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you know things aint right when your drafts get higher than the queue
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The Ultimate Guide to grandsoccertips.com
Free football Tips
Sevilla returned to profitable methods towards Real Betis on the weekend and now face an Elche facet that have lost their final five away games, failing to attain in 4 of their last nine away video games. Bayern Munich have scored 22 targets in their seven Champions League games this season and hammered Lazio four-1 in the first leg. The Bavarians have scored no less than three objectives in every of their final four games. Blackburn are winless in their final five house games and have lost seven of their final ten, while Bristol City are on a 3 match successful streak away from house. Championship leaders Norwich have won their final eight video games and have one of the best away document within the league, profitable 12 of their 18 trips so far this season. IIt’s not only faculty soccer we have experts in, we also have school basketball picks including March Madness.
In some cases, you may want extra perception into what’s going on within the game in the meanwhile. We provide this betting evaluation in our Football Betting Predictions for that purpose. Bielefeld have lost three and drawn 1 of their last 4 league games.
You might have been a supporter for years, but your love for the team is not going to make them play any higher or improve their probabilities when playing Liverpool or Man City away. Picking the best bet is about using your head not your heart. With 22 players, plus substitutes, plus a whole range of backroom employees influencing the end result of every game, there's a lot of analysis to be accomplished if you are to make an knowledgeable wager. This is where professional evaluation actually comes into its own. Chelsea solely sit one place and one point above visiting Everton, however the Londoners have not misplaced at residence to the Toffees since a 2011 penalty shootout within the FA Cup.
There are endless methods to bet on football matches other than a simple prediction of who will win. The extra you perceive about the game, and concerning the teams concerned, the more markets will speak in confidence to you, which is where oddschecker’s free football betting ideas can help. These football bets are created by the FA group and embody soccer ideas for the most important video games in the entire top leagues & tournaments in the world. However, we don’t restrict ourselves to just the highest leagues, we analyse the smaller ones so as to ensure we’re bringing you the best football betting tips potential. If you want regular, dependable, proven soccer predictions at present, oddschecker is the place to head.
The hosts head into this recreation on the again of four wins from their last four matches, three of which they've scored exactly 4 objectives in. Man Utd have won five of their final six encounters with AC Milan and each groups have scored in four of those matches. Man Utd have picked up three wins and three draws from their last six outings, bringing an finish to Man City's long successful streak final outing. Both teams have scored in 4 of AC Milan's final six fixtures and the visitors have only won twice throughout that period. Lyon beat PSG 1-0 when the two sides collided in December and this time, they have the home benefit. Both groups are level on 60pts in Ligue 1 and Lyon have secred three wins and two attracts from their last 5 fixtures.
Our day by day football tips are put collectively by our skilled group utilizing the previous match statics in addition to the current group news and kind. This means there are absolutely no half measures on the soccer betting ideas we suggest. Want to kick off your weekend with a Premier League winner? Searching for some midweek worth within the domestic and European leagues? Looking for the latest insight for the Nations League, Euros or the World Cup qualifiers?
See all Both teams to attain predictions for football video games. Btts ideas and stats primarily based on last teams games performances. Alongside the same old ideas and predictions, you’ll also get to take your pick of the most effective football betting provides every single day. We have those new buyer presents rolled out for you every time they’re out there alongside In Play presents, all buyer price boosts and plenty extra from the likes of bet365 and Betbull. Next to our soccer predictions we offer every day tips on our bet of the day web page which is well-liked amongst our visitors. All of the football betting suggestions that you just’ll discover on Footy Accumulators are a hundred% free.
This sort of wagering permits you to resolve uponon your bets depending on the unfolding motion, whether that’s a cup ultimate between two European giants or a tussle on the bottom of the desk in one of the lower leagues. For our tips, it’s difficult to submit them on web site because of the timing of matches, however you'll be able to comply with us on Twitter for the most effective stay tweets, stats, reactions and most importantly In Play suggestions as the fixtures unfold. During summer time when common soccer leagues are in a break we keep offering football ideas and predictions.
Three of the last four conferences between these two golf equipment have produced under 2.5 targets and we're predicting one other carefully fought ninety-minutes on Sunday. Under 2.5 objectives have additionally been produced in every of Man Utd's final six outings in all competitions. You can again Sassuolo to win & BTTS @ 15/four (4.75) with bet365. As you'd count on we provide in-depth betting advice for the main racing festivals and races such as the Cheltenham Festival and Grand National. You’ll discover a lot of help with the way to bet on football in our posts and of course you possibly can all the time ask questions in the feedback part in case you have any questions. You should also create a twitter account when you do not have already got one, and begin to comply with some key accounts, together with official football staff accounts where as much as the minute group information shall be posted.
The most effective ‘betting formulation’ is to put money into your knowledge as that is also the best way of enhancing your chances of winning. Football Predictions will help you increase your betting capability by offering numerous betting methods and guides where you're certain to search out some helpful methods of the commerce that can assist you polish your betting tactics. Have no worries, as your betting companion we are right here to information you want a guru and offer you knowledge that you can really apply in order to make some revenue alongside the way.
21 Soccer Ideas
Where you really see the distinction is over the long term. One particular person it is all the time necessary to listen to is your coach. They spend their week thinking about how each player can improve, how the staff can carry out better and dealing on achieving this. There are numerous choices that your targets could possibly be. Maybe it’s to score extra consistently or maybe its to be more assured at heading the ball. To see a fast enchancment in your recreation take the time outdoors of game time to work in your expertise and fitness.
It is very important that each time you'll method to the opponent you do it with confidence, security, and conviction. In this way, you impose your presence as a defender in the subject and they'll assume it twice earlier than trying to get previous over you. All defenders need to make the attackers feel their presence. You must be sure that each time they are going to get the ball, they know you'll be right next to them. When doubtful, maintain it simple and kick the ball out to a nook, sideline or to your forwards!
If you wish to go deeper examine our Free Betting Prediction all soccer matches part the place you can find all our betting predictions. Use our LiveScores for extra info, H2H statistics, group kind, standings and so on. To view all of our ideas for tomorrow's video games, go to predictions tomorrow. WinDrawWin is one of the best supply of free soccer betting tips and football predictions and betting statistics, soccer outcomes, soccer statistics and tendencies. Browse these free soccer predictions for at present and the weekend. Football match previews include statistics, betting odds markets & the most recent bookieoffers.
It takes an knowledgeable opinion or educated guess regarding the result of a specified sport of soccer to type each individual prediction. At oddschecker we offer a variety of betting recommendations on the extensive choice of betting events we cowl each day. All of our tips are free for you, the person, and we aim to provide you with the most effective research and stats to higher inform you when choosing a guess on your chosen match/occasion. This feature will enable you to generate a betting ticket in your bet slip. You can also choose between a variety of two and sixteen matches with soccer betting suggestions. Just generate a ticket with our betting tips and replica it under your bookmakers wager slip.
The worse thing that a defender can do is being “fancy” back there. When in doubt, just kick the ball out, and let all that artistic stuff to the attackers. The scenario in the picture above is something you need to totally avoid.
As mentioned in the final tip, positioning is important as it gives players that additional bit of time on the ball. But with a great first touch you can take the ball beyond the incoming tackle and open up space. By hovering between the central defenders or the gaps that emerge between them and the fullbacks, you can simply create confusion as to who is supposed to be marking you.
The stakes are higher, the lines are sharper and the betting handles are higher. Without further ado, listed here are a few suggestions to keep in mind as you wager on the insanity. To do this, a mix of algorithmic and human components are thought of. For an upcoming recreation let's say that a prediction was made by utilizing a heavy check here weighting on the last six results for both groups. It's one thing that many mathematical suggestions sites use as certainly one of their main factors.
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A Novices Information To Betting On Soccer 2021
You have a way to redeem your self on the online sportsbooks as a result of they submit odds at halftime on the sides and the totals. This can be a second probability, nevertheless it may also be a method to hedge your authentic bet. If you go this route, the team that you just choose has to win the game outright, and the rating doesn’t matter.
In an effort to make baseball and hockey more interesting to point spread bettors, the sportsbook operators provide run and puck lines, respectively. Betting on the NFL remains by far the leading single driver of sportsbook enterprise. It's no shock that America's hunger for the newest and best NFLpoint spreadscontinues to develop, together with soccer damage updates and matchup data to help them win more bets, and ultimately more cash. While there are lots of high NFL betting sites on-line, we believe Bovada to be the most effective web site to bet on NFL video games. Having stated that, each online sportsbook is totally different and presents their own distinctive incentives. Bovada, nonetheless, has fast withdrawals, exclusive bonuses on certain deposit options, in addition to a bunch of special promotions.
The 2nd half line accounts for what happened in the first half to help determine how the rest of the game will play out. Now that you understand the basics of NFL spread betting you’ll wish to take a look at ourSports Betting Strategyguide which has some great NFL strategy articles written by a professional bettor. Here you can see that the Rams are +three.5, while the Cowboys are -3.5. So for this instance the Cowboys are three.5 level favorites, whereas the Rams are underdogs of three.5 points.
The data discovered on Gamblingsites.org is for leisure purposes only. It is a purely informational web site that doesn't settle for wagers of any sort. Gamblingsites.org makes use of associates links from a number of the sportsbooks/casinos it promotes and reviews, and we might obtain compensation from those specific sportsbooks/casinos in certain circumstances. Gamblingsites.org does not promote or endorse any form of wagering or playing to customers beneath the age of 18.
Online NFL prop wagers aren't offered for every sport every Sunday; they're usually limited to video games that are the only focus inside a time slot, like Sunday and Monday night time frays. A proposition wager, or prop, is a bet on a selected focused side of a recreation or the individual performance of a player. You might even see a prop on the over/under on total area goals made by each teams in a contest, the entire interceptions thrown, or whether or not there will be a particular groups touchdown scored. Live NFL betting is another choice that involves inserting wagers after the sport has started, however they are often posted at any time during the sport. This lets you make subtle wagers primarily based on your analysis of what you could have seen on the field, and it’s one other sort of wager that can be utilized to hedge.
This provides you the power to run by way of a bunch of different prospects before you place your guess. Our presents change frequently, so you can at all times ensure there’ll be one thing to make the weekend’s fixtures a little spicier. Register for free and make your predictions forward of the subsequent massive recreation. We have all the latest motion from the English Premier League and the excitement of European soccer, from ‘El Clasico’ to the Belarusian league. lots of them supply extra rewards to current clients too.
This would imply in order for a wager on the favored group on the spread to win they would need to win by more than 6.5 points in order to win the wager. It additionally implies that a guess on the underdog team would win if the underdogs lost by lower than 6.5 factors or received the game outright. Major League Soccer the top soccer league within the United States and Canada has expressed sports betting as a attainable approach to gain reputation.
Free Tennis tips
Below we are able to see an example of set handicap odds listed at Paddy Power for an upcoming match between Caroline Wozniacki and Svetlana Kuznetsova. Set winner betting works the identical as match winner betting, besides that somewhat than betting on the result of a whole match, you might be only betting on the result of an individual set. In this example, we will see that Nadal is at very brief odds to win the opening set of the match.
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The grass floor favours some gamers while different players have types appropriate for clay or onerous court docket. Clay is the slowest of the ATP surfaces and hard courtroom is considered the center floor. Take these components into consideration when putting bets and which surfaces favour a specific gamers type. Likewise, it is essential to keep in mind previous matches between the 2 gamers. Some gamers might be thought of of lesser expertise within the event, but typically they have a enjoying fashion that troubles gamers that others contemplate to be of far higher capability.
Thus, while Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer have often entered the French Open ranked #1 on the earth, Nadal has typically been the overwhelming favourite in the tournament. The handicapping, sports odds information contained on this web site is for leisure purposes solely. Please confirm the wagering regulations in your jurisdiction as they range from state to state, province to province and country to nation.
Tennis futures bets may be very entertaining as a result of you'll be able to observe a participant through the match or the year. Continuing with the Medvedev vs Djokovic instance, the total is set at forty.5 video games. If you suppose it is going to be a protracted, drawn-out match, guess on over. If you assume one participant will dominate and that the match will be over rapidly, ideally leading to a straight units win, guess on beneath. All you care about with these bets is the entire video games performed in the match.
PointsBet has listed 42 totally different outcomes on the ladies’s side versus 27 different outcomes on the boys’s. Remember, we are attempting to predict who may win the Australian Open in 2021. At the time of writing, this sportsbook thinks there are significantly fewer males who stand an opportunity of profitable than girls. It is simply much harder to beat the best gamers in a five-set format. The men’s and ladies’s draws are played concurrently at the Grand Slams and 4 different premier mandatory tournaments each year, with equal prize money supplied to each genders. The males’s Association of Tennis Professionals Tour and the Women’s Tennis Association Tour play most different tournaments separately and for different amounts of prize cash, with a couple of exceptions.
Tennis Consultants Predictions And Every Day Free Betting Tips
This is a tip for the players which are both playing tournaments or wish to bounce into the competitive aspect of things. Whether you are a superstitious player like Nadal or a cool and calm participant like Federer, make your self snug on the tennis courtroom. If you're at any stage of your tennis journey, whether or not you are a beginner, intermediate and even advanced, I actually have compiled an inventory of 20 tips which is able to surely take your recreation to the next stage. For all of the advanced players out there who assume the following tips may simply be too fundamental, I advise you to learn by way of the article.
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Make sure you allow them to know the shoes are for taking part in actual tennis. This easy tennis tip will allow you to get your shots precisely the place you need them. If their shots appear to fall in the midst of the court docket as an alternative of the baseline…hang on the market as an alternative. You will need to know how to change your serves and strokes on a windy day when compared to taking part in in stillness. Be ready by taking part in on a lot of completely different courts and in all types of climate.
The spin will hold the ball in the service box, whereas making it more difficult to return. three.When running to a ball from one nook to the opposite, take a couple of large strides giant at first, after which switch to smaller steps as you get into place to hit the ball. Those faster, smaller steps will allow you to stay balanced and let you make needed adjustments for dangerous bounces, wind, etc. Visit Tennis to study more about tennis applications, coaches and the Tennis Centre at North Vancouver Recreation and Culture. If there's a doubt about court net dividers remaining open or closed, the desire is given to teams who want to hold the nets closed. Even should you’re on the way to accessing your courtroom, please don’t discuss in your telephone or keep on loud conversations.
Because it's so enjoyable to play, teammates have a great time with one another and the relationships amongst them get stronger and stronger. It is fundamental that staff members have nice hyperlinks and chemistry among each other. I think that the best way to tell if the court has the correct size is to play some video games and look should you feel comfy with the scale. The return of serve is a troublesome shot except your opponent has a very bad serve. The
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cesarjned982 · 4 years ago
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Free football Tips
Sevilla returned to successful methods towards Real Betis on the weekend and now face an Elche aspect which have misplaced their last five away games, failing to attain in 4 of their last 9 away video games. Bayern Munich have scored 22 objectives in their seven Champions League video games this season and hammered Lazio 4-1 in the first leg. The Bavarians have scored a minimum of three targets in every of their last four video games. Blackburn are winless of their final 5 residence games and have misplaced seven of their final ten, whereas Bristol City are on a 3 match profitable streak away from house. Championship leaders Norwich have received their last eight games and have the best away report in the league, winning 12 of their 18 journeys so far this season. IIt’s not only faculty football we've consultants in, we even have school basketball picks together with March Madness.
In some instances, you might have considered trying extra insight into what’s happening in the recreation at the moment. We present this betting analysis in our Football Betting Predictions for that purpose. Bielefeld have lost 3 and drawn 1 of their last four league games.
You could have been a supporter for years, but your love for the group is not going to make them play any better or enhance their probabilities when enjoying Liverpool or Man City away. Picking the right wager is about using your head not your heart. With 22 gamers, plus substitutes, plus a complete vary of backroom employees influencing the outcome of each recreation, there may be lots of research to be done if you are to make an knowledgeable bet. This is the place skilled analysis actually comes into its personal. Chelsea only sit one place and one level above visiting Everton, however the Londoners have not lost at home to the Toffees since a 2011 penalty shootout within the FA Cup.
