay.

Here’s another set of themes that might interest you, it’s our collection of multi vendor themes and it’s a great place to find just what you’re looking for.  We’re adding more and more themes every month, so check back to see what’s new!  Perhaps you’d rather see some more outstanding WooCommerce themes?  No matter which collection you look at, you’re going to have a wide array of high quality themes from which to choose.  So, why not get started today?

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Oshine

Oshine is a theme that gets a lot of attention on ThemeForest and I think it deserves to.  There are a lot of reasons why and we’ll get into a lot of them.  This theme is a true multipurpose theme with dozens and dozens of demo sites to show what Oshine is capable of.  There’s a photography demo site that comes with just about every theme, right?  Well Oshine gives you several, there’s a minimalist style, a full screen photography style, designer portfolio and ‘new style’ portfolio and video agency portfolio and a bunch more too.  There are plenty more, creative agencies, modern business, restaurant and café sites, winery, gym, multiple different creative agencies, app landing pages, wedding templates too.  You get a ton of demo sites and every one is eCommerce ready to help you start your online shop.

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Material

Material is a nicely crafted theme that uses WooCommerce, or the shopping cart of your choice, to allow you to sell most any type of product you want.  It was designed with electronics stores and gadget sellers in mind, but why stop there?  Any online store that wants a clean, sleek look will love this theme.  Responsive, well organized and modern, Material is the kind of theme that can be adjusted to fit the look of an existing brand.  So if you already have a brick and mortar presence and you’re looking to expand to eCommerce, this theme can really help you get the job done.  Material’s developer, JWS Themes, has fantastic support and documentation to go with all their themes and Material is no exception.  They’ve included a lot of nice touches like one click demo data installation, three pre-made homepages, a robust theme options panel and tons more.  Worth checking into!

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Slikk

Slikk was designed by Wolf Themes, a developer with well over 20,000 sales on ThemeForest so far and they’re sure to add to that total with Slikk.  They create world class themes and plugins for all sorts of folks in all kinds of industries.  Slikk has several homepage demo sites, I’ve included a couple of them above.  There’s a lookbook home page, coming soon countdown clock page, blogs, grid shops, plenty of internal pages and so much more.  Oh, fine, here’s one more, it’s called the presentation panel.

For more outstanding fashion WordPress themes, you should really have a look at our collection. We’ve got dozens of the very best fashion themes around and we keep adding to that collection as often as we find a new great looking theme that. You can really stretch your legs in that collection, finding pleasurable and encouraging themes that can make your readers jump for joy. Or maybe it’s minimalist WordPress themes you’re searching for?  Either way, our collections of themes are the biggest and best on the web, so you’ll definitely find something you love in one of them.  Style is incredibly important for fashion magazines and eCommerce sites, which is why we’ve done our best to select only the most modern and tasteful, stylish and presentable themes for all of our collections. If you don’t see what you’re looking for there, we might recommend our collection of WooCommerce themes. These juicy themes are knowledgeable and different, we have tried to create a nice blend of WordPress themes that can serve a lot of different content for any type of site.

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Diamond

Diamond is an attractive WordPress eCommerce theme that uses WooCommerce to help you set up a great-looking online shop. This theme was specifically built for watch shops and jewelry stores, though I think that it’s clean look makes it great for selling just about anything. I think that it would also work really well as a fashion store. This is 100% responsive theme offers Mega menu in local menu, Parallax background images, magnify zoom and other image slider features, product tab grid, list of options, there is a post type for building a team profile, employees basically. There is a brand logo slider, infinite product loading option, portfolio post type, testimonials custom post type and a wishlist option. Steam has a little bit of everything and I think that it could work great for any sort of eCommerce project.

If you’d like a little bit of guidance to help you find a fantastic e-commerce theme, have a look at our collection. The topic is a rich one, there are thousands and thousands of different themes out there, each one with a slightly different style and many of them offering unique and popular features. We have gathered up all of the best WordPress Ecommerce themes that we could find and that collection is great place to start to find a wonderful template to build your business. If you see a theme in our collection, you can be guaranteed that it is a high-quality template that’s going to work perfectly for your needs. Also, you might want to take a look at our WooCommerce theme collection. WooCommerce is great for both tangible goods and digital download products, there are a variety of payment gateways available to you and WooCommerce is a very extendable. You can download quite a number of add-ons and aftermarket features that don’t come with the vanilla version, making it one of the most popular and Powerful shopping carts for any content management system.

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Neto

Neto is a flexible, flat styled WordPress Theme specially designed to support e-commerce functions of websites. The theme is compatible with various WordPress business plugins like WooCommerce. It can also be used alongside theme builders to help create comprehensive product layouts and descriptions.

The Neto WordPress Theme is also highly customizable. It allows the use of shortcodes, widgets, and the ability to create unlimited templates. The theme boasts of access to appearance settings that allows changes to the overall color scheme without altering codes. It also allows users to personalize background images, logos, and even add a favicon.

Another business-friendly feature of the Neto theme is its easy integration with social media. With this, guests can easily share content on their profiles which, in effect, helps the business reach a wider audience. The theme is also specially optimized for optimum performance and to obtain higher ranks in search engines. It is also translation ready for the benefit of foreign guests.  The theme’s responsive design also allows access to different devices without sacrificing its functionality. It is both mobile friendly and retina ready to ensure quality display. Finally, Neto promises to deliver constant updates to ensure the theme’s compatibility with the latest versions of WordPress.

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Jevelin

Jevelin is one of the best selling WordPress themes on ThemeForest with over 5,000 sales.  It sports a solid 4.6 rating on ThemeForest too, so I think it’s worthy of inclusion in this list of the best eCommerce WordPress themes.  Built on the Unyson framework with Bootstrap code, Jevelin is compatible with all the plugins and shopping carts you’ll need to run a successful WordPress based store.  Jevelin is perfectly responsive, it’s mobile friendly for both blogging and eCommerce, it’s very well organized for SEO and creating a successful online brand is relatively easy, thanks to the number of custom options you can choose from setting up your store.  You’ll love the nimble style of this theme, the encouraging documentation, the dashing features and the alluring price.

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Float

With an attractive design, plentiful features and a full service eCommerce store, lots of folks have chosen to use the Float WordPress theme to build their online store.  Many WordPress eCommerce templates have static, plain designs and I haven’t seen too many that use parallax, but Float does.  I think it pulls it off quite well too.  With float, you can create a modern, slick looking WooCommerce shop, but if you want to sell digital products, you could choose to go with Easy Digital Downloads too.  I think Float would work particularly well as a digital downloads store.  Right now, if you purchase Float, you actually get a bonus theme for free.  Float offers a 30 day money back guarantee, you can use this GPL theme on as many sites as you want to and you get a full year of support and updates.

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Uncode

This theme is called Uncode, you may have heard of it.  With around 40,000 sales and a near-perfect rating on ThemeForest, plenty of people have.  Built to impress, to showcase products, to help you build a business, Uncode is a high performance miracle of a theme.  With a very fast page load speed, clean code and an even cleaner design, Uncode has carved out a place in history as one of the best themes ever made.  Uncode has so many demo sites to take a look at, it’s kind of ridiculous.  It’s a totally multipurpose eCommerce shop in a box.  The theme options are plentiful and easy to use, the support staff is fast and friendly, this trendy and contemporary theme is simply among the best eCommerce WordPress templates around.

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Shop Isle Pro

This is Shop Isle Pro, another great WooCommerce ready WP theme from Theme Isle.  Shop Isle Pro is responsive, it’s multipurpose and it’s perfect for all sorts of online shops, no matter what kind of product you’re selling.  You can create an awesome front page for your online webstore in just minutes, customizing any setting you want to customize.  While WooCommerce is powerful right out of the box, you can also add on some great functionality with extensions like product addons, affiliate programs, PayPal by Braintree, Stripe or Amazon Pay gateways, WooSubscriptions, coupons, dynamic pricing, shipment tracing and a whole lot more.

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Underwood

Looking for a simple, stylish blog that’s also ready to help you set up a WooCommerce powered online shop?  Well, Underwood may be a great choice for you.  This theme is simple to use, yet incredibly powerful.  Built using the latest Bootstrap code, Underwood is a fine example of a modern, clean and simple multipurpose theme.  With parallax effects, custom color and font selections all powered by a live customizer, you can take Underwood and make it look exactly like you want it to look.  Underwood is optimized for great SEO, it’s got tons of widgetized areas for adding functionality and it’s incredibly user friendly for webmaster and reader alike.  ThemeShift has been around since 2009, so they’re not going anywhere anytime soon and their support is known to be among the best around.

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Hestia Pro

Hestia Pro is a nice looking material design theme for WordPress and it offers eCommerce too, so whatever WordPress shopping cart you choose to employ, Hestia Pro will help you make a successful place on the internet.  I don’t think it matters what kind of products you’re selling, though Hestia Pro’s material design style might lend itself to things like software or SEO services.  Building a WordPress shop doesn’t have to be difficult and with Hestia Pro, it isn’t.  For startups or established businesses, the parallax scrolling, one page layout helps to highlight each section of your content and make it shine.  This theme is well worth having a look at.

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Wright

Wright is an ultra-minimalist theme that’s a solid blend of blog, eCommerce and portfolio.  I really like the minimalist design and all the benefits you get from having a minimalist site.  It doesn’t mean that your website will lack features, but it does mean it will load up lightning fast and look great on any size screen.  That provides a great user experience and makes it more likely that you can convert traffic into sales.  That’s the big thing, if somebody ends up on your website, that’s the hard part.  You really don’t want to lose that sale because your site loads slow or looks janky on somebody’s mobile phone.  That won’t happen with Wright, because it is a completely mobile friendly experience and that makes for the best user experience possible.  Wright could be the best eCommerce minimalist theme around.  To see more clean WordPress themes, check out our collection.

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Kalium

Kalium is a premium theme for WordPress that’s been the choice for thousands of business owners who have also wanted to set up an online eCommerce store, just like you.  Kalium is very popular thanks to it’s simple, modern and clean design, sleek arrangement of content, powerful features and bold typography.  The shopping cart itself is every bit as stylish and with Kalium, your website and your products will look amazing on all devices, because this theme is totally mobile friendly.  Kalium supports WooCommerce of course, but every other shopping cart can work with it too, so don’t feel like you need to be tied to one cart.  With so many out there, a little variety could be just what you need to stand out from the crowd.

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Studio 8

Studio 8 is like a might oak, it’s strong an powerfully built, it’s full of strong branches that can be loaded with tons of products?  Stuff?  I guess maybe it’s not like an oak after all, but it is a well designed WooCommerce WordPress theme that I’m happy to recommend.  There’s a gigantic amounts of features that make for a really enthusiastic reader, or buyer in the case of eCommerce, when they make it to your website.  The design is clean and agreeable, the layout is never jumbled and untidy, and this cheerful design is one that makes your shop like electric, professional and useful.  No matter what type of product, it’s unquestionable that the Studio 8 WordPress theme will never leave you wanting.  You’ll be able to generate a dramatic and exultant WordPress eCommerce site.  There’s no utopia in WordPress themes, but the Studio 8 theme comes close to creating perfection.

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ReHub

ReHub is a wonderful wordpress theme for building a multi-vendor marketplace website.  Let users create an account, log in and sell their products on your website.  Pretty neat trick, right?  I think so too.  Using the Dokan multvendor plugin for WordPress, you can easily do all of that and more.  But ReHub isn’t just a multivendor theme, it’s great for price comparisons, product reviews, gift ideas and shopping, daily deals sites, directories and a whole bunch more.  What can’t you do with ReHub, that’s really the question.  It’s modern, it’s professional and it can do anything you need to do to build a really successful online business.

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Massive Dynamic

Massive Dynamic has proven to be among the most popular themes for building a great online shop.  No matter which eCommerce cart you choose, Massive Dynamic works great.  Easy Digital Downloads, Cart66, Ecwid, WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping cart or the biggest and best of all, WordPress.  No matter which you choose, Massive Dynamic has the style, the tools and the functionality to make a great experience for buyer and seller alike.  Sometimes, multipurpose eCommerce themes can try to do too much, they try to be everything to everyone, but Massive Dynamic walks that fine line with ease.  This theme has several pre-made demo sites and each one can be used to sell products.  Each one is also installable with just a few clicks, which can help speed up the process of starting your website.  If you’re not familiar with how to set up an eCommerce cart, that can be a lifesaver.  For business or blogging, creative portfolios and personal websites, Massive Dynamic is a theme that’s well worth considering.

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Composition

Composition is a little different than many of the other themes in this collection, since it was built to work with the Sell Media plugin.  That’s sort of like Easy Digital Downloads, it’s an eCommerce plugin that allows you to sell digital files, prints and other stuff.  So, it’s one way to build a store online, but there’s a lot more going on with Composition.  This theme is really simple to customize, you’ll have the ability to visually arrange your blog, portfolio and more, making the perfect homepage to welcome your visitors and turn them into customers.  There are unlimited galleries, plentiful widgetized areas and automatic updates to make sure your site works perfectly with WordPress, every time.  Add in a clean, responsive design and you’ve got a full featured, user friendly theme that’s perfect for a stock photography store.

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Kleanity

Less is more, that’s an old saying and sometimes it can be true with regard to web design. A simple design, like the one offered with this theme, can allow your users to find exactly what they’re looking for without any sort of distraction. This template is great for businesses that want a clean and corporate style theme, it showcases your content with a minimal style that squarely focuses your readers attention on the products that you have to sell. I love the good layers page builder, it’s one of the best Drag and Drop content Builders around. It’s incredibly simple to use and can produce a very high quality shopping website. There are multiple headers and Footers, an infinite amount of layouts possible and each and every design produces a fluid and mobile-friendly, Unforgettable user experience.