There are countless methods to bet on soccer matches other than a simple prediction of who will win. The extra you understand concerning the game, and concerning the teams concerned, the more markets will speak in confidence to you, which is where oddschecker’s free soccer betting suggestions can help. These football bets are created by the FA team and include football suggestions for the biggest video games in the entire top leagues & tournaments on the earth. However, we don’t restrict ourselves to just the highest leagues, we analyse the smaller ones in order to guarantee we’re bringing you the best soccer betting suggestions attainable. If you need regular, dependable, confirmed soccer predictions at present, oddschecker is the place to head.
The hosts head into this sport on the back of four wins from their last 4 matches, three of which they have scored precisely four targets in. Man Utd have gained five of their last six encounters with AC Milan and both groups have scored in 4 of those matches. Man Utd have picked up three wins and three attracts from their final six outings, bringing an finish to Man City's lengthy successful streak last time out. Both teams have scored in 4 of AC Milan's last six fixtures and the guests have only received twice throughout that interval. Lyon beat PSG 1-zero when the two sides collided in December and this time, they've the home advantage. Both teams are stage on 60pts in Ligue 1 and Lyon have secred three wins and two attracts from their last five fixtures.
Our every day football tips are put collectively by our skilled staff using the previous match statics as well as the present staff information and kind. This means there are absolutely no half measures on the soccer betting suggestions we recommend. Want to kick off your weekend with a Premier League winner? Searching for some midweek value in the home and European leagues? Looking for the most recent insight for the Nations League, Euros or the World Cup qualifiers?
See all Both teams to attain predictions for soccer games. Btts tips and stats based mostly on last groups video games performances. Alongside the same old ideas and predictions, you’ll additionally get to take your decide of the best soccer betting provides every day. We have these new buyer presents rolled out for you every time they’re obtainable alongside In Play presents, all buyer worth boosts and many extra from the likes of bet365 and Betbull. Next to our soccer predictions we provide every day recommendations on our wager of the day page which is in style among our visitors. All of the soccer betting ideas that you simply’ll discover on Footy Accumulators are 100% free.
This kind of wagering permits you to resolve uponon your bets dependent on the unfolding action, whether or not that’s a cup last between two European giants or a tussle on the backside of the table in one of many lower leagues. For our tips, it’s difficult to post them on site as a result of timing of matches, but you possibly can observe us on Twitter for one of the best stay tweets, stats, reactions and most importantly In Play tips because the fixtures unfold. During summer time when common football leagues are in a break we hold providing soccer tips and predictions.
Three of the final 4 conferences between these two golf equipment have produced underneath 2.5 targets and we're predicting one other carefully fought 90-minutes on Sunday. Under 2.5 objectives have also been produced in each of Man Utd's final six outings in all competitions. You can again Sassuolo to win & BTTS @ 15/4 (four.75) with bet365. As you'll count on we provide in-depth betting recommendation for the most important racing festivals and races such because the Cheltenham Festival and Grand National. You’ll find a lot of assist with how to guess on soccer in our posts and of course you can all the time ask questions in the comments section when you have any questions. You also needs to create a twitter account should you don't already have one, and begin to observe some key accounts, together with official soccer group accounts the place up to the minute staff news might be posted.
The best ‘betting method’ is to spend money on your data as that can also be the best way of enhancing your probabilities of winning. Football Predictions will allow you to increase your betting capability by offering varied betting strategies and guides the place you are positive to seek out some helpful tips of the trade that will help you polish your betting ways. Have no worries, as your betting companion we are right here to guide you want a guru and give you data you could actually apply so as to make some revenue along the best way.
21 Soccer Tips
Where you actually see the distinction is over the long term. One individual it's all the time essential to take heed to is your coach. They spend their week thinking about how every participant can enhance, how the staff can carry out higher and dealing on attaining this. There are numerous options that your goals might be. Maybe it’s to attain extra consistently or perhaps its to be extra confident at heading the ball. To see a speedy improvement in your recreation take the time outside of recreation time to work in your expertise and fitness.
It is essential that each time you will method to the opponent you do it with confidence, security, and conviction. In this way, you impose your presence as a defender in the field and they will suppose it twice earlier than attempting to get past over you. All defenders must make the attackers really feel their presence. You must be sure that each time they will get the ball, they know you will be right next to them. When unsure, hold it easy and kick the ball out to a nook, sideline or to your forwards!
If you want to go deeper examine our Free Betting Prediction all soccer matches part the place you can find all our betting predictions. Use our LiveScores for additional information, H2H statistics, team form, standings and so forth. To view all of our tips for tomorrow's video games, go to predictions tomorrow. WinDrawWin is the best source of free football betting ideas and soccer predictions and betting statistics, football outcomes, football statistics and trends. Browse these free soccer predictions for right now and the weekend. Football match previews embrace statistics, betting odds markets & the newest bookieoffers.
It takes an knowledgeable opinion or educated guess relating to the outcome of a specified game of soccer to form every individual prediction. At oddschecker we provide a wide range of betting tips on the intensive number of betting events we cover each day. All of our suggestions are free for you, the consumer, and we aim to offer you the most effective analysis and stats to higher inform you when selecting a guess in your chosen match/occasion. This function will allow you to generate a betting ticket for your guess slip. You can even choose between a spread of 2 and 16 matches with soccer betting ideas. Just generate a ticket with our betting suggestions and copy it underneath your bookmakers guess slip.
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The worse thing that a defender can do is being “fancy” again there. When unsure, just kick the ball out, and let all that creative stuff to the attackers. The scenario in the picture above is one thing you wish to completely avoid.
As stated in the final tip, positioning is essential because it offers players that further bit of time on the ball. But with an excellent first touch you'll be able to take the ball beyond the incoming tackle and open up house. By hovering between the central defenders or the gaps that emerge between them and the fullbacks, you'll be able to easily create confusion as to who is supposed to be marking you.
The stakes are higher, the strains are sharper and the betting handles are higher. Without further ado, listed here are a couple of ideas to remember as you wager on the madness. To do this, a mixture of algorithmic and human components are considered. For an upcoming recreation for example that a prediction was made through the use of a heavy weighting on the last six results for each groups. It's one thing that many mathematical tips websites use as one of their major components.
youtube
A Beginners Information To Betting On Soccer 2021
You have a approach to redeem your self on the online sportsbooks as a result of they submit odds at halftime on the sides and the totals. This could be a second probability, nevertheless it can also be a way to hedge your unique guess. If you go this route, the team that you choose has to win the game outright, and the rating doesn’t matter.
In an effort to make baseball and hockey extra interesting to point spread bettors, the sportsbook operators provide run and puck traces, respectively. Betting on the NFL remains by far the leading single driver of sportsbook enterprise. It's no surprise that America's starvation for the newest and best NFLpoint spreadscontinues to grow, together with soccer injury updates and matchup information to assist them win more bets, and ultimately more cash. While there are numerous high NFL betting websites online, we believe Bovada to be one of the best web site to wager on NFL video games. Having said that, each on-line sportsbook is different and presents their very own distinctive incentives. Bovada, nonetheless, has fast withdrawals, unique bonuses on sure deposit choices, in addition to a bunch of particular promotions.
The 2nd half line accounts for what happened in the first half to assist determine how the remainder of the sport will play out. Now that you understand the basics of NFL spread betting you’ll need to try ourSports Betting Strategyguide which has some great NFL technique articles written by an expert bettor. Here you'll be able to see that the Rams are +three.5, whereas the Cowboys are -3.5. So for this instance the Cowboys are 3.5 level favorites, while the Rams are underdogs of 3.5 points.
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The information found on Gamblingsites.org is for entertainment functions solely. It is a purely informational website that does not accept wagers of any kind. Gamblingsites.org uses affiliates links from a few of the sportsbooks/casinos it promotes and evaluations, and we may receive compensation from those explicit sportsbooks/casinos in certain circumstances. Gamblingsites.org does not promote or endorse any form of wagering or playing to users underneath the age of 18.
Online NFL prop wagers aren't supplied for each game each Sunday; they are usually limited to video games which might be the only focus inside a time slot, like Sunday and Monday night frays. A proposition wager, or prop, is a guess on a selected centered aspect of a sport or the individual performance of a participant. You may see a prop on the over/under on whole field targets made by both groups in a contest, the whole interceptions thrown, or whether or not there shall be a special groups touchdown scored. Live NFL betting is an alternative choice that entails putting wagers after the game has started, however they can be posted at any time in the course of the sport. This permits you to make refined wagers based in your evaluation of what you have seen on the field, and it’s one other kind of wager that can be utilized to hedge.
This provides you the facility to run through a bunch of different possibilities before you place your bet. Our provides change regularly, so you can always be sure there’ll be one thing to make the weekend’s fixtures somewhat spicier. Register for free and make your predictions ahead of the subsequent massive game. We have all the newest action from the English Premier League and the joy of European football, from ‘El Clasico’ to the Belarusian league. lots of them supply extra rewards to current clients too.
This would imply to ensure that a guess on the favored staff on the unfold to win they would need to win by more than 6.5 points in order to win the bet. It also means that a guess on the underdog staff would win if the underdogs lost by lower than 6.5 points or won the sport outright. Major League Soccer the highest soccer league within the United States and Canada has expressed sports betting as a potential way to achieve popularity.
Free Tennis tips
Below we can see an instance of set handicap odds listed at Paddy Power for an upcoming match between Caroline Wozniacki and Svetlana Kuznetsova. Set winner betting works the identical as match winner betting, except that somewhat than betting on the outcome of a complete match, you're solely betting on the outcome of a person set. In this example, we will see that Nadal is at very brief odds to win the opening set of the match.
The grass floor favours some gamers while other gamers have styles appropriate for clay or onerous courtroom. Clay is the slowest of the ATP surfaces and exhausting courtroom is considered the middle ground. Take these components into consideration when putting bets and which surfaces favour a selected players type. Likewise, it is necessary to remember past matches between the 2 players. Some gamers might be thought of of lesser expertise in the tournament, however generally they have a playing fashion that troubles players that others consider to be of far greater capability.
Thus, while Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer have typically entered the French Open ranked #1 in the world, Nadal has typically been the overwhelming favourite within the match. The handicapping, sports odds info contained on this website is for entertainment purposes solely. Please verify the wagering laws in your jurisdiction as they differ from state to state, province to province and country to country.
Tennis futures bets can be very entertaining as a result of you are able to observe a participant via the event or the yr. Continuing with the Medvedev vs Djokovic example, the entire is ready at 40.5 games. If you suppose it will be a long, drawn-out match, bet on over. If you assume one player will dominate and that the match might be over quickly, ideally resulting in a straight units win, guess on beneath. All you care about with these bets is the whole video games performed within the match.
PointsBet has listed 42 completely different outcomes on the ladies’s facet versus 27 completely different outcomes on the men’s. Remember, we are trying to predict who would possibly win the Australian Open in 2021. At the time of writing, this sportsbook thinks there are considerably fewer males who stand a chance of profitable than ladies. It is simply much harder to beat the best gamers in a 5-set format. The males’s and women’s draws are played concurrently at the Grand Slams and 4 other premier obligatory tournaments annually, with equal prize cash provided to each genders. premier league tips The males’s Association of Tennis Professionals Tour and the Women’s Tennis Association Tour play most different tournaments separately and for various amounts of prize cash, with a few exceptions.
Tennis Consultants Predictions And Day By Day Free Betting Suggestions
This is a tip for the gamers that are either playing tournaments or want to bounce into the aggressive side of issues. Whether you are a superstitious participant like Nadal or a cool and calm player like Federer, make yourself comfy on the tennis court. If you are at any stage of your tennis journey, whether or not you are a beginner, intermediate and even advanced, I have compiled an inventory of 20 ideas which is able to certainly take your sport to the following stage. For all the superior players on the market who assume the following pointers might simply be too basic, I advise you to read through the article.
Make positive you let them know the sneakers are for enjoying precise tennis. This easy tennis tip will assist you to get your photographs exactly where you want them. If their pictures seem to fall in the middle of the courtroom as an alternative of the baseline…grasp on the market as an alternative. You will wish to know tips on how to change your serves and strokes on a windy day when in comparison with enjoying in stillness. Be prepared by playing on plenty of different courts and in all forms of weather.
The spin will hold the ball within the service box, while making it more difficult to return. 3.When running to a ball from one corner to the opposite, take a few large strides large at first, and then swap to smaller steps as you get into place to hit the ball. Those quicker, smaller steps will allow you to keep balanced and permit you to make essential changes for dangerous bounces, wind, and so forth. Visit Tennis to be taught more about tennis packages, coaches and the Tennis Centre at North Vancouver Recreation and Culture. If there's a doubt about courtroom web dividers remaining open or closed, the preference is given to teams who wish to maintain the nets closed. Even if you’re on the way to accessing your court, please don’t discuss in your telephone or keep on loud conversations.
Because it is so fun to play, teammates have a good time with one another and the relationships among them get stronger and stronger. It is key that group members have great hyperlinks and chemistry among one another. I think that one of the simplest ways to inform if the courtroom has the correct size is to play some video games and look when you really feel snug with the dimensions. The return of serve is a troublesome shot until your opponent has a extremely unhealthy serve. The ball is coming at you at a very different angle than you're used
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mdmaayon · 5 years ago
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10 Digital Marketing Tips and Tricks from Top Brands
There is no doubt that digital marketing or online marketing is crucial when it comes to the success of any business no matter what industry you are in. Unlike the past where businesses used traditional advertising, today, they are not as effective as online advertising and this has pushed many businesses to adopt online advertising to reach customers. Online marketing is the way to go if you want to reach and create a connection with customers.
Gone are the days when it was difficult to understand what customers want. Today, with the increase in tools such as analytics and digital marketing software, it is far easier to guess — nay, estimate — customer behavior… and cater to it! Online marketing has enabled businesses to gain treasured insights to customers’ minds.
When implemented in the right way, digital marketing will enable your business to target and reach its customers, classify new ones, increase sales, and experience lasting growth.
These digital marketing approaches will make your business visible to your existing customers online and connect you with new ones.
What is Digital Marketing Today?
Digital marketing is the use of the internet and electronic devices to make your business known to your existing and new customers both locally and internationally. It is a means of advertising done through digital platforms like social media, email, mobile apps, websites and search engines.
It today’s digital world, marketing is about connecting with your prospective customers in the right place and at the desired time, selling them with goods and service they need at the right time. This means that you need to target them where they spend most of their time and in this case, it is the internet. Digital marketing encompasses a range of marketing activities such as content marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, mobile marketing and more.
That being said, below, we’ve compiled a list of the digital marketing tricks used by all the famous business brands in the world.
1. Combine SEO and Content Marketing
SEO used to be a function of coding. Today, most of the metrics included in Google’s algorithm have to do with content and the engagement you win through the distribution of great content. Using various types of content (visual, text, video, infographics, audio, etc) does much better than using a single type of content.
More content – As more businesses embrace content marketing, competition continues to get tougher. Everything you do online is drowned in noise and information overload. If it’s SEO many businesses are doing it. If it’s posting good and original content, many are doing it. So, to beat them, you need to publish better and more content. According to HubSpot data, publishing at least once a week is critical for ROI and ROI drops pretty precipitously when you publish less frequently. However, it’s not about quantity or quality, but an ideal mix of both.
Valuable content – Content should be entertaining, informative, or make the reader feel something. Valuable content encourages subscription to your email, sharing, comments, and other actions that contribute to ROI.
Original content – Content can be audio, video or text but when you decide to use one or all of these digital content, ensure it is good and original. If you can’t create unique, compelling and good content by yourself, you can hire an expert to create content for your website and social media platforms. This is where you will need a powerful content marketing plan like never before.
Appropriate content – As you can see from this infographic from Occam’s Razor, you need to produce content that’s right for each stage in the conversion process (and your metrics need to match your goal with each piece of content).
Knowing where a visitor is in the conversion process isn’t always easy, but, if you’ve done a good job of coding content (applying tracking codes so you know what type of content drove them to visit your site) and use tools that let you track where visitors have been before, you can make an educated guess as to what content they need. By delivering the right content at the right time, you’re more likely to convert visitors.
Reach is important. The more visitors you bring to your site, all things being equal, the higher your ROI. This is one of the reasons it’s important to have several social platforms and have links on your content so visitors can easily share your content. You should share your content once it’s published and here’s a schedule recommended by Kissmetrics:
In addition to sharing your own content, you should share content created by other great companies/ experts. Many experts recommend you share 20% your promotional content and 80% other valuable content you find.