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Arnold

The Arnold WordPress theme is a minimal portfolio template for Creative people who want to blend and attractive and simple looking for folio with the power of WooCommerce. Actually, with this Arnold WordPress theme, you can create a clean and beautiful online shop using any of the most popular shopping cart plugins. If you’d like to sell digital products, you might prefer to use Easy Digital downloads, probably the leading cart for that type of product. No matter which shopping cart you choose, this clean and modern template allows you to build beautiful portfolios, have an amazing blog and sell some stuff too.

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CoupShop

ThemesKingdom has made several really attractive themes for eCommerce sites and none has has more of an impact that CoupShop.  The CoupShop WordPress theme was inspired by glossy print magazines and with all the white space, the typography centered layouts, big and impactful images and thoughtfully placed calls to action, it’s a very successful theme.  It can be a real challenge to run your own eCommerce website so picking the right theme is critical.  With CoupShop, you get a platform that’s stable, attractive and flexible enough to work for nearly any sort of product.  CoupShop has what it takes to be a sort of partner for you in building a very successful online business.

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LaBomba

LaBomba is a WooCommerce based theme that looks a little different than many other eCommerce themes, so I though it might be worth highlighting what this theme can accomplish.  Specifically built for fashion trends and online clothing shops, LaBomba is perfect for creating a combination lookbook, portfolio and blog in one finely knitted package.  I couldn’t think of any other clothing reference, let me know if you think of something better.  Okay, so for a fashion store, you get multiple headers to choose from, unlimited colors too.  There are almost two dozen different home page layouts and Visual Composer support means you can build even more, if you want to.  I think the clean design and the number of features make it a really good eCommerce template.

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Ultra

This is Ultra, a premium quality WordPress theme with the ability to let you create a full functioning multivendor marketplace using Dokan, a premium quality but free WordPress multivendor plugin.  Ultra is incredibly flexible, because it’s powered by Themify’s flexible drag and drop page builder and framework.  That lets you create a site that perfectly fits your needs, not making you adapt to a pre-made theme that has no flexibility.  With Dokan installed, you can instantly turn your site into a complete multivendor site.  It may take you a while to compete with sites like Amazon, Shopify, eBay or Magento, but Dokan does make it possible to get your foot in the door.  Dokan is fast and easy to use, integrates with WooCommerce, BigCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, it’s reliable and growing in popularity.  The combination is a powerful one and you may find that Ultra, plus Dokan, is the solution you’ve been waiting for.

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Create

ThemeTrust has made their finest theme yet, a powerful new one called Create, and it’s a multi-purpose theme, WooCommerce ready with a fantastic page builder option built in.  Create has a slick, modern look and there’s no amount of customization that you can’t do.  Everything is on the table, and with WooCommerce installed, you’ll be able to set up an online shop with ease.  There are a ton of functions in this template.  The drag and drop page builder kicks things off with a wide variety of layout designs at your fingertips.  Then there’s the retina ready and responsive design, always a huge hit.  There are multiple headers available, a powerful options panel on the back end and a built in mega-menu for delightfully intuitive navigation.  The blog can be standard, masonry or full width, which gives you flexibility to design the website you’ve always wanted, not what you can because of design limitations of the theme itself.

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EmallShop

Compatible with the latest versions of both WooCommerce and WordPress, the eMall Shop WordPress theme was built with Bootstrap for fast loading and incredible SEO performance.  This template is incredibly flexible, since it works hand in hand with Visual Composer to make your site looks just the way you need it to look.  Multilingual support, RTL too, that means eMall Shop can help you sell products all around the world.  I love themes that come complete with one click demo data installation and that’s what eMallShop brings to the table.  For general products of all kinds, sports stores, beauty shops, kids toy stores and plenty more, eMall Shop works for any type of website that you can imagine.  If it’s in the mall, it could be on your computer instead.

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Goodstore

With almost two dozen demo sites, Good Store is just that, a good store theme for any type of products and some of the designs showcase fashion, shoes, electronics, handbags and plenty more.  The options are limitless.  The great thing about this theme, it’s complete flexibility.  That means style, features and layout, they can all be adapted and adjusted until you have a website that’s exactly what you’re looking for.  There’s demo content available to install, fourteen translations are already included, so this is a theme that’s made for international audiences.  SEO optimized for fast load times and great rankings on the SERPs, this theme is easy to customize and, of course, it’s responsive and mobile friendly too.

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Shop, Ultra Simple eCommerce WordPress Theme

Shop calls itself the ultimate e-commerce team. Well, I’ll be the judge of that. I do think that it has a slim and trim style that could be great for almost any sort of project. If you’re selling fashion, tech gadgets or even digitally downloadable products, Shop is a fine example of what is possible with woocommerce or your favorite e-commerce plugin. This template has a variety of short codes, tons of different page templates and a responsive grid style that is fabulous. There are featured videos, gravity forms compatibility and a ton more. If you want to make selling products easy as it is profitable, this theme is a great starting point. If you need to customize, easy to use and it delivers a massive amount of user experience right out of the box. You don’t even need a lot of extra plugins to achieve a great-looking website with this template.

Created by Organic Themes, here’s what the developer has to say about their template. I couldn’t agree more with everything they have to say about it. I think this theme is a really fantastic example of modern e-commerce themes. Sometimes, themes rely too much on page builder plugins and that is not a trap that organic themes falls into. Organic Themes uses their own proprietary system to create delightful end results.

Shop was created to work with the popular and free WooCommerce and Exchange plugins. Creating a beautiful storefront has never been easier. Begin selling products within moments after setting up the theme.

The design is clean, modern and flexible — accommodating a wide variety of brands and products. The featured slider is capable of showcasing products or posts with the simple switch of an option. The theme is constructed from our Seed framework — featuring a responsive grid, retina optimization, a variety of page templates, shortcodes, featured videos, WooCommerce and Gravity Forms compatibility and much more. Shop makes selling products online easy as pie.

Okay, so that is someone out of words describing this theme, but what about the looks? It’s really important to have a stylish looking theme, even if it has tons of features. Features aren’t everything, looks or something. I’m not sure what any of that means. I really don’t care.

You know how much we love a great eCommerce theme, that’s why we have taken the time to select dozens of fantastic options for you if that’s what you’re looking for. All we do, all day, day after day, we find amazing Ecommerce themes to help you run a successful business. That’s it, that’s all. Seriously, that’s all we do. Sometimes it gets to be a bit of a grind, but we just keep at it. If you need a fantastic theme to sell some products online, Shop is a fantastic option. I like to say fantastic, fantastic is a fantastic work. Anyway, I think that you will enjoy this theme, however, there are multiple other e-commerce options out there that could fit the bill for what you were looking for. That’s why they invented horse racing, that’s a phrase that I’ve heard in the past. I’m not sure that it actually is. Anyway, have a look at that collection, I’m sure there’s something that you might enjoy.