2. Have a Visible Presence on Relevant Social Media Platforms
Being seen online is the key to success for every business, especially in today’s world where almost all businesses have gone digital. It is one of the ways to stand out from the crowd. For this reason, you need to build your online presence on social media networks of relevance. Note that there are plenty of social networks available but you need to identify where your customers spend most of their time and target them there. Pick those that are relevant to your business and prospects and build your online presence there.
3. Optimize Your Website for Mobile-First Browsing
To ensure your content is mobile friendly, your website and social media networks are accessible on desktops and mobile devices. Customers are currently using smartphones and tablets to access the web. So, it is crucial to make your website and content accessible to users on all screen sizes.
4. Use the Right Tools
Digital marketing is an amalgamation of different strategies aimed at a plethora of channels, like SEO, PPC, social media, and so on. In order to ensure that you have an integrated marketing mix, you need the right digital marketing tools to help you run effective campaigns. You also need to develop expertise in using them and applying the insights in the right context.
5. Be Awesome at Design
Design underpins much of what makes digital marketing success. Whether you’re designing a website, a landing page or creating an image for your website, ad, or infographic, you need to have good design skills. Not all of us are whiz kids when it comes to design, but there are some tools to help.
Canva – is a great tool for creating social media images whether you need them for your profile or as images to include in posts. One aspect of Canva I really like is the templates that help design great looking images even if you know nothing about layout or what fonts go together. They’re constantly adding new images and tools, such as infographic templates, to help you out.
Photoshop – granted it’s expensive, but Photoshop is a great design tool. Luckily, you can now get the entire creative cloud from Adobe for as low as $29/ month if you’re in school and a little more to use for business. It used to be more difficult to use Photoshop, but now there are tons of tutorials on YouTube and Photoshop now includes little mini tutorials if you hover over the buttons.
Kuler – If mixing colors isn’t your forte, then Adobe Color is for you. It lets you import an image and get the colors used or you can choose a color to get colors that coordinate well with it.
6. Create an Email List
This should be done from the beginning of your business. If you are on the startup phase, you need to make an email list when planning. Ensure to gather people’s emails where you will be sending them any updates and progress of your business. Send them useful information but avoid spamming them.
7. Spend on Digital Advertising
Online advertising, including PPC (pay per click) campaigns such as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, social media advertising on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and mobile ads are great to support digital marketing success.
8. Use Infographics
People love infographics because they are attractive. Note that our brains can process pictures must quicker than text. A picture is worth a thousand words, and people will share them more often than texts.
Here are some examples of the best content infographics that awesome marketers have created and used to resonate with their audience.
9. Closely Watch Your Analytics
Almost the other end of the spectrum from creativity is analytics, but that’s exactly the combination you need for digital marketing success. Google Analytics is perfect for understanding critical elements of your website and how visitors navigate through it. If you’re trying to learn how to gain insights from Google Analytics, you can use the Google Data Studio to give it a test drive using data from Google’s e-commerce site.
For analytics outside of Google Analytics, a number of great tools exist. You can use individual analytics from each social network (ie. Facebook, Pinterest, etc), you can bring them all to one place by using a dashboard program such as Cognos (from IBM), or you can pay for a more powerful tool to gain more insights.
10. Integrate Strategies and Campaigns Across Channels
Integrating across these tactics can be really challenging, especially in a larger firm where different teams may manage different platforms or where different ad agencies handle different aspects of marketing, such as content marketing, paid, and social. But, integrate you must to achieve true digital marketing success.
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caitsbooks · 6 years ago
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6 Summer Adult Romances!
Click here to view the full post on my blog, or read more to find out more about these books!
Despite still feeling kinda new to the romance genre, I wanted to compile a list of some of my favorite romance novel’s I’ve read, that I think are perfect for summer.
Whether you’ll be reading on the beach or nice and comfortable in air conditioning, these books will be the perfect addition to your summer!!
Read more for descriptions of each book, plus check out my blog to see 6 YA Romances that are perfect for summer!
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THE HATING GAME BY SALLY THORNE
Page Count: 387 pages Publisher: William Morrow Release Date: August 9th, 2016 Purchase Options: Amazon, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble [ Click Here For My Full Review ]
“Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She’s charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual. Trapped in a shared office together 40 (OK, 50 or 60) hours a week, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive, ridiculous never-ending game of one-upmanship. There’s the Staring Game. The Mirror Game. The HR Game. Lucy can’t let Joshua beat her at anything—especially when a huge new promotion goes up for the taking. If Lucy wins this game, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign. So why is she suddenly having steamy dreams about Joshua, and dressing for work like she’s got a hot date? After a perfectly innocent elevator ride ends with an earth-shattering kiss, Lucy starts to wonder whether she’s got Joshua Templeman all wrong. Maybe Lucy Hutton doesn’t hate Joshua Templeman. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.”
This book is what finally pushed me into reading adult romances. Yeah, I had read a couple before this one, but this is the book that made me fall in love with the genre. I know it’s been talked about by most everyone, but if you haven’t read it yet, this summer is the perfect time (especially with the movie in the works)!
THE KISS QUOTIENT (THE KISS QUOTIENT #1) BY HELEN HOANG
Page Count: 333 pages Publisher: Berkley Release Date: June 5th, 2018 Purchase Options: Amazon, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble [ Click Here For My Full Review ]
“Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases — a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old. It doesn’t help that Stella has Asperger’s and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice — with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can’t afford to turn down Stella’s offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan — from foreplay to more-than-missionary position… Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all the other things he’s making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic… ”
Firstly, if you aren’t a fan of series, don’t worry. This is just a series of companion novels, so you don’t have to commit to them. But trust me when I say, after reading this, you will want to. I just love this book so much. These characters are just absolutely amazing and you will not regret picking this up!
JOSH AND HAZEL’S GUIDE TO NOT DATING BY CHRISTINA LAUREN
Page Count: 309 pages Publisher: Gallery Books Release Date: September 4th, 2018 Purchase Options: Amazon, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble [ Click Here For My Full Review ]
“Hazel Camille Bradford knows she’s a lot to take—and frankly, most men aren’t up to the challenge. If her army of pets and thrill for the absurd don’t send them running, her lack of filter means she’ll say exactly the wrong thing in a delicate moment. Their loss. She’s a good soul in search of honest fun. Josh Im has known Hazel since college, where her zany playfulness proved completely incompatible with his mellow restraint. From the first night they met—when she gracelessly threw up on his shoes—to when she sent him an unintelligible email while in a post-surgical haze, Josh has always thought of Hazel more as a spectacle than a peer. But now, ten years later, after a cheating girlfriend has turned his life upside down, going out with Hazel is a breath of fresh air. Not that Josh and Hazel date. At least, not each other. Because setting each other up on progressively terrible double blind dates means there’s nothing between them…right?”
I have two Christina Lauren books on this list because I am addicted to their books. However, this one is by far my favorite of theirs. It’s a friends-to-lovers done so well, you won’t be able to put it down. I know I wasn’t able to.
RED, WHITE, AND ROYAL BLUE BY CASEY MCQUISTON
Page Count: 423 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin Release Date: May 14th, 2019 Purchase Options: Amazon, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble [ Click Here For My Full Review ]
“First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations.
The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex is busy enough handling his mother’s bloodthirsty opponents and his own political ambitions without an uptight royal slowing him down. But beneath Henry’s Prince Charming veneer, there’s a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him.
As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. And Henry throws everything into question for Alex, an impulsive, charming guy who thought he knew everything: What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?”
You all knew I would have to put this book on here. It’s my obsession. The love of my life. I know this book is getting a lot of hype right now, but let me tell you, it deserves all of it. This book is really something special. Not only is it an adorable romance with enemies-to-lovers and plenty of wit, but it’s also a powerful read that you don’t want to miss.
THE UNHONEYMOONERS BY CHRISTINA LAUREN
Page Count: 400 Publisher: May 14th, 2019 Release Date: Gallery Books Purchase Options: Amazon, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble [ Click Here For My Full Review ]
“Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man. Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs. Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of… lucky.”
While Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating may be my favorite Christina Lauren book, this one is pretty close. Enemies-to-lovers, fake datings, and basically every other classic trope everyone loves found their way into this extremely fun read.
WELL MET BY JEN DELUCA
Page Count: 336 Publisher: Berkley Release Date: September 3rd, 2019 Purchase Options: Amazon, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble [ Click Here For My Review Teaser ]
“Emily knew there would be strings attached when she relocated to the small town of Willow Creek, Maryland, for the summer to help her sister recover from an accident, but who could anticipate getting roped into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire alongside her teenaged niece? Or that the irritating and inscrutable schoolteacher in charge of the volunteers would be so annoying that she finds it impossible to stop thinking about him? The faire is Simon’s family legacy and from the start he makes clear he doesn’t have time for Emily’s lighthearted approach to life, her oddball Shakespeare conspiracy theories, or her endless suggestions for new acts to shake things up. Yet on the faire grounds he becomes a different person, flirting freely with Emily when she’s in her revealing wench’s costume. But is this attraction real, or just part of the characters they’re portraying? This summer was only ever supposed to be a pit stop on the way to somewhere else for Emily, but soon she can’t seem to shake the fantasy of establishing something more with Simon, or a permanent home of her own in Willow Creek.”
Okay, I know this one won’t be published until summer is over, but I need to mention it. It’s absolutely amazing! Seriously, it’s completely worth the wait. The relationship is so perfect, the characters are all amazing, and it takes place at a Ren Faire!!! What more could you ask for?
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What is your favorite summer romance? I really need some good recommendations!!
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nickgerlich · 6 years ago
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What I Like About You
Social media (and the word “media” is plural, not singular) have forever changed humanity. We stay connected with people through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. We get our news there. We post pix of our kids and pets, and share our successes along with our sadnesses. We practice slactivism by signing online petitions that have been shown to do nothing in the overwhelming majority of cases, on a site that is known to sell its users’ information to advertisers.
And, as some are now arguing, these activities are causing too much stress in our lives as we supposedly determine our self-worth based on how many Likes and Hearts we get on our posts.  It’s as if this were all just one big dopamine drip irrigation system.
To address this issue, Facebook is considering hiding the number of Likes your posts get, similar to a pilot program they are testing on their Instagram site. The thinking is if you don’t know how well or how poorly your post tracked that day, you won’t have the chance to feel like crap.
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That’s a similar logic used by supporters of school uniforms, in an effort to try to reduce the apparent income gaps among families with children. Make them all dress the same, and poor kids won’t feel inferior to others because of clothing.
But this is social media, not wardrobes. Naturally, the number of Likes and Hearts a person receives is going to be a function of many things, ranging from how many Friends and Followers you have, to the quality of the content. On Facebook, family matters track highly. On Instagram, it’s based more on the artistry. Content truly is king.
Oh, and let’s not forget the algorithms that Facebook and Instagram use, which basically reward a popular post with more exposure. In other words, Likes beget more Likes.
As for me, I don’t let my self-worth be determined by who or how many Like or Heart my posts, but I do use that number to learn about what my Friends and Followers enjoy seeing. In other words, it provides a valuable feedback mechanism to help me create better content in the future, wherever I decide to post it. It’s not a competition. It’s about helping forge better relationships, even if it’s among people you have never met.
We kind of already do this in F2F communication. If we start droning on and on about something, beating the same old drum for the 17th time, our friends will very visibly show their lack of interest by getting a glazed-over look on their eyes, changing the subject, or, worse yet, walking away.
Yup. No Likes or Hearts for you. Sorry.
In other words, if Facebook, Instagram, and the others are going to provide readers with the ability to interact by signifying their Likes and so forth, they need to follow through by sharing the metrics with the content creator, even if it hurts. In the end, it should help make us all better social media users.
Social media are powerful sites for personal expression and sharing. Leave them that way, because a Like or a Heart is as much reciprocal content creation as is leaving a comment, as well as the original post.
And I am good with that, Like it or not.
Dr “Hearts For The Win“ Gerlich
Audio Blog
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lunapaper · 4 years ago
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The year was 2010. Emo was just starting to die out (long live the scene). I was studying to become a secondary school teacher, and Katy Perry was shooting whipped cream out of her boobs...
Second albums, more often than not, fail to live up to the hype. And yet, Teenage Dream has somehow endured.
While Perry’s 2008 debut, One of the Boys, launched her into the mainstream, it really hasn’t aged all that well. On tracks like ‘Self Inflicted’ and ‘Fingerprints,’ she tries way too hard to emulate Paramore’s bold pop punk. On others, she attempts to rebel against her gospel roots by turning the bawdiness up to 10.
It can also come off pretty juvenile at times. The singer was almost 25 when she sang on the title track: ‘So over the summer, something changed/I started reading Seventeen and shaving my legs/And I studied Lolita religiously/And I walked right in to school and caught you staring at me.’
But let’s be honest: Even though it’s been declared ~problematic~, you still jam out to ‘I Kissed A Girl’ when you hear it, don’t you? I hadn’t listened to ‘Ur So Gay’ before this, either, but its slinky, jazz-infused vibe absolutely slaps.
Like Teenage Dream is also a product of its time, presenting pop at its most sugary, hook-laden and bombastic. It managed to spawn 5 No.1 singles, the second album in history to do so after Michael Jackson’s Bad, as well as a documentary, Part of Me. There’s even a deluxe edition, cleverly titled The Complete Confection. It was Perry at her peak.
You know the title track, of course. Evoking images of cherry red lipstick, tight denim and driving down an empty highway in summer, Perry desperately clings to the memory of young love, breathlessly pleading ‘don’t ever look back, don’t ever look back.’
‘The One That Got Away,’ meanwhile, is its bittersweet sequel, Perry's lovesick nostalgia now tinged with regret. Yet, the only thing I really remember about the song is the video starring Cassian Andor himself, Diego Luna, as Perry’s past love, the beautifully dishevelled and tortured artist of my dreams (Dear God, that penetrating stare...) He’s also the only reason why anyone bothered to watch Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, if it wasn’t already obvious.
First single ‘California Gurls,’ on the other hand, is pure pop exuberance at its most campy and carefree, indicative of a more innocent time when it wasn’t driven by algorithms or social media. ‘Firework’ is still a go-to empowerment anthem for just about every kind of montage imaginable. ‘ET’ (featuring a pre-’presidential’ Kanye) is heavily-synthesised cyber pop that doesn’t get nearly enough love.
But Teenage Dream, in retrospect, has quite a few misses. ‘Peacock’ is just one big, long, glitchy dick joke. ‘Not Like The Movies’ is big ballad schmaltz. The brassy soft rock of ‘Hummingbird Heartbeat,’ meanwhile, opens with a hell of a line: ‘You make me feel like I'm losing my virginity/The first time, every time when you're touching me.’ And I’m pretty sure ‘What Am I Living For?’ is partly plagiarised from Justin Timberlake’s ‘My Love.’ Even Pitchfork awarded Teenage Dream a rather tame 6.8 in their recent retrospective review.
By the time Perry released Prism in 2013 – her ‘darker, moodier’ record - she had shifted further into ‘inspirational anthems.’ There was the inescapable mega-hit ‘Roar,’ the saccharine power ballad ‘Unconditionally’ and the Eastern-tinged ‘Legendary Lovers,’ complete with wellness and spiritual motifs.
But it wasn’t without its bangers: ‘Dark Horse’ (featuring Juicy J) jumped onto the trap pop bandwagon just in time with its subterranean bass and eerie, otherworldly synths. Even the slick, 90s-indebted ‘This Is How We Do’ has a certain charm.
Prism also marked the point where Perry’s invincibility began to wear off. Where the masses once lapped up her candy-coated antics, they were now calling her out for wearing braids in the video for ‘This Is How We Do’ and dressing up as a geisha during a performance at the American Music Awards.
And they would only get louder during her era of ‘purposeful pop.’ Released in the aftermath of the 2016 US election, Witness was meant to cement Perry as ‘Artist. Activist. Conscious’ - as her Twitter bio read at the time. She had joined Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. On Instagram, she was quoting the likes of Socrates and Plato. She was Woke now, and she was telling anyone who’d listen.
Yet you’d be hard pressed to find much trace of this ‘purposeful pop’ on Witness, bar the first single, ‘Chained to the Rhythm.’ Written with Sia and Max Martin, the singer implores listeners to ‘put your rose-coloured glasses on and party on’ amid whirling, colourful synths.
The rest of the record, however, is made up of either soppy, overly sentimental ballads (‘Save As Draft,’ ‘Pendulum,’ ‘Into Me You See’), awkward lyrical turns and CHVRCHES/Purity Ring knock-offs (‘Hey Hey Hey,’ ‘Roulette,’ ‘Deja Vu’).
Funnily enough, Purity Ring’s Corin Roddick produced some of Witness’ better tracks: ‘Mind Maze’ and the soaring ballad ‘Miss You More, along with ‘Bigger Than Me.’
Final track ‘Act My Age,’ meanwhile, feels like a pre-emptive strike against the criticism Witness would inevitably receive (‘They say that I might lose my Midas touch/They also say I may become irrelevant/But who the fuck are they anyway?’).
Then there’s the godawful ‘Bon Appetit’ (featuring Migos) with its food-related double entendres. It was ‘Yummy’ before ‘Yummy’ existed. Seriously, I just wanna see Orlando Bloom say he likes this song with a straight face...
But I will still defend ‘Swish Swish’ to the death. Do the lyrics suck? Yeah, but Perry’s never been the strongest lyricist. But its pulsing 90s house beat does a lot of the heavy lifting, along with Nicki Minaj’s spitfire verse.
The promotional rollout for Witness, meanwhile, proved just as messy. Among the most infamous was a 72-hour livestream, where voyeurs got to witness Perry sleep, meditate, do yoga and welcome a random assortment of guests, including Gordon Ramsey and activist DeRay McKesson. Then there was the meme-laden video for ‘Swish Swish. She literally served herself up on a platter in the clip for ‘Bon Appetit.’ She tried reigniting her feud with Taylor Swift on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke. Needless to say, it reeked of desperation.
Looking back, though, you can’t help but feel a little bad for Perry, trying so hard to please only for it to blow up spectacularly in her face. So devastated, it sent her to the Hoffman Institute, which offers an abridged version of therapy. As she later told the Guardian:
‘I think the universe was like, ‘OK, all right, let’s have some humble pie here […] My negative thoughts were not great. They didn’t want to plan for a future. I also felt like I could control it by saying, ‘I’ll have the last word if I hurt myself or do something stupid and I’ll show you’ — but really, who was I showing?’
But although Witness lacked the perkiness of Teenage Dream or the cartoonish charm of One of the Boys, it shines best on its darker moments.
‘Dance With The Devil’ has the kind of smoky allure that wouldn’t look too out of place on a BANKS album, while ‘Power’ is a revelation. Produced by Jack Garrett, what could’ve been yet another dull empowerment ballad is turned into a gritty, groaning slab of vaporwave pop, with sultry sax riffs that sample, of all things, Smokey Robinson’s ‘Being With You.’ It’s electric as fuck. You believe it when Perry sings: ‘’Cause I'm a goddess and you know it/Some respect, you better show it/I'm done with you siphoning my power.’
If the singer had just done away with the whole ‘purposeful pop’ concept and stuck with Garrett, Roddick and Terror Jr’s Felix Snow as her core producing group, Witness probably wouldn’t have been half the failure it was. It could’ve had a chance to grow on people, the kind of slow burn Perry could’ve gotten away with at this point in her career. The cyberpop dystopian feel also could’ve gone hand in hand with her newfound wokeness, echoing people’s fear and anger in the aftermath of Trump’s win. But alas, we’ll never know...
While the rollout for Witness over the top, Smile’s was lacklustre and wildly inconsistent.
First single ‘Never Really Over’ came out a whole 15 months before the release of Smile to little fanfare, along with a hippie-inspired video to match. ‘Harleys in Hawaii’ later followed, which also stuck with the flower power aesthetic. Other singles - ‘Daisies’ and the title track – seemingly came and went without a trace.
So how did Katy Perry get to this point? And is there any chance of coming back?
It’s hard to say. A lot of artists go through a rough patch or two:   Miley's twerking antics divided audiences when she released 2013’s Bangerz. Taylor Swift’s reputation divided audiences. Only in recent years has Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP been vindicated. Such is the nature of music and pop culture in general. It’s fickle, just one vicious cycle after another; an endless quest for trend-bait that'll never end.
Right now, disco pop is going through a renaissance, while hyperpop reigns supreme. Dua Lip and Charli XCX are basically untouchable at the moment. TikTok has taken over from Top 40 radio when it comes to breaking hits, while the gap between album releases has also grown shorter and shorter. Even the nature of fandom has changed, shifting from old-school elitism to the bloodsport that is ‘stanning,’ along with an unhealthy amount of ‘endless simping’ (to quote a close friend of mine).
Perry, meanwhile, has failed to keep up, choosing to play it safe in order to avoid further scrutiny. But in doing so, she strips away the humour, the mischief and other idiosyncrasies that fans fell in love with in the first place.
But what choice did she have? As Junkee’s Sam Murphy notes in his own piece about Perry’s rise and fall:
‘At that point, you have two choices as a popstar — hunt for relevancy or make what comes naturally to you. Perry chose the former and came unstuck. She inserted vague wokeness into her songs as cancel culture infiltrated pop, tacked on rap features as hip-hop became the dominant commercial genre, and worked with producers who may have been able to find her credibility.’
(Full disclosure: I started writing my piece on Perry back in December 2020, so the timing of Murphy’s piece and mine is purely coincidental).
Even if you don’t believe in cancel culture, no one actually wants to be cancelled. It’s just not good for PR, especially for someone with an image as glossy and as carefully put-together as Perry’s. Even now, she continues to atone for Witness, telling the LA Times: ‘Having more awareness and consciousness, I no longer can just be a blissful, ignorant idealist who sings about love and relationships […] Even my travels have afforded me a new perspective on cultures, class systems and the inequality around the world, not just in the United States,’ though she carefully avoids the subject of politics on Smile.
But redemption is possible. Swift – Perry's one-time nemesis - was a total pariah back in 2016, mocked for her Girl Squad, for diddling the Hiddles while on the rebound from Calvin Harris and criticised for remaining coy on her political leanings. Now she’s earning indie cred with two of 2020’s biggest albums, folklore and evermore, and has thrown her support behind a number of social causes.
The devil works hard, but Swift’s PR team work harder. I might not be her biggest fan, but Taylor works Kris Jenner levels of mastery when it comes to rebuilding public sentiment. Thanks to her newfound indie cred, you’ve almost forgotten about the pastel atrocity ‘Me!,’ her 2019 duet with that insufferable drama kid cliché, Brendon Urie. Shifting her songs away from petty grievances to more original storytelling was also a smart move.
But while Swift has managed to move on, Perry seems to have fallen into the same adult contemporary trap as Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera and Pink, one that ensnares many female artists over 30 (Though many have also managed to escape – Gaga, Taylor, Beyonce, Rihanna, Kesha, Robyn...)
As ‘woke’ as the industry and fans at large might think themselves to be, they’re still pretty ageist. There's still an expectation to ‘mature’ your sound as you age, to become more ‘serious.’ No more fun, no more experimenting, boomer. But when you do end up filing away the edges, you’re called dull, generic and past your prime. Perry said as much on the aforementioned ‘Act My Age. You just. can't. win.
And yet, many female artists over 30 have created some of their best work yet in just the past year or so: Hayley Williams made the dramatic shift from pop rock to low-key, Radiohead-inspired tunes on her solo debut, Petals For Armor. Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters was hailed by critics as her most bold, urgent and visceral. Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? was a cut of understated disco pop elegance. Carly Rae Jepsen, meanwhile, released an equally stellar companion to 2019’s Dedicated.
At this point in her career, Perry could afford to follow a similar path to that of the Canadian singer. Once the meme value of ‘Call Me Maybe’ wore off, along with her mainstream appeal, Jepsen finally had a chance to discover real creative freedom, pushing her sound to greater heights and earning critical acclaim, all without having to compromise her love for catchy hooks and bold synth pop arrangements.
A couple of years ago, a Reddit user made a post about participating in a focus group held by Perry’s label to discuss why she’s ‘no longer one of the[ir] most notable female pop artists,’ and ‘what can [they] do with her image or marketing to make you care about her again?’
It’s depressing to think that an artist as accomplished as her needs a focus group to help solve her identity crisis. There really is no easy answer. Hopefully, Perry will be able to return more vibrant and assured than ever, on her own terms...
-Bianca B.
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brianobrienny · 5 years ago
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10 Digital Marketing Tips and Tricks from Top Brands
There is no doubt that digital marketing or online marketing is crucial when it comes to the success of any business no matter what industry you are in. Unlike the past where businesses used traditional advertising, today, they are not as effective as online advertising and this has pushed many businesses to adopt online advertising to reach customers. Online marketing is the way to go if you want to reach and create a connection with customers.
Gone are the days when it was difficult to understand what customers want. Today, with the increase in tools such as analytics and digital marketing software, it is far easier to guess — nay, estimate — customer behavior… and cater to it! Online marketing has enabled businesses to gain treasured insights to customers’ minds.
When implemented in the right way, digital marketing will enable your business to target and reach its customers, classify new ones, increase sales, and experience lasting growth.
These digital marketing approaches will make your business visible to your existing customers online and connect you with new ones.
What is Digital Marketing Today?
Digital marketing is the use of the internet and electronic devices to make your business known to your existing and new customers both locally and internationally. It is a means of advertising done through digital platforms like social media, email, mobile apps, websites and search engines.
It today’s digital world, marketing is about connecting with your prospective customers in the right place and at the desired time, selling them with goods and service they need at the right time. This means that you need to target them where they spend most of their time and in this case, it is the internet. Digital marketing encompasses a range of marketing activities such as content marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, mobile marketing and more.
That being said, below, we’ve compiled a list of the digital marketing tricks used by all the famous business brands in the world.
1. Combine SEO and Content Marketing
SEO used to be a function of coding. Today, most of the metrics included in Google’s algorithm have to do with content and the engagement you win through the distribution of great content. Using various types of content (visual, text, video, infographics, audio, etc) does much better than using a single type of content.
More content – As more businesses embrace content marketing, competition continues to get tougher. Everything you do online is drowned in noise and information overload. If it’s SEO many businesses are doing it. If it’s posting good and original content, many are doing it. So, to beat them, you need to publish better and more content. According to HubSpot data, publishing at least once a week is critical for ROI and ROI drops pretty precipitously when you publish less frequently. However, it’s not about quantity or quality, but an ideal mix of both.
Valuable content – Content should be entertaining, informative, or make the reader feel something. Valuable content encourages subscription to your email, sharing, comments, and other actions that contribute to ROI.
Original content – Content can be audio, video or text but when you decide to use one or all of these digital content, ensure it is good and original. If you can’t create unique, compelling and good content by yourself, you can hire an expert to create content for your website and social media platforms. This is where you will need a powerful content marketing plan like never before.
Appropriate content – As you can see from this infographic from Occam’s Razor, you need to produce content that’s right for each stage in the conversion process (and your metrics need to match your goal with each piece of content).
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Image courtesy of Occam’s Razor
Knowing where a visitor is in the conversion process isn’t always easy, but, if you’ve done a good job of coding content (applying tracking codes so you know what type of content drove them to visit your site) and use tools that let you track where visitors have been before, you can make an educated guess as to what content they need. By delivering the right content at the right time, you’re more likely to convert visitors.
Reach is important. The more visitors you bring to your site, all things being equal, the higher your ROI. This is one of the reasons it’s important to have several social platforms and have links on your content so visitors can easily share your content. You should share your content once it’s published and here’s a schedule recommended by Kissmetrics:
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In addition to sharing your own content, you should share content created by other great companies/ experts. Many experts recommend you share 20% your promotional content and 80% other valuable content you find.
2. Have a Visible Presence on Relevant Social Media Platforms
Being seen online is the key to success for every business, especially in today’s world where almost all businesses have gone digital. It is one of the ways to stand out from the crowd. For this reason, you need to build your online presence on social media networks of relevance. Note that there are plenty of social networks available but you need to identify where your customers spend most of their time and target them there. Pick those that are relevant to your business and prospects and build your online presence there.
3. Optimize Your Website for Mobile-First Browsing
To ensure your content is mobile friendly, your website and social media networks are accessible on desktops and mobile devices. Customers are currently using smartphones and tablets to access the web. So, it is crucial to make your website and content accessible to users on all screen sizes.
4. Use the Right Tools
Digital marketing is an amalgamation of different strategies aimed at a plethora of channels, like SEO, PPC, social media, and so on. In order to ensure that you have an integrated marketing mix, you need the right digital marketing tools to help you run effective campaigns. You also need to develop expertise in using them and applying the insights in the right context.
5. Be Awesome at Design
Design underpins much of what makes digital marketing success. Whether you’re designing a website, a landing page or creating an image for your website, ad, or infographic, you need to have good design skills. Not all of us are whiz kids when it comes to design, but there are some tools to help.
Canva – is a great tool for creating social media images whether you need them for your profile or as images to include in posts. One aspect of Canva I really like is the templates that help design great looking images even if you know nothing about layout or what fonts go together. They’re constantly adding new images and tools, such as infographic templates, to help you out.
Photoshop – granted it’s expensive, but Photoshop is a great design tool. Luckily, you can now get the entire creative cloud from Adobe for as low as $29/ month if you’re in school and a little more to use for business. It used to be more difficult to use Photoshop, but now there are tons of tutorials on YouTube and Photoshop now includes little mini tutorials if you hover over the buttons.
Kuler – If mixing colors isn’t your forte, then Adobe Color is for you. It lets you import an image and get the colors used or you can choose a color to get colors that coordinate well with it.
6. Create an Email List
This should be done from the beginning of your business. If you are on the startup phase, you need to make an email list when planning. Ensure to gather people’s emails where you will be sending them any updates and progress of your business. Send them useful information but avoid spamming them.
7. Spend on Digital Advertising
Online advertising, including PPC (pay per click) campaigns such as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, social media advertising on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and mobile ads are great to support digital marketing success.
8. Use Infographics
People love infographics because they are attractive. Note that our brains can process pictures must quicker than text. A picture is worth a thousand words, and people will share them more often than texts.
Here are some examples of the best content infographics that awesome marketers have created and used to resonate with their audience.
9. Closely Watch Your Analytics
Almost the other end of the spectrum from creativity is analytics, but that’s exactly the combination you need for digital marketing success. Google Analytics is perfect for understanding critical elements of your website and how visitors navigate through it. If you’re trying to learn how to gain insights from Google Analytics, you can use the Google Data Studio to give it a test drive using data from Google’s e-commerce site.
For analytics outside of Google Analytics, a number of great tools exist. You can use individual analytics from each social network (ie. Facebook, Pinterest, etc), you can bring them all to one place by using a dashboard program such as Cognos (from IBM), or you can pay for a more powerful tool to gain more insights.
10. Integrate Strategies and Campaigns Across Channels
Integrating across these tactics can be really challenging, especially in a larger firm where different teams may manage different platforms or where different ad agencies handle different aspects of marketing, such as content marketing, paid, and social. But, integrate you must to achieve true digital marketing success.
A big part of conversion is frequency and unless efforts are coordinated, you lose out on frequency.
Let’s talk about how you go about integrating across these tactics that contribute to digital marketing success.
Strategic planning
The first step in integration is to have a strategic plan. Don’t have one, here’s a link to creating a digital marketing plan.
Coordination comes from strategic elements such as messaging, but even elements such as mission and goals help integrate efforts by creating an umbrella under which teams create posts, infographics, and the metrics used to assess them.
Creative meetings
Bringing everyone together is important. Everyone should have time to share elements they’re working on and get input from the group about ways to extend a particular effort across multiple platforms and creative efforts.
Having a style guide is a must. In the style guide, list the color palette, fonts, and approved variations so there’s consistency across your marketing efforts (including traditional advertising). Copies of various sizes and types of logos, images of the leadership team, and other graphic elements may be part of the style guide.
A master plan
There needs to be a point person in charge of digital marketing success and that person is key to coordinating efforts across teams. Some organizations have an approval process where the top person must approve everything before it goes live. I’m not a big fan of this approach because it can slow the process down and, unlike traditional advertising, digital media is a fast-flowing river where putting in a dam causes the flow to back up and allows accumulation of a lot of flotsam and jetsam, which is both stinky and further jams the pipeline.