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X

Want a true powerhouse of a responsive WordPress theme?  Want the absolute best in documentation, support, features and options?  Then you may want X, which is another powerhouse of a WordPress theme that can be used to create any type of website with WordPress.  It really is that feature filled.

X is one among the hottest, most powerfully dominant, special and superbly created WordPress templates you can get. But yet those terms cannot tell the full, unabridged story describing precisely what is possible with X.  X is a fairly in demand for a lot of good reasons, let’s address some of them. This responsive, incredibly powerful theme is 100% fluid, permits you to modify the delightful typography fast and without much trouble, gives crystal clear website navigation, is incredible if you want to create a one webpage web sites and tons more brilliant capabilities

This ultra powerful as well as stylish WordPress theme is extremely adaptable in the way it’s built, lets you create customized background patterns or images and a lot more.  One can fashion outstanding portfolios and it’s also eCommerce friendly to promote wonderful things over the internet.  This stunning responsive, multipurpose website theme is completely Retina display friendly, rapidly responsive and gives you stunning BuddyPress compatibility also.  X presents a powerful end user experience and also an incredible admin experience too, as it’s quite well built to seem amazing on any gadget and extraordinarily hassle-free to tailor-make to look and feel just like you want it to appear.

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[freelance-arc]

Learning by doing, and how not to do it. 4 Things I learnt from my first business.

Guitar Solutions. My first business.

What an experience. So much time spent, and late nights. Trying and trying and trying again.

GS is on hiatus right now. It has been for a few years. It may well be forever at this point. I keep toying with the idea of following through with the big rebrand I had lined up shortly before I gave up and kicking it back into gear.

(Note -I did give up. I had a bad stint after the biggest opportunity that had ever presented for GS became a sour, arduous experience. I set it to one side, I needed a break, and never picked it up again).

The knowledge is there. The enthusiasm’s there. But, so is the key takeaway from it all.

You can’t just start a business and expect it to be financially viable. 

A successful business needs a little more thought than none at all.  I started GS because I needed more money, I wanted more money. I looked at my skills and thought “What can I do, I can fix guitars”, and went from there.

Musicians, as a rule, don’t tend to have a whole bunch of cash anyway. Especially after a couple of years in 2008 when the recession hit. People were literally losing their jobs. Things like a spanky service on the guitar was just too luxurious to consider.

If I’d considered it at all, I’d have realised that it was a very small marketplace, and I was going to struggle.

Now, any one of today’s sales and marketing gurus will tell you that getting right down to specifics is good. Find your niche. Make it super focused. 

This is great when the people in that niche have plenty of cash to buy your services. But if they aren’t there, it’s gonna be an uphill battle.

Thing is, those clients were there. I knew they were. I wanted them but was too scared to approach them. The impostor syndrome was so strong I didn’t dare promise them anything, which didn’t matter cos I didn’t approach them at all.

I didn’t consider learning to sell cos I thought of it as pushy, sleazy absolutely not for me or my customers.

People would ask me about work and I’d pitch them, and 4/5 times they’d say “Cool, I’ll give you a shout on payday”. Payday never came.

The most salesy I ever got would be to say, “I can squeeze you in this week, before XYZ for *name drop*, and we can sort out the other stuff (payment) after”.

This improved things a bit. The workflow increased, happy customers came back. Until the “pay me later” bit reared its head and I ended up waiting 2 months for payment for a big job. It shouldn’t have been a problem except that I’d sunk all the assets I had into paying the supplier to complete this one. Deposits I’d put down on items to buy and sell were forfeited. It cost me more to come back from than I made.

I rethought the pay me later approach. It was a hard lesson in Liquidity, the lifeblood cash flow of a business. 

If the cash flow stops, the business stops.

It served a second lesson too. Serving friends. The guy I did the work for was a friend, in a locally known touring band, they were doing well. It made total business sense, plus my mate wasn’t going to let me down on his end of the bargain, was he.....?

There’s lessons in owning your own business that you’ll NEVER expect. You end up doing things you never saw coming, and you get to see people you think you know really well in a very different light. 

Honestly, now, I avoid working with anyone I have a prior relationship with. Just in case.

I wasn’t gonna let myself be a mug again. It was the second time that working with a mate had burned me. The first time I started teaching lessons with another friend of mine. I put the word around, sorted a venue to teach in, hand wrote the lesson plans and teaching materials, and dealt with the contact with the client - a lady looking for guitar lessons for her two daughters, about 9 and 11 years old, during the summer holidays. The first lesson went really well, we got paid and I split the cash with him 50-50 like we agreed. 

The second week came, we started the lesson. He was hungover and swore, albeit casually in front of the girls. NOT COOL. I told him that if that’s how he felt then I’d do the lesson without him. They never rebooked. My reputation as a teacher was dead, thanks to my friend.

So, be very careful who you trust your time, money and reputation with.

Anyways, I persevered. It took a little while, but basically, I lent the business the cash from my own pocket. I wasn’t about to let all that effort lose steam and go to nothing. Custom was steady but slow. I tried to get people engaging online, to interact with the posts I found. I’d get a like. One post had a few shares, and no-one even mentioned GS. I was gutted.

I know now that I was trying to market, but didn’t know it. I thought if I post cool content then people will talk about GS. This is kinda true, cos content marketing IS a thing, but it’s one aspect. 

You need a call to action (tell people what to do - call me, email, message here, get in touch for your 10% discount, today only!) But you need to tell them how you can help them. Don’t just say “We’re so great, we’re the best, blah blah”. 

Try “We’re the best. We’re the best because whatever instrument you send to us will be so improved, and make your playing so great, whoever you like will fall at your feet pleading to go out with you! Oh, and the record company will offer you so much cash you’ll be crushed”.

Well, not quite like that, it’s long-winded for a start. But what it does is portray the benefits of your services. They imagine the hotties falling at their feet, and swimming in cash. 

Some people care about the height of the action on a guitar neck. Others care about it cos they know it’ll make them shred and look SICK. AS. FUCK.

Y’see the difference? 

What you do is one thing, but how it relates to the customer is the important bit, so tell them that.

On top of all this, I learnt about registering as self-employed and doing tax returns, which aren’t nearly as terrible as you think they are, getting adverts in relevant magazines, buying domains and hosting. Trying to set up a website (I was using the wrong platform).... The list goes on.

Choose your niche.

Cash is king

Be careful who you let in.

Learn to market yourself. Tell your customers how your services benefit them.

Read this. Remember the pitfalls I discovered. Set your business up anyway (after relevant research!) and GO FOR IT!

Good luck!