A better strategy is to use a digital master calendar or another device, such as an app, to allow everyone to post what they’re working on, the assets they plan to use, and when the creative effort will go live. But, it’s not enough to post plans, but everyone should be required to check this master calendar every day to see where their plans fit into those already in the works.
For instance, reusing a graphic created by another team not only saves time and money, it creates a visual that helps consumers (customers and potential customers) associate the two efforts–and increases frequency.
Your Turn
Digital marketing is a must for your business success, and we hope our list of tricks will keep you headed in the right direction. These tricks are tried and tested and when you implement them effectively, you can get ahead of your competition.
If you want your business to succeed online in today’s digital world, then these digital marketing tricks will come in handy. What tips would you add to this list? Tell us in the comments below!
The post 10 Digital Marketing Tips and Tricks from Top Brands appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.
10 Digital Marketing Tips and Tricks from Top Brands published first on http://rssmix.com/u/11592782/rss.xml
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reakyflashsmrt-blog · 7 years ago
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reaky Flash - Smart Official Video
Music Video Production Companies
Are you a kind of fortunate ones who've their very own music bands, wish to play music and have your music videos however in search of methods to get your bands title on the market? Or are you one amongst these thousands and thousands of music artists who're searching for methods to ascertain your identification or promote your title and music video in the international music world? In case, your reply is yes then you are not alone. Right this moment if we talk by way of the current scenario then it is a powerful activity to mark your presence within the aggressive world of music.
Though there are numerous expertise hunt exhibits and personal music companies which are working continually to promote younger music talents however there is no substitute for a web based promotion. The world has become a global wi-fi township and at the moment via a web based promotion you may actually seize the concentration of millions of viewers from each nook of the world at most competitive worth.
Lately, you have the ample of choices similar to movies submission websites, video promotional sites and video sharing websites, that are regularly changing into major components and ways to promote music movies and in turn getting enormous net traffic.
Video Submission Websites
Selling your music video by video submission websites is among the best strategies of promotion. Today many individuals flock to those web sites on a regular basis to see and learn extra about music. And, thus you may by no means know that your band may get seen by the big recording companies as properly. On a regular basis, these web sites are get visited by 1000's of visitors and submitting your music to video submission sites can actually assist large attention.
Video Informer Web sites
The other approach will be the video informer website can be yet another option to advertise your video. These web sites helps you in easily upload the music videos you want. Including to this, the value of music video content material is generally decided by trap music their algorithm, which further help in positioning to the most popular and highest quality video content submitted. Consequently, this really offers you a chance to be on high page, which in flip play a vital position in making your video extra standard.
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The key feature that makes these web sites the more preferred choice is it is without doubt one of the greatest price competitive tools that may simply drive site visitors through the use of your embedded video. Your music movies get extremely promoted by means of such websites since when any person perform search operation on this on-line platform after they discover a description of your video in several classes that actually pull their attention and drag them directly to your website. It is among the cheapest and simplest means to succeed in a huge on-line viewers.
Video Sharing Websites
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On different hand, you even have possibility of various video sharing websites like YouTube, Metacafe, Twitter and MySpace. Looking at the moment scenario, these days video sharing websites are most popular among all. Music lovers from every age group spend their time browsing completely different music videos on these sites. In truth, it has emerged as a major hotspot for different music listeners who wish to pay attention different form of song composition. In the present day including music videos to these sites is very easy. All you want is to create your profile and add music movies to your profile. The process may be very simple and do not consume much time.
You must understand and realize that at this time there are tens of millions of music bands and videos over the Web. Many of those either get lost underneath the burdens of search engines like google and yahoo or never get seen, however what makes them the most effective from the remainder is the way of selling these movies on-line effectively by means as mentioned above.
Many musical artists made their careers successful by utilizing music videos. As an important part of the music business, music videos not solely showcase an artist's singing expertise, but in addition how they perform. The historical past of music videos reveals how using the movies remodeled the music industry.
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Premiering in 1974, the Australian TV show 'Countdown' performed an essential role in the improvement of the music video business. Music video clips had been used as a method of selling acts that have been to look on the show. As the popularity of the video clips grew, the music industry started to comprehend the advertising and marketing potential of these music clips. One of the crucial notable video clips options was the AC/DC hit, "It's A Long Technique to the High." During the Eighties, 'Countdown' aired in 22 nations.
In 1980, the New Zealand group Cut up Enz became one of many first bands to create a complete set of music promo clips and market them on video cassette for every track on their album, 'True Colors.
Predating MTV by almost three years, 'Video Concert Hall,' was the first nationwide video music program on American television. Premiering in June 1981, one of the first US programs to play music videos was the USA Cable Network program 'Night Flight.' Night Flight predated MTV's launch by just a few months.
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV was launched and it began the age of 24-hour music tv.
They launched the channel with the video, "Video Killed the Radio Star." All through the Eighties, MTV expanded to change into an vital software used in music advertising and marketing. Singers like Madonna not only used music videos to promote their albums, however to create their pictures. In 1983, the virtually 14-minute-long video for Michael Jackson's track "Thriller," was launched. It grew to become the world's most successful and influential video in music video history.
In 1985, MTV launched the channel VH1 which featured softer music for an older audience than the everyday younger MTV audience. In 1987, MTV Europe was launched and in 1991, MTV Asia was introduced.
In 1988, the MTV present, Yo! MTV Raps was launched. The show helped to carry hip hop music to a nation huge viewers. Two of the movies which are most well-known for being two of the three most expensive music videos of all time are Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream," which value $7 million to supply, and Madonna's "Bedtime Story," which cost $5 million. "Scream" is still probably the most expensively video ever made.
The internet has made its presence felt nearly in all areas. In recent times, it has broadly captured the attention of all music lovers from all the world over and allowed them watch their favourite music movies on-line. Online music videos and songs have damaged the blockade of language, society and country.
It would not matter, you might be on the lookout for jazz tune videos, old or the most popular new music videos, video information websites have supplied a web based platform to seek out the every kind of music movies that you love to look at. Actually, movies data websites and video search engines like google and yahoo has grew to become the host for a plethora of on-line music movies both person-generated as effectively professionally produced. Moreover this, these days there are many video data sites which have launched the concepts like "vote-up". The concept of vote up or down helps in realizing the recognition of the particular music video.
Online video websites beyond doubt has definitely introduced a rare video thrill throughout the web world. Certainly, one's private assortment of assorted music movies seems to be the most well liked obsession of internet users, particularly among the younger technology. Everyone loves music movies. They seem to be a highly pleasing form of entertainment. For those who like music, its nearly a on condition that you'll like music videos. My dad is 65 and he quite likes Eminem's music videos, he even likes some of Green Day's music movies.
He has a style for off the wall, my dad. He additionally has an eye for the ladies, not the half bare ones within the R&B videos or many of the rap videos however he likes Pink, thinks that she is pretty because she has character (and a hot body that she shouldn't be afraid of showing off), he digs her music too. He likes Annie Lennox for the same motive, she doesn't showcase her physique however she has character and it comes out in her music and music videos. He's additionally a bit eclectic is my dad.
Everybody has his or her personal distinctive taste in music. Some people have very specific tastes and a few folks's tastes are very broad, they're the fortunate ones as a result of they will hearken to a wide variety of music and never get irritated by what they hear very quickly. Fairly often folks have a secret style in music that they're a bit ashamed of. It's because it is often one thing that they might ordinarily mock however out of the blue they discover that they like a few of a particular artist's music and they feel the need to purchase the brand new cd.
They really feel dreadful doing it and the self-chastisement and self-flagellation that they undergo is gigantic however do not think that they don't get enormous joy out of the cd also. They simply don't inform individuals about it. Solely mutual sharing of embarrassing music will allow the secret to be advised and only if the opposite particular person's music is deemed to be more embarrassing than theirs. Key point, panpipes at all times wins in the embarrassing stakes, nothing beats panpipes, nothing, not even Spice Women (however its shut).
The truth that we are able to really feel such acute embarrassment by one thing as silly as the music we listen to simply goes to indicate what a robust function music plays in our lives. We identify ourselves by the type of music that we listen to. Check out the Goth subculture; they're closely influenced by the music that they take heed to. The clubs that they go to only play Goth music, everyone dresses in a manner that identifies them as Goth.
The ravers are the identical, they take heed to rave music, dress a specific approach, speak a particular method and have identified themselves as a part of a specific subculture. They take delight of their id. There are subcultures for each sort of music, even teenybopper pop as little ladies determine with whoever the current icon is (not Britney Spear, thank goodness). There is little or no crossover between subcultures. They have a tendency to stick very a lot to themselves and to judge different music subcultures as inferior in each means possible.
Even when we don't identify so strongly to a subculture that we undertake its gown, make-up, language and mode of life, music still plays an essential function in day by day life. It affects our moods or we play music to replicate our moods, we use it to maintain ourselves company in our automobiles or when we are alone in our homes, it helps focus, it relieves stress and pressure and helps us calm down, it sets the temper for a party or for a romantic night in with our partners.
Scientific research has even proved that if performed to babies while nonetheless within the womb it may possibly make your youngsters smarter, however that needs to be a sure type of music, not just any previous keys will do. Love of music is inherent, infants smile chortle and dance from before they'll stand when they right here music and so they develop their own taste early on. It might be much like their dad and mom but not necessarily. Its all a part of what makes life fascinating.
In terms of music videos you could not essentially like the artist but you'll be able to still just like the video. Ricky Martin as an example, not that musically gifted but that man can swing his booty like no one's enterprise. His music movies are a pleasure to observe.
The advantage of the Web is that you just get free streaming audio and websites that supply music videos via free streaming audio, which signifies that you get to see your videos virtually as soon as you select them. It also implies that you don't have to wait for ages on your favorite videos to look on TELEVISION, you just decide and click on. Some websites have huge archives of videos so that you can choose from in any genre that you just like. All tastes and subcultures are catered for. It's great living in an age where entertainment and expertise work hand in hand to offer handy and quick access to the most recent and oldest music movies that you just might need a yen to see.
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webeasts123-blog · 6 years ago
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Header: Solve the 2019 Insta-Math, you Marketer!
We, as an advertising agency, feel that IG works on its own terms, has its own formulas and algorithms. If you didn’t know about it, it’s never late! I am here to solve it all for you. It might seem a little tricky but by the end of this piece, I don’t think it would be as harsh as any of your Game of Thrones Episode. So, take a chill-pill and concentrate on some facts coming by your way…
Instagram in 2010 and captured the market! Social Media was a little laid back, then. Surprisingly, now it has become the best way to socialize, network and promote. Now, the word promotion, advertisement and brand building take their thrones through Instagram and occupy their business profiles at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Coming back to our main agenda, Instagram takes you through a visual journey of the life of a brand, an influencer, an individual or a business. Earlier, Instagram lived on dates and chronology. On the onset of 2016, Instagram started to pay more heed to the “memories that we care about” putting a full stop to the old reverse-chronological feed. So, let’s assume, the new maths on gram is  ‘Instagram Algorithm’ which is influenced by tons of different factors like the engagement of a post, attention span, most liked posts, most viewed profiles, and many other factors. Instagram is something that works for our taste, preferences and styles. Moving the story forward, in 2018, Instagram started to highlight fresh posts.
And, in January 2019, they said that your feed will be the fruit of what you sow meaning what you see, think and do on the gram is what we get!
That’s where the need to get a know-how of its working, updated changes and some hacks to deal with it; here’s what we have compiled for you being a digital marketing agency:
 1 The engagement play Or Post-engagement wins it all
Do you follow an influential figure? Watch their videos while scrolling on Instagram? I’m sure that you must have liked their Instagram handle and you might also be sending the different posts to your friends and family. And, if you really like it, who knows you may share it on your story too! Now, that’s engagement! You see, like and share! But, friends! Liking and sharing is one thing and quicker engagement is the other.
 Follow this:
All you need to do is adjust with the timings a little, for instance, posting in the morning from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. would automatically grab attention.
 2 Look, See and Stay
The Instagram Algorithm works exactly like the Facebook Algorithm. It works on the time you spend to see a post or a video (which works quite well in this case). The more the time you spend on each post, the boosting magic begins therefrom. So, the Instagram-math focuses on this. See how it can work wonders for your brand! I’m quite sure you are at the right place to hit the right chords for your brand.
 3 Set the posting tempo right
Gram surely uses its time wisely and, that’s the main funda of the 2019 Instagram Algorithm. Follow some steps:
You need to time your posts for more grabbing more eyeballs.
The more you post the better it is this way because people refreshing their feeds will have your recent activity on their screens.
Pick a morning or peak evening time
This will surely fetch more likes and comments at hand. All of this works only at one cost and that is some engaging language and content. Captions are the biggest way to interact with your followers on IG.
 4 You see what you like!
You need to get this up your head that Instagram is smart and so is its Algorithm. Liking and sharing the content of some particular accounts of your friends and family will increase your notifications, perhaps. Probably, this is the reason you see more of travel bloggers, bikers or clothing apparel in your feed. Isn’t it? Do you know that the followers of the particular person/ brand don’t really play a major role here but the user’s behaviour does? Even the people who love your content will come across most of your posts for the same reason.
5 More space for relevancy of the content
Now, what if I give you a black silk dress to wear on the sweaty morning during Summers? Will that be relevant to you even if its purchase rate is high? Of course, not! That’s what the Instagram Algorithm looks at rather than engagement on a post, relevancy. It keeps an eye on the kind of genre you browse every day. It plays the biggest role in what you see on your feed. Have you ever noticed that if you follow more fashion bloggers, then all your sponsored posts will have the go-to-link of many other similar fashion/ food/ Digital bloggers’ profiles? What we see here is the relevancy or similarity factor working to design your feed as per your personalized interests.
6 Your search is a determiner
Now, imagine… Imagine a shopping mall and Lifestyle store or H&M Store. That’s your search phase where you want to buy a top/ bag but what colour, what design, which budget and for which occasion, etc. is unknown. The way you will see the pop-ups in the store would determine what you are looking for! Similarly, whenever you search for a new account, Instagram records your behaviour and might show you more of the content (similar or relevant) from the particular ones.
 Phew! A tough one at that. Instagram Algorithm seems to be difficult to beat and drive more engagement to your posts in comparison to the potential competitors or competitors established in the market. That’s where I have tried to portray the things in an easier format so that you are able to understand well and implement the same while running a normal profile or a business one. The inability to do so has other solutions inclusive of certain digital marketing services in Delhi and many other cities. Get in touch with them, work on individual levels and there you go all effortlessly through the algorithm.
 How the Instagram Algorithm Works in 2019: Everything You Need to Know
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theconservativebrief · 7 years ago
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Maniac, a new, darkly comic Netflix miniseries starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, is the rare project that I like both more and less the longer I think about it.
By the time it reaches the midpoint of its 10 episodes, the series is one of the more confident and assured examples of what I call “Big Moment TV,” where every episode involves some jaw-dropping visual or conceit that’s meant to send you to Twitter to buzz, “Did you see that?!”
And as directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, the genius (and newly minted James Bond director) behind everything from the wonderful 2011 Jane Eyre to the visuals of the first season of True Detective, those moments really land. I wanted to go to Twitter to talk about them, except that would have been a violation of my screener agreement with Netflix.
And yet there’s something so calculated about Maniac. There’s rarely the thrill of the unexpected, which is tough to explain in a series that longs, deeply, to provide the thrill of the unexpected. Every time the story would shift, or enter another genre entirely, or let the actors play other characters than the ones they came in as, I would nod and say, “Sure. Makes sense!” Which is not what I think anybody involved was going for.
Some of that stems from performance (Hill is a fine dramatic actor but maybe not the guy you want sublimating all of his live-wire energy to play a depressive), and some of it stems from the storytelling, which is a wackadoodle pastiche of “mind-fuck cinema,” in which the movies ask you to question reality and wonder what’s going on and so on.
But not only have you seen the basic dramatic beats of Maniac over and over again, but Maniac takes great pains to explain to you, at every turn, what’s going on, how the characters feel and think about it, and what those crazy, trippy visuals could mean. It’s a mind-fuck movie so unconfident in its ability to fuck with you that it follows up every big reveal or jaw-dropping mindscape with a moment that seems to ask, “Did you see what I did there?”
This probably already sounds like a bunch of ideas thrown together in haste, which don’t really cohere. It is, and it isn’t, and to explain why, I’m going to have to spoil the show almost in its entirety, so follow me after the massive spoiler warning to talk about why it’s easy to remain interested in Maniac but hard to become truly invested in it.
The rise of Big Moment TV has been driven by two factors. The first is that TV storytelling has grown more complex in terms of serialization, but the second is that lots of people still kind of half pay attention to what they’re watching, because they’re doing chores or playing a game on their phone or whatever. So if you watch an episode of Game of Thrones and there’s a big, bloody death or something, that jars you out of whatever other thing you’re doing and forces you to pay attention.
But, increasingly, these sorts of shows feel driven less by the whims of their characters than by the whims of their creators. Game of Thrones went from a show that made you feel the weight of every death to a show that wantonly killed characters without much regard to emotional resonance or storytelling sense. And that’s, ultimately, part of the fun of that show, but it took it from a must-watch to a fun show that often struggles to reach its potential.
But Big Moment TV has increasingly evolved to a point where it’s less about a big death or a big plot twist and more about anything unusual that will get you talking on Twitter, as I explored in this article about The Magicians and Legion. And those two shows form useful comparison points for Maniac, with its occasionally fascinating, occasionally awkward attempts to fuse Big Moment TV, over-explanatory mind-fuck pastiche, and what amounts to falling asleep in front of Netflix. (It was an early adopter of Big Moment TV, lest we forget House of Cards’ entire storytelling ethos.) All while the algorithm randomly shuffles through things it thinks you might like.
(And really do turn away at this point if you want to remain unspoiled about this series, because knowing the premise of this show could potentially ruin it.)
The story focuses on Annie (Stone) and Owen (Hill), two 20-somethings struggling with barely repressed trauma and other mental conditions in a near-future New York where everything, including friendship, has become a part of the gig economy. You can even sell your likeness for various ads and stock photos, as Annie has done, which means that when Owen bumps into her at a purported pharma trial for a new drug, he both feels he already knows her and fears he’s hallucinating her. (He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, see.)
In one episode, Owen and Annie become stuck in some sort of espionage thriller. Netflix
Anyway, the drug trial turns out to be a complicated procedure designed to put people through a sort of psychological boot camp, where in stage one they relive their greatest trauma (the loss of her sister for Annie; a suicide attempt — that might not have even happened — for Owen), attempt to better understand the roots of their psychological issues in stage two, and then confront those issues and their trauma in stage three, in hopes of healing and moving on.
The trial is overseen by a group of people cosplaying as the characters erasing Jim Carrey’s memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, including Justin Theroux, the dryly funny Sonoya Mizuno, and (I swear I am not kidding about this) Sally Field playing a depressed computer.
The bulk of the series involves what happens when a mechanical malfunction results in the fusing of Owen and Annie’s subconsciouses, which results in them essentially entering an anthology series. Across five of the season’s 10 episodes, they play different characters, in different genres, following what amounts to Fukunaga’s syllabus for a “history of American indie film” class. There are suburban capers, and an extended (kinda awful) journey through a gangster/crime movie tale, and a story where Owen becomes a hawk. (That last one’s a lot of fun!)
This is, I think, a pretty compelling way to explore two characters who seem paper-thin at first. By having Annie and Owen journey through both of their subconsciouses at once, the show could theoretically fill in details about these people’s core beings while still allowing for plenty of action and adventure. Seeing Annie as a Long Island housewife trying to steal a lemur, or as a con artist interrupting a seance, or as a half-elven ranger in a generic fantasy kingdom gives us different sides of the actual Annie’s persona and lets Stone have a lot of fun.
But I could never escape the feeling that the show’s weirdness was less an organic investigation of two people in crisis and more a mechanism designed to keep me watching. The journeys that Annie and Owen take through their brains feel assembled more from other movies and TV shows than from genuine psychological exploration.
On a show limited only by the human imagination (at least in theory), these adventures stay frustratingly earthbound. They’re “imaginative,” in the manner of a college student who’s carefully cultivated her persona out of bits and pieces of other personas she’s seen elsewhere, rather than authentic.
The strange facility where Owen and Annie bond is a weird setting unto itself. Netflix
It feels a little churlish to complain about this, because watching Maniac is a lot of fun. I sat down intending to watch a couple of episodes one day and ended up watching seven, because I really did want to see what would happen next. The writing staff — led by Patrick Somerville of The Leftovers fame — has given real thought to the story of all 10 episodes as well as the story of each episode, which leads to fun journeys through the various genre pastiches the writers come up with. (I loved the Long Island-set crime caper, which felt straight out of a Coen brothers movie.)
But I could never get past the stage where I was enjoying the show’s considerably gorgeous surfaces to access some deeper level. And then after watching the finale, I read a quote from Fukunaga in a recent GQ profile of him, and something clicked. He said:
Because Netflix is a data company, they know exactly how their viewers watch things. So they can look at something you’re writing and say, We know based on our data that if you do this, we will lose this many viewers. So it’s a different kind of note-giving. It’s not like, Let’s discuss this and maybe I’m gonna win. The algorithm’s argument is gonna win at the end of the day. So the question is do we want to make a creative decision at the risk of losing people. …
There was one episode we wrote that was just layer upon layer peeled back, and then reversed again. Which was a lot of fun to write and think of executing, but, like, halfway through the season, we’re just losing a bunch of people on that kind of binging momentum. That’s probably not a good move, you know? So it’s a decision that was made 100 percent based on audience participation.
Now, listen, the notes-giving process in Hollywood is important. I’m not somebody who rails against notes, or thinks they ruin the creative process or tear down impeccable works of art. But something about letting a computer give those notes speaks to why Maniac, ultimately, felt less human than human to me, why it always seemed like it was assembled more than it was a deeply felt passion project for anyone. And, indeed, the series is based on a Norwegian show of the same name, and the various genre pastiches look a lot like other Netflix shows if you squint, and every single actor feels specifically chosen to appeal to a very specific demographic.
This would almost feel like Netflix snarkily commenting on itself if the show didn’t take itself so seriously. The fact that it turns into a genuinely sincere story of how Owen and Annie come together to better each other’s lives in the last few episodes is either the bold swing that saves the enterprise or a case of too little, too late. I’m more in the former camp than the latter, but it’s not hard for me to imagine talking myself out of that stance.
And yet there’s something kind of beautiful about a series that applies the dull plotting of most other TV shows — all life-and-death stakes and, “We’ve gotta get to the [plot device] before they do!” numbness — to two emotionally damaged people trying to heal. There’s a bravado here that I can’t write off, even if I never felt like the show went deep enough to turn either Owen or Annie into anything more than ciphers, despite all of the self-analyzing monologues both deliver in an attempt to sell their complexities.
Whatever complaints I have about the show, then, might be a part of its commentary on a world where our mental horizons are so often occupied by stories we’ve heard elsewhere. If you and I somehow had our subconsciousnesses fused, and then went through a series of adventures in dreamspace together, wouldn’t it be more likely that those adventures would be drawn from the movies and TV shows we had watched than something wildly original?
Maniac isn’t weird enough to really achieve what it wants to, but it does say something — however accidentally — about how reality is already weird enough. Maybe that’s why we’re so content to live inside the dreams of others.
Maniac is streaming on Netflix.
Original Source -> Netflix’s Maniac, with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone, is either too weird or not weird enough
via The Conservative Brief
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technato · 7 years ago
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Former Head of Google China Foresees an AI Crisis—and Proposes a Solution
Q&A: Kai-Fu Lee talks about AI, jobs, and the human heart
When the former president of Google China talks about artificial intelligence and its potential to cause global upheaval, people listen. His hope is that enough people will listen to avert catastrophic disruption on three different scales: to the global balance of power, to national economies, and to human beings’ delicate souls.
Kai-Fu Lee has been fascinated by AI since he was an eager computer science student applying to Carnegie Mellon University’s Ph.D. program; his admission essay extolled the promise of AI, which he called “the quantification of the human thinking process.” His studies led him to executive positions in Apple, Microsoft, and Google China, before his 2009 founding of Sinovation Ventures, a venture-capital firm focusing on high-tech companies in China.  
His new book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), is something of a bait and switch. The first half explores the diverging AI capabilities of China and the United States and frames the discussion as a battle for global dominance. Then, he boldly declares that we shouldn’t waste time worrying about who will win and says the “real AI crisis” will come from automation that wipes out whole job sectors, reshaping economies and societies in both nations. 
“Lurking beneath this social and economic turmoil will be a psychological struggle,” he writes. “As more and more people see themselves displaced by machines, they will be forced to answer a far deeper question: In an age of intelligent machines, what does it mean to be human?”
In a wide-ranging Q&A with IEEE Spectrum, Lee not only explored this question further, he also gave his answer. 
  Kai-Fu Lee on . . .
Why China Will Overtake the U.S. in AI
“50 Percent of Jobs Are in Danger”
The Inevitability of the AI Revolution 
Facing Death
A “Blueprint for Coexistence”
Why China Will Overtake the U.S. in AI
IEEE Spectrum: Why do you believe that China will soon match or even overtake the United States in developing and deploying AI?
Kai-Fu Lee: The first and foremost reason is that we’ve transitioned out of an era of discovery—when the person who makes the discovery has a huge edge—and into an era of implementation. The algorithms for AI are pretty well known to many practitioners. What matters now is speed, execution, capital, and access to a large amount of data. In each of these areas, China has an edge.
That’s why I began the book by talking about China’s entrepreneurism. It’s not like Silicon Valley, which is built on iPhone breakthroughs and SpaceX innovations, it’s built on incredibly hard work. Chinese entrepreneurs find areas where there’s enough data and a commercially viable application of AI, and then they work really hard to make the application work. It’s often very hard, dirty, ugly work. The data isn’t handed to you on a silver platter. 
Spectrum: You say that Chinese tech giants like Tencent have a clear advantage in terms of access to data that’s needed to train AI. Do they really have more data than companies like Google?
Lee: There are a few ways to look at the data advantage. The first is how many users you have. Google probably has more users than Tencent, because it’s international. The second question is: How homogenous is your data set? Google’s data from Estonia may not help its work in India. It may be better to have rich data from one set of people who have the same language, culture, preferences, usage patterns, payment methods, and so on.
The third way to measure is how much data you have about each person. Tencent has a catch-all app, WeChat, that does basically everything. The average Chinese Internet user spends half of his or her time online in WeChat. When you open WeChat, you have access to everything U.S. users get from Facebook, Twitter, iMessage, Uber, Expedia, Evite, Instagram, Skype, PayPal, GrubHub, LimeBike, WebMD, Fandango, YouTube, Amazon, and eBay.
Spectrum: You describe China’s startup ecosystem as a brutal “coliseum” where companies don’t win because they’re the most innovative, but rather because they’re the best at copying, using dirty tricks, and working insane schedules.
Lee: There is creativity, but it’s just one tool. Another is copying. Entrepreneurs do whatever it takes to win, to build value for the user, and to make money. If you look at WeChat, you can’t point to one moment when it shocked the world like an iPhone. WeChat today is an amazing innovation, but it didn’t come about because someone at Tencent dreamed it up and built it and shocked the world. They kept layering on features that users wanted, they iterated, they threw away the features that didn’t work, and at the end they had a product that was the most innovative social network. It’s so good that Facebook is now copying them.
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“50 Percent of Jobs Are in Danger”
Spectrum: You write that the big AI question isn’t whether China or the United States will dominate. Instead it’s how we’ll deal with the “real AI crisis” of job losses, wealth inequality, and people’s sense of self-worth.
Lee: AI will take many single-task, single-domain jobs away. You can argue that humans have abilities that AI does not: We can conceptualize, strategize, create. Whereas today’s AI is just a really smart pattern recognizer that can take in data, optimize, and beat humans at a given task. But how many jobs in the world are simple repetitions of tasks that can be optimized? How many jobs require no creativity, strategizing, conceptualization? Most jobs are repetitive: truck-driving, telemarketing, dishwashing, fruit picking, assembly-line work, and so on. I’m afraid that about 50 percent of jobs in the world are in danger. 
Whether these jobs will disappear in 15 years or 20 or 30, that’s debatable. But it’s inevitable. Not only can AI do a better job, it can do the job for almost marginal cost. Once you get the system up and running you just pay for the server, electricity, bandwidth. To be competitive, companies will be forced to automate. And this shift will happen a lot faster than has ever happened before in the history of humanity.
Spectrum: Why do you think “techno-utopians” have it wrong when they say that AI will ultimately create entirely new categories of jobs, just like the industrial revolution?
Lee: People say that in the industrial revolution, more jobs were created than destroyed. They say it was the same with electricity, and that we shouldn’t worry, because the same thing will happen this time with AI. I would agree with that if we had enough time. Those earlier technological revolutions took a century or longer. Electricity has been around for over 100 years, and we still don’t have electric cars, we’re still working on the grid. That gave people time to grow, and develop, and invent new jobs. But we have basically one generation with AI, and that’s a lot less time.
Spectrum: You argue that even if governments figure out a way to distribute money to all these jobless people, it will still be a crisis.
Lee: Most people don’t think of their job just as a source of income. It brings meaning to their life, it’s their contribution to the world. That’s how we decided to structure our capitalistic society: There’s the idea that even by working routine jobs, they can make money and make better lives for their families. If we pull the rug out from under them and say, you have no job, but here’s some money from the government, I think that would lead to bad outcomes. Some would be happy and retire early. Some will learn a new skill and get a new job, but unfortunately many will learn the wrong job, and get displaced again. A large number of people will be depressed. They will feel that life has no meaning, and this can result in suicide, substance abuse, and so on.
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The Inevitability of the AI Revolution
Spectrum: If this kind of economic and societal upheaval is an inevitable consequence of AI, is there any chance that we’ll decide to turn away from the technology, and decide not to use it?
Lee: Individual governments can make certain decisions to slow down the deployment of AI. But for humanity as a whole, it’s not possible. We’ve opened Pandora’s box. We did, as humans, control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but that technology was secret and required a huge amount of capital investment. In AI, the algorithms are well known to many people, and it’s not possible to forbid people to use them. College students are using them to start companies.
Take autonomous trucks as an example. While China is building cities and highways to facilitate autonomous trucks, the American trucking union is appealing to President Trump to forbid testing on highways. If the U.S. is currently ahead on autonomous trucks, but chooses to slow down the development for fear of taking away jobs from truck-drivers, the only outcome is that China will catch up. Chinese companies will test the trucks, get the data, that data will make the AI better, at some point the technology will be so good that China will export it to the rest of the world. At that point, the U.S. will still have to give in to automation.
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Facing Death
Spectrum: You call this a grim picture, but then go on to say that there’s hope, and that the potential for human flourishing has never been greater. You had your own grim experience that led to your own flourishing. Can you talk about your cancer experience?
Lee: I had been a workaholic for my whole life, and I always put work as my top priority. It was only when I faced cancer and possible death that I realized that no amount of money, success, or fame could substitute for the love I have from other people. And I felt great regret for not giving back what they gave me. That was a wake-up call.
After I became better and my cancer was in remission, I changed my life. It’s not that I don’t work hard anymore, I still do. But I prioritize differently. I prioritize family, I found a much better balance. I realized that the optimization that I used to do at work brought me money, success, and fame, but those are not the things that really matter to me—although I once thought they were.
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A Blueprint for Coexistence
Spectrum: So that experience led to your idea for what you call a blueprint for coexistence with AI, in which the use of AI gives people more time to love each other. You write that we must “forge a synergy between artificial intelligence and the human heart.” Can you give me an example of how this synergy might manifest in the job market?
Lee: One of my favorite examples is in medicine. Imagine a future clinic, in which the room is enhanced with all sorts of sensors that take readings of your body and give the human doctor lots of information. The doctor will help tease out information like family history and specific symptoms. 
AI can make a great diagnosis and suggest the treatment, the prescription, and so on. In early days, AI will give statistics and the doctor will make the final choice. But in time, it will be very rare that the doctor overrides the system. So the AI will do the diagnosis, then the doctor will deliver the message in a way that feels caring and warm. The doctor will also let the patient tell his or her story. In many countries, each person gets only five minutes of doctor’s time—but while the doctor may only need five minutes, the patient needs much more to feel heard, to ask questions, and to be reassured. 
If each doctor spends more time with each patient, there will need to be more doctors. Maybe they don’t need to be full MDs with 10 years of education and internship, since they no longer need to memorize all the symptoms and treatments. Instead they could get four years of education to become caring, compassionate caregivers, similar to nurse practitioners. Then the cost of health care will come way down, people will get better care, and the number of caregivers will go way up.