Follow Freelancerskil for more

[wolfliving]

Tech he won't touch in 2019

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/04/my_2019_resolution_not_to_buy_any_of_this_rubbish/

TECH I WILL NOT TOUCH IN 2019

A smart speaker

Any IoT device

An autonomous vehicle

Anything using fingerprint access

A robot

Bitcoin

AI

Choose-your-own-adventure entertainment

Travel sector tech

Personal voice assistants for retail

Any computer game invented after 1994

The new Doctor Who's new Sonic Screwdriver

Music on vinyl

What, you've actually PAID to own a mediocre mono speaker that listens to your farts when you think no-one else is around and you don't consider that (a) poor value, (b) creepy as fuck and (c) slightly less useful than the SodaStream your Mum bought for Christmas 1978? No thank you, I do not wish a digital sneak in the room to secretly record my breathing pattern and mistakenly order 1,000 toilet rolls each time my cat sneezes.

The most apt example of the Idiot of Things has to be the Ekster 3 Smart Wallet. It contains a GPS tracker so that you will never lose it, or at least know where it is when you do. It even responds to voice command via smartphone app and smart speaker skill to make your misplaced wallet produce a ringing sound. This should be especially appreciated by night-time house breakers who might be having trouble locating your valuables in the dark. "Psst, Alexa, where's 'my' wallet?" Ta-da! Here I am, Mr Burglar!

I may as well say a flying car, or indeed a flying pig. That said, I do wish Apple would hurry up and develop an electric car so we can have a laugh when owners discover that the driver, passengers and luggage must all pass through just one door as all the others have been removed, they'll need a proprietary handle adapter to open it. After 14 months, the vehicle will run at 10 mph maximum with dim headlights in order to preserve the battery.

Vein authentication is no longer secure, apparently. Nor do you need a bag of jelly babies (Tom Baker, please note). A wax cast of your hand is all that's required now, so expect a rise in celebrity break-ins to be traced back to Mme Tussauds.

One in four women would have sex with a robot, according to this survey. In that case, she can buy her bloody own.

I was fascinated to watch my initial investment of 0.00002232 BTC, worth less than a penny at the beginning of 2013, proceed to reach the giddy sterling value of 33 pence by Christmas 2017 before settling down to 7 pence this week. This is not a currency, this is road rash. I am still intrigued by blockchain and can envision a purpose for cryptocurrency as a concept but Bitcoin is exclusively for fools, liars and conmen.

Beware of anything described as "AI" because this invariably means it isn't AI: it's just programmed that way. We should rebrand AI as PS = "Programmed Software".

Forgive me, Black Mirror fans, but you can stuff that idea up your RPG. When Squaxx Dek Thargo sought their thrill-power with Judge Dredd role-playing books and a couple of dice in 1985, it felt pretty naff even then. Choose my own? I choose not to.

I am bombarded with press releases from travel industry tech companies that insist their products promise both enhanced digitalisation and more self-service options to travellers. In other words, if you want a decent holiday, arrange it yourself. This will of course cost you more, while pushing more people currently working in the hospitality sector out of a job.

Brilliant concept, this one. After all, talking chat bots perform so well in other industries, don't they? Ah but these voice assistants also use voice recognition to provide customers with a er… custom shopping experience. No thanks: it will probably tell me Hitler was right, recognise my cat and promptly place an order for 100 swastika-embossed toilet rolls.

That's just me. All games since 1994 were imitations. Or shite.

What are you, a fucking 8-year-old? It's a TV series for children.

If I want to relive that good old record-player sound experience, I'll just listen to an MP3 while the tumble drier is running with a pair of wet jeans and three loose marbles in it, occasionally tapping the |< and >| buttons randomly to replay or skip a couple of seconds.

That's enough predictions; you're depressed as it is without me making it worse....

[wouldadepressedpersonmakethis]

phone wars

STORE 1: “Mobicity”

IDRIS ELBA (45, reserved by kate aa) - store manager: super intense!!!!! runs his store like he’s running an army!!!! treats every sale like a life or death situation!!! has some raymond holt vibes too??? like this, this, this, and this are all him! expects peRFECTION from his employees!!!! the interview process is inSANE!!!!!! definitely treats the other stores and their employees like mortal enemies!!!!! his office is conveniently located so that he can spy on the store two stores. also has some john mulaney’s dad vibes. “you have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair” “god can’t hear you” “how are you better than a nazi?” “let’s change the subject” “1 black coffee”

MICHEAL B. JORDAN (31 , reserved by kate aa) - didn’t believe that IDRIS ELBA was a real person but heard stories from his sister. forged an impressive resume and got a job as his assistant manager. got the job just so he could mess w/ idris for fun???? super talented at pretending like he’s got his shit together when in reality he’s super lazy (except when it comes to playing elaborate pranks). secretly dating melissa benoist

RICHARD AYOADE (41) - salesperson, always nervous!!! brilliant but no social skills, terrified of idris, talks fast, throws up when he gets nervous, “i’m okay as long as i don’t think about it!” you could spill soup on him and he’d probably apologize to you

KATIE MCGRATH (35) - idris’s assistant; once dated chris pine; may or may not have gotten this job just to desTROY him; super ambitious/intelligent; could be doing any number of things w/ her life but she’s also kind of petty; has a lot of meryl streep in the devil wears prada vibes, does have a lot of respect for idris but also has plans to over-throw him; can be intense?????? only cares about 1 person (her sister/cousin/bff???) still attracted to chris pine but u won’t hear her say that

ZOEY DEUTCH (23) - katie’s assistant; STRESS LEVEL IS CONSTANTLY A 11/10; def has anne hathaway’s job in tdwp; got this job by mistake; is the furthest thing from organized; applied for a janitor position b/c that’s all she’s qualified to do here but somehow her resume got mixed up??? *** she thinks it was a mistake but it was actually just a prank that MBJ played*** faking it until she makes it??? or rather until she gets fired heh. pretending to be an uptight harvard grad but instead hardly graduated hs and doesn’t know how to adult; may or may not have spent her entire first pay check on fuzzy socks and mozzarella sticks.

??? another lady 

STORE 2: “What’s App”

CHARLIE DAY (42) -- an idiot, super chill and laid back, somehow always accidentally thwarts the others’ plans to destroy him! a human disaster but somehow everything just works out for him. his store is a mess tbh??? very unorganized but somehow the most successful of the three??

DYLAN O’BRIEN (26) -- wanted to work for store #1 with a deep passion and intensity!! looks @ idris elba as his idol??? potentially calls him dad accidentally a lot??? idk its weird and IDRIS ELBA got super annoyed with him constantly applying to work for him so instead he sent him to work at store 2 as a “spy”. he takes this role suPER seriously and basically thinks he’s james bond. never gets anything at all helpful for idris elba. has a weird and elaborate fake back story for going undercover. most people can tell he is a “spy”?

ZENDAYA (21) (reserved by lizzy) - younger sister to MBJ and GMR. college student. this is 100% the best summer job she’s ever had. super unmotivated to do well most of the time and just tricks #2 to do all of her work for her. loves just to sit back and watch the chaos unfold.

KRYSTEN RITTER (36 , reserved by kate aa) - IT, monotone voice, always wears black, likes to pretend that she’s a satanist to fuck with people, surrounded by idiots, hates everyone, do not engage her in psychological warfare b/cs she will deSTROY you

BLAKE LIVELY (30 , reserved by kate aa) - heavy beatrice/eugenie vibes~ under skills she listed: i know how to do makeup and have an iphone, only got and has kept this job b/c her manager is as clueless as she is???? does try to be helpful but honestly makes things worse, doesn’t understand you have to put in a full eight hours a day??? often leaves for several hours at at time for lunch??? sometimes just doesn’t come back??? grew up super wealthy and was recently disinherited by her parents after she got into a huge fight w/ them over something stupid?? too proud to go crawling back but tbh she is def drowning in the real world.

MAX GREENFIELD (37) LOUD, yells a LOT, hired as the new brand manager. is grossed out 24/7 by the state of the store; sUPER dramatic; always saying how he’s going to have a heart attack working here (probably will tbh), also says he’s going to die of a rare disease working w/ charlie day (also probably true), has goals to rebrand this as a luxury phone store (closer in style to Oasis vs. a garbage). has his work cut out for him 

STORE 3: “Oasis”

CHRIS PINE (37, reserved by lizzy) -- super wealthy!!!, spoiled!!!! a huge ass!!!!! his father is the CEO but he wanted his son to work his way up the ranks on his own vs. just handing the business over to him. has become manager here but that’s as far as he’s gotten. will do whatever it takes to make his branch the most successful!!!! soooo dramatic!!!!! the level of bitchiness in him is absurd!!! definitely considers IDRIS ELBA to his his (1) true enemy!!!!!! def considers manager #2 to be worthless and beneath his notice (don’t mention that he’s actually his biggest competition)!!! has probably won the shithead of the year award. hits on his assistant 24/7 has anger management issues

GUGU MBATHA-RAW (35) - michael b. jordan’s older sister. chris pine’s secretary. the sweetest person in the world!!!!!!! does NOT deserve to work for someone like chris pine. doesn’t realize how much of an awful person he is just because she can’t believe anyone could be that awful???? would come home and tell her siblings about work and the rivalry and neither of them could believe it but then they all got jobs at the other two stores just to see if it was what gugu had said ... turns out its even better.

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT (50, reserved by lizzy) - hired by chris pine’s dad to keep him in line and make sure that he doesn’t do anything to harm the family’s or the company’s reputation. it is a fulltime job!!!! constantly stressed!!!! constantly like: idk what i expected!?!?!? keeps trying to talk sense to chris pine but that’s like talking to a brick wall??? sometimes tries to tell him not to do something in the hopes that he will actually do it ... but that never works either ... will probably die from a heart attack soon. spends his days apologizing to everyone  

MELISSA BENOIST (29, reserved by lizzy) - secretly dating michael b. jordan, her job is basically to keep everyone she knows alive???? helP, loves MBJ a lot but he does stress her out sometimes, kind of OCD, works too hard, super driven, just needs to relax, honestly hates this job but just holding it while she finishes up med school, bffs w/ zoey, somehow emily thinks they are bffs??? but melissa doesn’t have the heart to tell her that they aren’t

EMILY BLUNT (35, taken by kate aa) mary eileen vibes~ An Author™ (but not really) trolls her amazon reviews and obsesses over every bad one, hardly does any work? is “in love” with TIMOTHY and is convinced that he is in love with her too even though he’s blatantly told her that he is not, thinks they can’t be together b/c they are co-workers and that they are involved in some kind of forbidden romance???? is the office manager and has def put a lot of personal expenses on it w/ shaky, at best, justifications for why they needed to be charged to the company

JERMAINE CLEMENT (?) method actor. currently is trying to get a role as a vampire. never breaks character. it gets weird. 

STORE 4: a fro-yo shop that’s stuck in the middle of the war zone “Sprinkles on Top”

DREAMA WALKER (32) - believes all you need is a hug and some frozen yogurt to have a good day!!!! but the arrival of the three competing phone stores is testing everything she thinks she knows!!!!! her shop has now become hostile territory b/c all of her customers are mostly just the workers on break and they all just stare each other down!!!!!!! has become super aggressive in her attempts to try to get everyone to just get along and be happy!!!

CHRIS O’DOWD? JAKE JOHNSON (38-40 reserved by lizzy) - watched too many nature documentaries on netflix, feels like he morally needs to be a vegetarian now but can’t stop eating meat, so instead he justifies himself by making up elaborate stories about how the chicken he’s eating has unforgivable character flaws, talks at length about this to the customers? doesn’t have great social skills,has conversations with his cat more than w/ actual people; calls himself the alchemist b/c he once managed to burn his laundry, “i didn’t even know you could do that!”

NICK ROBINSON (23 , reserved by kate aa) - has a mild peanut allergy but took this job anyway. “i live life on the edge” ~ nick “you don’t” ~everyone else, has had a crush on ZENDAYA, got this job to be close to her after they went to different colleges? loves bad jokes, a Nerd, writes fanfiction, has won employee of the month every month since he was hired but tbh his competition isn’t that hard to beat, both proud and embarrassed to see his picture up on (the wall) so many times,

JON BERNTHAL? BEN BARNES?  (reserved by kate aa)- actually a hitman and this job is just a cover, honestly a terrible liar and everyone can tell what he actually does but pretend they don’t??? inSANELY good at his hitman job ... not so good at serving frozen yogurt? doesn’t have any customer service skills tbh, honestly comes off as pretty terrifying? looks @  everyone like he might just kill you, tbh dreama is a little afraid to fire him?? doesn’t look like he works here???

ANNA KENDRICK (33, reserved by lizzy) - always come to work hungover, the queen of TMI, hits on everything and anything that moves, tbh a sexual harassment situation just waiting to happen, dreama’s younger sister/cousin and was only given this job as a favor, tbh is not working out as well as dreama had hoped.

AWKWAFINA (29) has killed every plant she has ever owned (doesn’t stop her from getting more!), dumps all the toppings on her fro yo. constantly is eating ~free~ frozen yogurt and doesn’t realize that after her 1 cup a day limit, the rest comes out of her paycheck. still lives with her parents. lOUD. ZERO FILTER. will say whatever is on her mind at any time. is TERRIBLE with secrets and is pretty sure she’s gonna drop to someone that melissa and michael are dating and get them both fired! yay! bffs w/ melissa benoist, 

[igotbigideas]

VeggieTales 2018

He y’all! How’s everyone been?

I know I haven’t been very active here since, well....

...forever.

But I just wanted to put some stuff out there about VeggieTales and it’s future as a franchise and as a series.

I’ve noticed three big things that have come up recently in the Veggie World, and I wanted to bring them to attention as best I can to the community.

1) VeggieTales is rebranding itself again.

For the past couple of weeks on all of the official VeggieTales social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), the original designs have been used in their posts. Not once have they mentioned or used any reference to and/or from the Netflix series in their posts. I find it very odd this choice was made as they clearly established their social media presence with the new character designs for the past 3 or 4 years. But it seems they are, in fact, rebranding and focusing on the old VeggieTales. Examples include many throwback posts and trivia to older shows and episodes if the original series. And did I forget to mention the old designs are back...? I did? Okay, nevermind them.