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Former Head of Google China Foresees an AI Crisis—and Proposes a Solution syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com
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recentnews18-blog · 7 years ago
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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/netflixs-maniac-with-jonah-hill-and-emma-stone-is-either-too-weird-or-not-weird-enough/
Netflix's Maniac, with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone, is either too weird or not weird enough
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Maniac, a new, darkly comic Netflix miniseries starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, is the rare project that I like both more and less the longer I think about it.
By the time it reaches the midpoint of its 10 episodes, the series is one of the more confident and assured examples of what I call “Big Moment TV,” where every episode involves some jaw-dropping visual or conceit that’s meant to send you to Twitter to buzz, “Did you see that?!”
And as directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, the genius (and newly minted James Bond director) behind everything from the wonderful 2011 Jane Eyre to the visuals of the first season of True Detective, those moments really land. I wanted to go to Twitter to talk about them, except that would have been a violation of my screener agreement with Netflix.
And yet there’s something so calculated about Maniac. There’s rarely the thrill of the unexpected, which is tough to explain in a series that longs, deeply, to provide the thrill of the unexpected. Every time the story would shift, or enter another genre entirely, or let the actors play other characters than the ones they came in as, I would nod and say, “Sure. Makes sense!” Which is not what I think anybody involved was going for.
Some of that stems from performance (Hill is a fine dramatic actor but maybe not the guy you want sublimating all of his live-wire energy to play a depressive), and some of it stems from the storytelling, which is a wackadoodle pastiche of “mind-fuck cinema,” in which the movies ask you to question reality and wonder what’s going on and so on.
But not only have you seen the basic dramatic beats of Maniac over and over again, but Maniac takes great pains to explain to you, at every turn, what’s going on, how the characters feel and think about it, and what those crazy, trippy visuals could mean. It’s a mind-fuck movie so unconfident in its ability to fuck with you that it follows up every big reveal or jaw-dropping mindscape with a moment that seems to ask, “Did you see what I did there?”
This probably already sounds like a bunch of ideas thrown together in haste, which don’t really cohere. It is, and it isn’t, and to explain why, I’m going to have to spoil the show almost in its entirety, so follow me after the massive spoiler warning to talk about why it’s easy to remain interested in Maniac but hard to become truly invested in it.
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The rise of Big Moment TV has been driven by two factors. The first is that TV storytelling has grown more complex in terms of serialization, but the second is that lots of people still kind of half pay attention to what they’re watching, because they’re doing chores or playing a game on their phone or whatever. So if you watch an episode of Game of Thrones and there’s a big, bloody death or something, that jars you out of whatever other thing you’re doing and forces you to pay attention.
But, increasingly, these sorts of shows feel driven less by the whims of their characters than by the whims of their creators. Game of Thrones went from a show that made you feel the weight of every death to a show that wantonly killed characters without much regard to emotional resonance or storytelling sense. And that’s, ultimately, part of the fun of that show, but it took it from a must-watch to a fun show that often struggles to reach its potential.
But Big Moment TV has increasingly evolved to a point where it’s less about a big death or a big plot twist and more about anything unusual that will get you talking on Twitter, as I explored in this article about The Magicians and Legion. And those two shows form useful comparison points for Maniac, with its occasionally fascinating, occasionally awkward attempts to fuse Big Moment TV, over-explanatory mind-fuck pastiche, and what amounts to falling asleep in front of Netflix — an early adopter of Big Moment TV, lest we forget House of Cards’ entire storytelling ethos — while the algorithm randomly shuffles through things it thinks you might like.
(And really do turn away at this point if you want to remain unspoiled about this series, because knowing the premise of this show could potentially ruin it.)
The story focuses on Annie (Stone) and Owen (Hill), two 20-somethings struggling with barely repressed trauma and other mental conditions in a near-future New York where everything, including friendship, has become a part of the gig economy. You can even sell your likeness for various ads and stock photos, as Annie has done, which means that when Owen bumps into her at a purported pharma trial for a new drug, he both feels he already knows her and fears he’s hallucinating her. (He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, see.)
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In one episode, Owen and Annie become stuck in some sort of espionage thriller. Netflix
Anyway, the drug trial turns out to be a complicated procedure designed to put people through a sort of psychological boot camp, where in stage one they relive their greatest trauma (the loss of her sister for Annie; a suicide attempt — that might not have even happened — for Owen), attempt to better understand the roots of their psychological issues in stage two, and then confront those issues and their trauma in stage three, in hopes of healing and moving on.
The trial is overseen by a group of people cosplaying as the characters erasing Jim Carrey’s memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, including Justin Theroux, the dryly funny Sonoya Mizuno, and (I swear I am not kidding about this) Sally Field playing a depressed computer.
The bulk of the series involves what happens when a mechanical malfunction results in the fusing of Owen and Annie’s subconsciouses, which results in them essentially entering an anthology series. Across five of the season’s 10 episodes, they play different characters, in different genres, following what amounts to Fukunaga’s syllabus for a “history of American indie film” class. There are suburban capers, and an extended (kinda awful) journey through a gangster/crime movie tale, and a story where Owen becomes a hawk. (That last one’s a lot of fun!)
This is, I think, a pretty compelling way to explore two characters who seem paper-thin at first. By having Annie and Owen journey through both of their subconsciouses at once, the show could theoretically fill in details about these people’s core beings while still allowing for plenty of action and adventure. Seeing Annie as a Long Island housewife trying to steal a lemur, or as a con artist interrupting a seance, or as a half-elven ranger in a generic fantasy kingdom gives us different sides of the actual Annie’s persona and lets Stone have a lot of fun.
But I could never escape the feeling that the show’s weirdness was less an organic investigation of two people in crisis and more a mechanism designed to keep me watching. The journeys that Annie and Owen take through their brains feel assembled more from other movies and TV shows than from genuine psychological exploration.
On a show limited only by the human imagination (at least in theory), these adventures stay frustratingly earthbound. They’re “imaginative,” in the manner of a college student who’s carefully cultivated her persona out of bits and pieces of other personas she’s seen elsewhere, rather than authentic.
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The strange facility where Owen and Annie bond is a weird setting unto itself. Netflix
It feels a little churlish to complain about this, because watching Maniac is a lot of fun. I sat down intending to watch a couple of episodes one day and ended up watching seven, because I really did want to see what would happen next. The writing staff — led by Patrick Somerville of The Leftovers fame — has given real thought to the story of all 10 episodes as well as the story of each episode, which leads to fun journeys through the various genre pastiches the writers come up with. (I loved the Long Island-set crime caper, which felt straight out of a Coen brothers movie.)
But I could never get past the stage where I was enjoying the show’s considerably gorgeous surfaces to access some deeper level. And then after watching the finale, I read a quote from Fukunaga in a recent GQ profile of him, and something clicked. He said:
Because Netflix is a data company, they know exactly how their viewers watch things. So they can look at something you’re writing and say, We know based on our data that if you do this, we will lose this many viewers. So it’s a different kind of note-giving. It’s not like, Let’s discuss this and maybe I’m gonna win. The algorithm’s argument is gonna win at the end of the day. So the question is do we want to make a creative decision at the risk of losing people. …
There was one episode we wrote that was just layer upon layer peeled back, and then reversed again. Which was a lot of fun to write and think of executing, but, like, halfway through the season, we’re just losing a bunch of people on that kind of binging momentum. That’s probably not a good move, you know? So it’s a decision that was made 100 percent based on audience participation.
Now, listen, the notes-giving process in Hollywood is important. I’m not somebody who rails against notes, or thinks they ruin the creative process or tear down impeccable works of art. But something about letting a computer give those notes speaks to why Maniac, ultimately, felt less human than human to me, why it always seemed like it was assembled more than it was a deeply felt passion project for anyone. And, indeed, the series is based on a Norwegian show of the same name, and the various genre pastiches look a lot like other Netflix shows if you squint, and every single actor feels specifically chosen to appeal to a very specific demographic.
This would almost feel like Netflix snarkily commenting on itself if the show didn’t take itself so seriously. The fact that it turns into a genuinely sincere story of how Owen and Annie come together to better each other’s lives in the last few episodes is either the bold swing that saves the enterprise or a case of too little, too late. I’m more in the former camp than the latter, but it’s not hard for me to imagine talking myself out of that stance.
And yet there’s something kind of beautiful about a series that applies the dull plotting of most other TV shows — all life-and-death stakes and, “We’ve gotta get to the [plot device] before they do!” numbness — to two emotionally damaged people trying to heal. There’s a bravado here that I can’t write off, even if I never felt like the show went deep enough to turn either Owen or Annie into anything more than ciphers, despite all of the self-analyzing monologues both deliver in an attempt to sell their complexities.
Whatever complaints I have about the show, then, might be a part of its commentary on a world where our mental horizons are so often occupied by stories we’ve heard elsewhere. If you and I somehow had our subconsciousnesses fused, and then went through a series of adventures in dreamspace together, wouldn’t it be more likely that those adventures would be drawn from the movies and TV shows we had watched than something wildly original?
Maniac isn’t weird enough to really achieve what it wants to, but it does say something — however accidentally — about how reality is already weird enough. Maybe that’s why we’re so content to live inside the dreams of others.
Maniac is streaming on Netflix.
Source: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/9/21/17884512/maniac-netflix-review-emma-stone-jonah-hill
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thedeadshotnetwork · 7 years ago
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Lady Dynamites brilliant second season is openly hostile toward Netflix
Lady Dynamite’s brilliant second season is openly hostile toward Netflix, its platform
Maria Bamford’s surrealist comedy parodies the streaming service as ‘MuskVision’
by Nov 15, 2017, 8:30am EST
Beth Dubber / Netflix
Maria Bamford’s Lady Dynamite, created in collaboration with Arrested Development’s Pam Brady and Mitch Hurwitz, was the most interesting addition to Netflix’s original content catalog in 2016. It’s a bizarro-world show-biz sitcom with three timelines, a smattering of animation, Candy Land production design, talking pugs, and a heroine who explains that, physically, she can only speak in “baby voice” or “rich lady at a cocktail party” voice. It’s a more immediately lovable iteration on 30 Rock’s entertainment-industry satire. Lady Dynamite has the same ability to pull apart popular culture and command impressive guest turns. (Season 1 has Ana Gasteyer, Jenny Slate, and Judd Apatow; season 2 adds Andy Samberg, Judy Greer, and Weird Al Yankovic.) But its lead is far less interested in posturing as Pinterest’s idea of a mess, and far more interested in struggling to keep her shit together for real. Season 1 has about a thousand plot lines, but to put it simply: it follows a character named Maria Bamford, played by Maria Bamford, as she tries to move forward with her comedy career and take care of her mental health at the same time. This involves turning down a Judd Apatow movie over and over, offending him deeply. Season 2 is both stranger than the first and more aggressively meta. Between all the usual antics (the first episode’s A-plot is about a raccoon named Randall), it’s a dissection of how a TV show gets green-lit in the streaming age — through consideration of how it fits into a catalog, a recommendation algorithm, a brand, etc. Lady Dynamite directly addresses how a struggle with bipolar disorder is worthy of series-length exploration, even while implying that Netflix is taking advantage of it to win brownie points with subscribers and critics. The second season’s structure is just as odd as the first, with frequent time jumps back to Bamford’s 1987 adolescence in Duluth, Minnesota, and forward to a jarring, dystopian future in which she’s turning her life into a TV show (called Maria Bamford is Nuts!) for a content farm called “MuskVision.” MuskVision is an Elon Musk property, but it has the Netflix branding and color scheme. (There are also several side plots that involve a malevolent autonomous Tesla.) Maria Bamford is Nuts! — a science fiction reimagining of her life, in which she, again, plays herself — is green-lit after a small robot named Don Jr. (I’m still struggling to figure out that part of the joke) scans her face and feeds her through an algorithm. MuskVision needs more mental illness content, Don Jr. declares! Ana Gasteyer, playing a Hollywood agent whose flame-adorned office building looks like the gates of Hell, explains why: “I want to tell the story of your fucking life in bingeable fucking installments! It will be so inventive and groundbreaking in its comedy that alt-comedy Twitter will choke on its own jizz! And here is the cherry on the streaming sundae: we will focus on mental illness, and we will destigmatize it, forever!” In a recent interview with the AV Club, Bamford explains that the second season of Lady Dynamite gave her the unexpected opportunity to critique the first. In a brain-busting twist, some of the examples she uses in this interview double as lines her character says on Lady Dynamite, in a handful of direct addresses to the camera. Bamford — as either the real Bamford or the show-within-a-show Bamford; it’s hard to tell which fourth wall she’s breaking at any given moment — takes a sidebar to say that her first season (of Lady Dynamite or of Maria Bamford is Nuts!, it isn’t clear) had too many blowjobs, and that it “wasn’t cool” to have an entirely white writers’ room collaborate on an episode about race. She isn’t just critiquing her streaming platform, she’s critiquing the show it let her produce.
Photo by Beth Dubber / Netflix
The new season of Lady Dynamite also has a lot of strange 30 Rock-esque plotlines that initially seem like distractions. Bamford’s character finds out that her manager Bruce Ben-Bacharach (Fred Melamed) tricked her into a production deal involving half a dozen reality competition TV shows starring children in the Philippines. They have sinister titles like Kids Have to Dance, Can You Beat Up a Fifth Grader? and Shark Tank. Hoping to atone for her involvement, Bamford tries to ingratiate herself at a Filipino community center in Los Angeles, and ends up accidentally letting a bunch of strangers plan her wedding. What they come up with involves a stranger in red glitter walking her down the aisle, six-foot wings with portraits of every Catholic saint glued onto them, and an atmosphere that her mother declares “like a Mad Max movie without the dust.” This season also introduces the “Hollywood Ladies Club,” a Skull and Bones-like organization led by Transparent creator Jill Soloway. Its goal is to lean into and exploit Hollywood sexism, keeping men distracted by keeping them “jacking it” all the time. This involves sending Maria on a quest to unleash a “hive-queen” named Ranlith. “Have you seen the Matrix trilogy?” Maria is asked, two or three times, as part of her introduction to this bonkers conspiracy. “No I haven’t, and I really don’t want to,” she keeps muttering, “It just looks so boring.” Later, en route to the core of the Earth, she has to use her boobs and tongue to jump-start a magical elevator. This probably sounds like incoherent, over-the-top storytelling. It’s true that Bamford doesn’t actually arrive at a digestible critique of Hollywood sexism, or the whiteness of writers’ rooms. But eventually, both of these plotlines are revealed as spinoffs from the show’s central conflict, like Bamford’s tendency to take on more and more responsibility and emotional obligation until it threatens to destroy her. She presents that as the result of a pathological fear of hurting or disappointing anyone for even a second, and she pushes both plots to absurd lengths to show just how irrational the fear is.
Photo by Beth Dubber / Netflix
In the same AV Club interview, Bamford speaks diplomatically but disconcertingly about how the 17-hour production days on her Netflix series were almost unmanageable for her. She was told that doing 10-hour “child actor days” would be too expensive. Of course, that production schedule isn’t unique to Netflix, but you don’t have to guess at how it threatened Bamford’s mental health; this risk is literally the plot of the second season of her Netflix show. Lady Dynamite’s frank hostility toward Netflix may be less satisfying for the average viewer than it is for me, a culture writer trying to keep up with a dozen original series releases each month. But anyone navigating the age of peak TV has likely felt a twinge of the feeling Bamford expresses here: that all life experiences exist to be pushed through an algorithm and come out the other side as money and laudatory headlines. It’s a sharp twist on Nora Ephron’s famous “everything is copy” philosophy — everything is content. And the books Ephron created out of her life experiences were her books, but Bamford’s show belongs to Netflix. Bamford has spoken plainly about her bipolar disorder outside of the series, often in her standup, and recently in a column for The New York Times, in which she detailed how she met and fell in love with her husband, the artist Scott Marvel Cassidy. (At age 43, this was her first long-term relationship.) The character of Maria’s husband on Lady Dynamite is based on and named after him, and the unassuming ease of their banter is the show’s emotional core: it can slip between silly and serious, but never comes off as anything but 100 percent attentive and affectionate. Their relationship is what eventually gets her out of her Hollywood dystopia, and it’s the only plotline that abstains from all the surrealist elements that swirl around everything else. The love story Bamford wrote in the Times is short, told with matter-of-fact prose, and organized around a plainly stated but harrowing story. It’s a great supplement to the show, which ultimately sneaks something human into a confusing collage of societal critiques. Not that anyone should care about this part, but the love story even somewhat redeems Netflix: Bamford clearly resents the algorithmic approach to content — or at least, she thinks it’s worth challenging and mocking, but she contorted around it to tell a deeply personal story. Describing a show with as many bizarre moving pieces as Lady Dynamite makes it sound like a joke, and watching it in “bingeable fucking installments” is sort of tiring. But it’s the gradual piling and eventual shucking of absurdities that makes the end of the second season so rewarding and, strangely, elegant. The second season of Lady Dynamite is currently available on Netflix.