2) Someone emailed Big Idea’s customer service and got some interesting news...

A YouTuber by the name of “DudeTomato” uploaded a video about a potential release this holiday season from Big Idea, and at this point in Veggie History, that’s a pretty big deal. It’s a legitimately interesting video. You can check it out here: https://youtu.be/Z8kAzFEp4jo

3) Phil Vischer has been busy writing!

Trusty old VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer. I listen to Phil Visvher’s podcast quite regularly, and most recently there’s been a big change for Phil and his friends Christian Taylor and Skye Jathani. They’ve had to reformat the podcast to fit Phil new schedule, which, in this case, involves a lot more (you guessed it) writing! He’s said he’s working on a couple of books and a POTENTIAL NEW TV SERIES. Now, he didn’t say it was specifically or even implie its a VeggieTales, but I still think this news is noteworthy to the subject. I can’t help but try and connect the dots back to. The veggies. Heh...go figure.

So those things have been circling around my mind lately. I wanted to get them off my chest and hear from the small but mighty community of VeggieTales fans here on Tumblr.

So do what you guys think about what’s going on. Do you think it means anything? Are we really getting a new episode? Are the old veggies coming back? Is Phil Vischer writing for VeggieTales again? Am I just asking pointless questions?! Is the canoe wood or aluminum?!?!

...

...Heh. I got a little carried away there. Anyway...

Please reblog and spread the word. Feel free to add your opinion to my post! I’d love to hear from you all. I’d love to bring out the community again.

Well, that’s all from me I guess. Thanks for reading! I’m honored if you got this far down the post. I don’t I would have made it myself. ;)

Oh and one more thing. I’m gonna make a hashtag you can use if you continue this post.

It’s #veggies2018.

Nothing fancy (despite the chosen font) but it should get the job done if needed.

I hope to see and hear more from you soon!

[nickgerlich]

It’s A Burger Flap, Jack

If there is one marketing activity that is simultaneously risky, expensive, and difficult, it is rebranding. Once customers have come to identify with your brand (good or bad), it can be darn near impossible to change that in their mind.

Like when everyone knows you for pancakes, but you insist on being a burger joint.

Unless you have spent the last week in a cave, and specifically yesterday, you know that IHOP (the International House of Pancakes) was up to something. Starting last week it teased us on social media by flipping the “p” into a “b,” leaving us hanging as to what it would be. Bacon? Blintzes? Or in my case, Beer?

Alas, the “b” is for burgers, and we are supposed to listen to IHOB’s serious promise to also deliver the goods from lunch on into the evening. The chain has announced seven new gourmet steak burgers that, they hope, will solidify the 1800-unit chain in consumer minds as a burger destination, not just breakfast.

Now before you run to conclusions, IHOP is not really changing its name to IHOB. The company’s president says that one store in Hollywood will have a new sign out front, and possibly a few others. For all other units, it is business as usual, but with a new menu. Still, given the social media outcry yesterday, you would think that the company had completely given up on breakfast.

It only took a few minutes before tweets and lampoon graphics from Wendy’s, Burger King, and Whataburger began showing up in newsfeeds, even if they completely missed the public relations stunt this is all about. And therein lays yet another challenge in rebranding: social media is like an uncontrollable fire, and once it starts, it is hard to extinguish.

But back to burgers.

IHOP has been around since 1958, born a year before me. It has always had burgers on the menu, in spite of its time-of-day self-limiting name. It was their choice to focus on breakfast, unlike other chains at the time that chose no focus other than American diner food (like Denny’s, Sambo’s, Big Boy, and others). It was a calculated move in so doing, but as in all branding decisions, they become your own prison of sorts.

Here, have a paint brush. See that corner over there? Start painting toward it.

And that is exactly what IHOP has done. It’s just that their focus on a day-part caused people to dissociate it with other meal times (not counting for the folks who can be seen arriving at 2:05 a.m., right after the bars close). IHOP did a good job owning breakfast, but had little on lunch and dinner, even if it has had a full menu for 60 years.

While IHOP certainly garnered lots of PR traction the last week, I will join the others in saying this was a bad move. The burger market is already crowded, both at the low end with fast-food purveyors from McDonald’s to Carl’s, Jr., and on the upper end, from Smash Burger to Red Robin, Fuddrucker’s, and more. Who is IHOP to think they can suddenly wiggle in among these established peers?

Consider the opposite: Red Robin has decided to add a gourmet line of pancakes to its menu. Fuddrucker’s will now feature omelets. Wendy’s will offer table service.

Right. Not going to happen.

Now to be fair, many chains have tried to expand their offerings and break out of their self-imposed day-parts. McDonald’s added the Egg McMuffin in 1972. Starbux has been valiantly testing a variety of measures, from sandwiches to beer and wine, in an effort to entice people in the afternoon and evening. And Taco Bell has added a breakfast line-up as well.

But none of them went so far as to try to change their name, and thus, their entire corporate identity. They are all the same companies they once were, all trying in one way or another to make the best use of the 168 hours they have each week to do business.

That IHOP would even jest...and it really is in jest, albeit misguided...to change its name in a rebranding effort was begging for ridicule from the press and in social media. At best, they might sell a few more burgers. At worst, they will leave consumers wondering what the hell just happened.

Kind of like me. Can anyone say New Coke?

Dr “Pancakes FTW“ Gerlich

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/nickgerlich/itsaburge

[jreadhd]

How to Decide on a Business Name: Tools, Tips, and Strategies

There are dozens of considerations entrepreneurs have to keep in mind when launching a new company, from the logo to the product to the packaging. The business name, however, may be the most important of all.

There are over 30 million small businesses in the U.S., according to the U.S Small Business Administration. That means you have to go above and beyond to stand out. The right name can help you do just that.

If you’re stuck on what to call your business or just want to make sure your chosen name ticks all the right boxes, I’m here to help.

In this article, I’ll cover my top tips for picking a winning business name, show some examples of what a great business name looks like, and even let you in on a sneaky way to get a load of business name ideas fast.

10 Tips to Pick a Business Name

Your business name can be almost anything you want it to be. As long as it’s legal and isn’t already in use, you’re good to go. However, there are several best practices most legal and marketing experts agree on.

I recommend the following tips to make sure your business gets off to the best start possible.

1. Ensure the Business Name Is Not Copyrighted or Trademarked

The first step in picking a business name is to make sure it doesn’t infringe any copyrights or trademarks. You can search copyright records and trademark records online.

I’d recommend going one step further and make sure it’s possible to trademark your brand name. You never know what the future will bring, after all. Even if you plan to keep your business small, I strongly recommend making sure it’s possible to copyright and trademark your brand.

Not doing so could land you in hot water years down the line. Just look at Apple. When Steve Jobs started the company, he chose Apple’s name because he was a fan of the Beatles (their recording label was called Apple Records).

There wasn’t any conflict initially because the two companies operated in completely separated industries. That was until Apple launched the iPod and the iTunes store, however. When they started operating in the same industry, Jobs quickly found himself saddled with a lawsuit.

2. Ensure the Business Name Isn’t Already Taken

This is a no-brainer, but it’s important to mention. Ideally, your business name will be unique and not used by any other business in existence. At the very least, it shouldn’t be used in any way by other companies operating in your industry.

A quick Google search can help you out here. If any results or domains come up that suggest another company is already using your name, either as a business name or as the name of one of their products, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

3. Ensure the Business Name Is Descriptive

You want customers to have an idea of what your business does just by hearing your name. You don’t have to know anything about TripAdvisor to know it is in the travel industry or that Burger King sells burgers.

Don’t be so descriptive that your name is downright boring, however. Seattle Plumber Inc. isn’t exactly inspiring and doesn’t separate your brand from any other plumbers in the city. First Call Plumbing is much catchier and easier to remember.

4. Make Sure the Matching Domain Name Is Available

Coming up with a brilliant business name is just the start. Before you can commit to it completely, make sure a matching domain name is available.

If it is, buy it .

If not, consider coming up with another business name. Having a domain name that is the exact match of your brand can be a real boost, particularly when it comes to SEO .

If your heart is set on a specific name, then all is not lost. There are several strategies you can use if your domain name is unavailable . Adding extra words or extending the name of your brand in your URL is becoming increasingly common.

5. Get Creative

This is your chance to embrace your inner copywriter and let your imagination and creativity run wild. Don’t be afraid to make something up. Almost three-quarters (72 percent) of the best brand names use made-up words or acronyms.

There are a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, existing words already mean something to many of your potential customers. You’ll need to decide whether this is a good or bad thing. Second, competitors may well be using the same or similar words.

6. Don’t Choose a Business Name That Is Hard to Pronounce or Spell

You’ll want your brand name to be accessible for everyone. That means no words that are impossible to pronounce when written down or easy to misspell.

While mixing up the letters or removing vowels from common words may look cool, it doesn’t help your customers find your business online. If customers can’t easily search for your business after hearing your name phonetically, there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on leads. You’ll also spend a lot of time spelling out your URL for customers.

7. Complete a Secretary of State Search

One way to make sure your business name is different from everyone else operating in your area is to complete a Secretary of State Search. Most states have a way to do this easily online, so it’s simply a matter of visiting your state’s website and typing in your proposed name.

If in doubt, ask your attorney for help. I’d also recommend searching in Delaware , even if you don’t live in that state. Delaware is a haven for company registrations, and so searching there helps ensure no businesses anywhere else in the country have similar names.

8. Get Feedback on the Business Name Before Making It Official

Test your business name out on your friends and family and get their feedback before committing to it. While you may think you’ve looked at your name from every angle, there’s a chance you’ve missed something.

If you’re not sure about a business name yet, give people a shortlist of your ideas and ask them to pick their favorite. If everyone agrees on the same one, you may just have found your new name.

9. Choose a Business Name That Isn’t Accidentally Offensive

Make sure your business name doesn’t mean something offensive in another language or as a slang term.

No self-respecting business owner would want to insult potential customers. Yet dozens of businesses do this without knowing it because of their business name.

Just because your business name isn’t offensive in your own country doesn’t mean it’s inoffensive everywhere. Any language or cultural issues can spell bad news for companies wanting to expand abroad.

Luckily, it’s never been easier to check whether your business name is offensive or not. Just head over to WordSafety.com and enter your proposed name. The site will quickly find whether there are any potential issues.

10. Keep It Simple and Easy to Remember

Long, complicated business names are bad news. The shorter, catchier, and more memorable your name is, the better. Try to keep it under 20 characters for the sake of your URL and avoid combining more than three different words.

Examples of Great Business Names

Tips and guidelines aren’t always enough to get the creative juices flowing. That’s why I’ve compiled five examples of great business names below, along with a description of what makes them so good.

Hopefully, these will give you a jumping-off point.

Google

In a parallel universe, someone is currently searching for something on BackRub. That’s the name Google was initially called because of the backlinks it used to rank websites. Eventually, they settled on Googol, a mathematical term for a number with a million zeros in it. The final brand name of Google was the result of a spelling error by an employee.

In the end, it worked out brilliantly. The name is catchy, creative, and random. “Google” is also easier to spell, remember and pronounce than Googol too.

Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods Market is the most descriptive name on this list, and that is part of the reason it’s so effective. It sends subtle signals that attract the brand’s target audience .

Choosing the word market rather than grocer or store was a stroke of genius in this regard. Market conjures up images of farmer’s markets and suggests the kind of well-off consumer Whole Foods’ targets.

Lego

Lego is a simplified portmanteau of the Danish words leg godt meaning “play well.” Brilliantly, Lego also means “I put together,” so the name works on two levels.

Not only is the name descriptive for the native Danish market, but it also sounds great in other languages and doesn’t have any additional meanings.

Pepsi

Caleb Davis Bradham, the inventor of Pepsi, originally called his concoction Brad’s Drink. Thankfully, he rebranded three years later . Pepsi is derived from the word dyspepsia, which means indigestion as Bradham believed the drink aided digestion.

Pepsi is way more creative and memorable than Brad’s Drink. Perhaps most importantly, the new name in no way infringed on Coca-Cola, created just a handful of years earlier.

Verizon

Verizon was formed in 2000 by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE. The business name combines the Latin word for truth, veritas, and horizon to signify the new company’s honest and forward-thinking nature. It’s creative, it has meaning, and it’s definitely memorable!

Use a Business Name Generator to Find Your Perfect Name

If you’re still stuck, help is at hand in the form of business name generators. There are plenty of software tools to help entrepreneurs quickly brainstorm business names.

Here are some to try:

Shopify

Shopify is famous for helping small business owners thrive. Coming up with a brand name is no different. Enter a keyword into the search bar, and Shopify will instantly spit out 100 business names you can create a store from today.

Freshbooks

Bookkeeping software Freshbooks has a pretty comprehensive business name generator that tailors recommendations based on your industry.

Start your search by choosing whether you operate in creative and marketing, legal or business services, trade, and home services, or IT. Enter a keyword, and Freshbooks will serve up three suggestions. You can ask for more suggestions or change your keyword to get a different batch of names.

Namelix

Namelix is a free AI-powered business name generator. Enter one or several keywords to get started, then filter suggestions by name, length, and style. There are hundreds of names to scroll through and a mix of basic and premium names. Premium recommendations come with a logo and domain name attached to make building a brand easier.

Conclusion

The right name can impact your SEO, branding, and customer perception . Would Google be where it is now if it was called Backrub? I don’t think so.

The business landscape is becoming more competitive every day, and a great business name can help your brand stand out.

Take inspiration from some of the great business names already out there, and use a business name generator if necessary. Just make sure your business name sets you up for long-term growth.

What are you going to call your new business? Let me know in the comments!

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Go to Source Author: Neil Patel

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