Tags: November 15, 2017 at 01:34PM
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theconservativebrief · 7 years ago
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Maniac, a new, darkly comic Netflix miniseries starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, is the rare project that I like both more and less the longer I think about it.
By the time it reaches the midpoint of its 10 episodes, the series is one of the more confident and assured examples of what I call “Big Moment TV,” where every episode involves some jaw-dropping visual or conceit that’s meant to send you to Twitter to buzz, “Did you see that?!”
And as directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, the genius (and newly minted James Bond director) behind everything from the wonderful 2011 Jane Eyre to the visuals of the first season of True Detective, those moments really land. I wanted to go to Twitter to talk about them, except that would have been a violation of my screener agreement with Netflix.
And yet there’s something so calculated about Maniac. There’s rarely the thrill of the unexpected, which is tough to explain in a series that longs, deeply, to provide the thrill of the unexpected. Every time the story would shift, or enter another genre entirely, or let the actors play other characters than the ones they came in as, I would nod and say, “Sure. Makes sense!” Which is not what I think anybody involved was going for.
Some of that stems from performance (Hill is a fine dramatic actor but maybe not the guy you want sublimating all of his live-wire energy to play a depressive), and some of it stems from the storytelling, which is a wackadoodle pastiche of “mind-fuck cinema,” in which the movies ask you to question reality and wonder what’s going on and so on.
But not only have you seen the basic dramatic beats of Maniac over and over again, but Maniac takes great pains to explain to you, at every turn, what’s going on, how the characters feel and think about it, and what those crazy, trippy visuals could mean. It’s a mind-fuck movie so unconfident in its ability to fuck with you that it follows up every big reveal or jaw-dropping mindscape with a moment that seems to ask, “Did you see what I did there?”
This probably already sounds like a bunch of ideas thrown together in haste, which don’t really cohere. It is, and it isn’t, and to explain why, I’m going to have to spoil the show almost in its entirety, so follow me after the massive spoiler warning to talk about why it’s easy to remain interested in Maniac but hard to become truly invested in it.
The rise of Big Moment TV has been driven by two factors. The first is that TV storytelling has grown more complex in terms of serialization, but the second is that lots of people still kind of half pay attention to what they’re watching, because they’re doing chores or playing a game on their phone or whatever. So if you watch an episode of Game of Thrones and there’s a big, bloody death or something, that jars you out of whatever other thing you’re doing and forces you to pay attention.
But, increasingly, these sorts of shows feel driven less by the whims of their characters than by the whims of their creators. Game of Thrones went from a show that made you feel the weight of every death to a show that wantonly killed characters without much regard to emotional resonance or storytelling sense. And that’s, ultimately, part of the fun of that show, but it took it from a must-watch to a fun show that often struggles to reach its potential.
But Big Moment TV has increasingly evolved to a point where it’s less about a big death or a big plot twist and more about anything unusual that will get you talking on Twitter, as I explored in this article about The Magicians and Legion. And those two shows form useful comparison points for Maniac, with its occasionally fascinating, occasionally awkward attempts to fuse Big Moment TV, over-explanatory mind-fuck pastiche, and what amounts to falling asleep in front of Netflix — an early adopter of Big Moment TV, lest we forget House of Cards’ entire storytelling ethos — while the algorithm randomly shuffles through things it thinks you might like.
(And really do turn away at this point if you want to remain unspoiled about this series, because knowing the premise of this show could potentially ruin it.)
The story focuses on Annie (Stone) and Owen (Hill), two 20-somethings struggling with barely repressed trauma and other mental conditions in a near-future New York where everything, including friendship, has become a part of the gig economy. You can even sell your likeness for various ads and stock photos, as Annie has done, which means that when Owen bumps into her at a purported pharma trial for a new drug, he both feels he already knows her and fears he’s hallucinating her. (He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, see.)
In one episode, Owen and Annie become stuck in some sort of espionage thriller. Netflix
Anyway, the drug trial turns out to be a complicated procedure designed to put people through a sort of psychological boot camp, where in stage one they relive their greatest trauma (the loss of her sister for Annie; a suicide attempt — that might not have even happened — for Owen), attempt to better understand the roots of their psychological issues in stage two, and then confront those issues and their trauma in stage three, in hopes of healing and moving on.
The trial is overseen by a group of people cosplaying as the characters erasing Jim Carrey’s memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, including Justin Theroux, the dryly funny Sonoya Mizuno, and (I swear I am not kidding about this) Sally Field playing a depressed computer.
The bulk of the series involves what happens when a mechanical malfunction results in the fusing of Owen and Annie’s subconsciouses, which results in them essentially entering an anthology series. Across five of the season’s 10 episodes, they play different characters, in different genres, following what amounts to Fukunaga’s syllabus for a “history of American indie film” class. There are suburban capers, and an extended (kinda awful) journey through a gangster/crime movie tale, and a story where Owen becomes a hawk. (That last one’s a lot of fun!)
This is, I think, a pretty compelling way to explore two characters who seem paper-thin at first. By having Annie and Owen journey through both of their subconsciouses at once, the show could theoretically fill in details about these people’s core beings while still allowing for plenty of action and adventure. Seeing Annie as a Long Island housewife trying to steal a lemur, or as a con artist interrupting a seance, or as a half-elven ranger in a generic fantasy kingdom gives us different sides of the actual Annie’s persona and lets Stone have a lot of fun.
But I could never escape the feeling that the show’s weirdness was less an organic investigation of two people in crisis and more a mechanism designed to keep me watching. The journeys that Annie and Owen take through their brains feel assembled more from other movies and TV shows than from genuine psychological exploration.
On a show limited only by the human imagination (at least in theory), these adventures stay frustratingly earthbound. They’re “imaginative,” in the manner of a college student who’s carefully cultivated her persona out of bits and pieces of other personas she’s seen elsewhere, rather than authentic.
The strange facility where Owen and Annie bond is a weird setting unto itself. Netflix
It feels a little churlish to complain about this, because watching Maniac is a lot of fun. I sat down intending to watch a couple of episodes one day and ended up watching seven, because I really did want to see what would happen next. The writing staff — led by Patrick Somerville of The Leftovers fame — has given real thought to the story of all 10 episodes as well as the story of each episode, which leads to fun journeys through the various genre pastiches the writers come up with. (I loved the Long Island-set crime caper, which felt straight out of a Coen brothers movie.)
But I could never get past the stage where I was enjoying the show’s considerably gorgeous surfaces to access some deeper level. And then after watching the finale, I read a quote from Fukunaga in a recent GQ profile of him, and something clicked. He said:
Because Netflix is a data company, they know exactly how their viewers watch things. So they can look at something you’re writing and say, We know based on our data that if you do this, we will lose this many viewers. So it’s a different kind of note-giving. It’s not like, Let’s discuss this and maybe I’m gonna win. The algorithm’s argument is gonna win at the end of the day. So the question is do we want to make a creative decision at the risk of losing people. …
There was one episode we wrote that was just layer upon layer peeled back, and then reversed again. Which was a lot of fun to write and think of executing, but, like, halfway through the season, we’re just losing a bunch of people on that kind of binging momentum. That’s probably not a good move, you know? So it’s a decision that was made 100 percent based on audience participation.
Now, listen, the notes-giving process in Hollywood is important. I’m not somebody who rails against notes, or thinks they ruin the creative process or tear down impeccable works of art. But something about letting a computer give those notes speaks to why Maniac, ultimately, felt less human than human to me, why it always seemed like it was assembled more than it was a deeply felt passion project for anyone. And, indeed, the series is based on a Norwegian show of the same name, and the various genre pastiches look a lot like other Netflix shows if you squint, and every single actor feels specifically chosen to appeal to a very specific demographic.
This would almost feel like Netflix snarkily commenting on itself if the show didn’t take itself so seriously. The fact that it turns into a genuinely sincere story of how Owen and Annie come together to better each other’s lives in the last few episodes is either the bold swing that saves the enterprise or a case of too little, too late. I’m more in the former camp than the latter, but it’s not hard for me to imagine talking myself out of that stance.
And yet there’s something kind of beautiful about a series that applies the dull plotting of most other TV shows — all life-and-death stakes and, “We’ve gotta get to the [plot device] before they do!” numbness — to two emotionally damaged people trying to heal. There’s a bravado here that I can’t write off, even if I never felt like the show went deep enough to turn either Owen or Annie into anything more than ciphers, despite all of the self-analyzing monologues both deliver in an attempt to sell their complexities.
Whatever complaints I have about the show, then, might be a part of its commentary on a world where our mental horizons are so often occupied by stories we’ve heard elsewhere. If you and I somehow had our subconsciousnesses fused, and then went through a series of adventures in dreamspace together, wouldn’t it be more likely that those adventures would be drawn from the movies and TV shows we had watched than something wildly original?
Maniac isn’t weird enough to really achieve what it wants to, but it does say something — however accidentally — about how reality is already weird enough. Maybe that’s why we’re so content to live inside the dreams of others.
Maniac is streaming on Netflix.
Original Source -> Netflix’s Maniac, with Jonah Hill and Emma Stone, is either too weird or not weird enough
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technato · 7 years ago
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Former Head of Google China Foresees an AI Crisis–and Proposes a Solution
Q&A: Kai-Fu Lee talks about AI, jobs, and the human heart
When the former president of Google China talks about artificial intelligence and its potential to cause global upheaval, people listen. His hope is that enough people will listen to avert catastrophic disruption on three different scales: to the global balance of power, to national economies, and to human beings’ delicate souls.
Kai-Fu Lee has been fascinated by AI since he was an eager computer science student applying to Carnegie Mellon University’s PhD program; his admission essay extolled the promise of AI, which he called “the quantification of the human thinking process.” His studies led him to executive positions in Apple, Microsoft, and Google China, before his 2009 founding of Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm focusing on high-tech companies in China.  
His new book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, is something of a bait and switch. The first half explores the diverging AI capabilities of China and the United States, and frames the discussion as a battle for global dominance. Then he boldly declares that we shouldn’t waste time worrying about who will win, and says the “real AI crisis” will come from automation that wipes out whole job sectors, reshaping economies and societies in both nations. 
“Lurking beneath this social and economic turmoil will be a psychological struggle,” he writes. “As more and more people see themselves displaced by machines, they will be forced to answer a far deeper question: In an age of intelligent machines, what does it mean to be human?”
In a wide-ranging Q&A with IEEE Spectrum, Lee not only explored this question further, he also gave his answer. 
  Kai-Fu Lee on . . .
Why China Will Overtake the U.S. in AI
“50 Percent of Jobs Are in Danger”
The Inevitability of the AI Revolution 
Facing Death
A “Blueprint for Coexistence”
Why China Will Overtake the U.S. in AI
IEEE Spectrum: Why do you believe that China will soon match or even overtake the United States in developing and deploying AI?
Kai-Fu Lee: The first and foremost reason is that we’ve transitioned out of an era of discovery—when the person who makes the discovery has a huge edge—and into an era of implementation. The algorithms for AI are pretty well known to many practitioners. What matters now is speed, execution, capital, and access to a large amount of data. In each of these areas, China has an edge.
That’s why I began the book by talking about China’s entrepreneurism. It’s not like Silicon Valley, which is built on iPhone breakthroughs and SpaceX innovations, it’s built on incredibly hard work. Chinese entrepreneurs find areas where there’s enough data and a commercially viable application of AI, and then they work really hard to make the application work. It’s often very hard, dirty, ugly work. The data isn’t handed to you on a silver platter. 
Spectrum: You say that Chinese tech giants like Tencent have a clear advantage in terms of access to data that’s needed to train AI. Do they really have more data than companies like Google?
Lee: There are a few ways to look at the data advantage. The first is how many users you have. Google probably has more users than Tencent, because it’s international. The second question is: How homogenous is your data set? Google’s data from Estonia may not help its work in India. It may be better to have rich data from one set of people who have the same language, culture, preferences, usage patterns, payment methods, and so on.
The third way to measure is how much data you have about each person. Tencent has a catch-all app, WeChat, that does basically everything. The average Chinese internet user spends half of his or her time online in WeChat. When you open WeChat, you have access to everything U.S. users get from Facebook, Twitter, iMessage, Uber, Expedia, Evite, Instagram, Skype, PayPal, GrubHub, LimeBike, WebMD, Fandango, YouTube, Amazon, and eBay.
Spectrum: You describe China’s startup ecosystem as a brutal “coliseum” where companies don’t win because they’re the most innovative, but rather because they’re the best at copying, using dirty tricks, and working insane schedules.
Lee: There is creativity, but it’s just one tool. Another is copying. Entrepreneurs do whatever it takes to win, to build value for the user, and to make money. If you look at WeChat, you can’t point to one moment when it shocked the world like an iPhone. WeChat today is an amazing innovation, but it didn’t come about because someone at Tencent dreamed it up and built it and shocked the world. They kept layering on features that users wanted, they iterated, they threw away the features that didn’t work, and at the end they had a product that was the most innovative social network. It’s so good that Facebook is now copying them.
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“50 Percent of Jobs Are in Danger”
Spectrum: You write that the big AI question isn’t whether China or the United States will dominate. Instead it’s how we’ll deal with the “real AI crisis” of job losses, wealth inequality, and people’s sense of self-worth.
Lee: AI will take many single-task, single-domain jobs away. You can argue that humans have abilities that AI does not: We can conceptualize, strategize, create. Whereas today’s AI is just a really smart pattern recognizer that can take in data, optimize, and beat humans at a given task. But how many jobs in the world are simple repetitions of tasks that can be optimized? How many jobs require no creativity, strategizing, conceptualization? Most jobs are repetitive: truck-driving, telemarketing, dishwashing, fruit picking, assembly line work, and so on. I’m afraid that about 50 percent of jobs in the world are in danger. 
Whether these jobs will disappear in 15 years or 20 or 30, that’s debatable. But it’s inevitable. Not only can AI do a better job, it can do the job for almost marginal cost. Once you get the system up and running you just pay for the server, electricity, bandwidth. To be competitive, companies will be forced to automate. And this shift will happen a lot faster than has ever happened before in the history of humanity.
Spectrum: Why do you think “techno-utopians” have it wrong when they say that AI will ultimately create entirely new categories of jobs, just like the industrial revolution?
Lee: People say that in the industrial revolution, more jobs were created than destroyed. They say it was the same with electricity, and that we shouldn’t worry, because the same thing will happen this time with AI. I would agree with that if we had enough time. Those earlier technological revolutions took a century or longer. Electricity has been around for over 100 years, and we still don’t have electric cars, we’re still working on the grid. That gave people time to grow, and develop, and invent new jobs. But we have basically one generation with AI, and that’s a lot less time.
Spectrum: You argue that even if governments figure out a way to distribute money to all these jobless people, it will still be a crisis.
Lee: Most people don’t think of their job just as a source of income. It brings meaning to their life, it’s their contribution to the world. That’s how we decided to structure our capitalistic society: There’s the idea that even by working routine jobs, they can make money and make better lives for their families. If we pull the rug out from under them and say, you have no job, but here’s some money from the government, I think that would lead to bad outcomes. Some would be happy and retire early. Some will learn a new skill and get a new job, but unfortunately many will learn the wrong job, and get displaced again. A large number of people will be depressed. They will feel that life has no meaning, and this can result in suicide, substance abuse, and so on.
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The Inevitability of the AI Revolution
Spectrum: If this kind of economic and societal upheaval is an inevitable consequence of AI, is there any chance that we’ll decide to turn away from the technology, and decide not to use it?
Lee: Individual governments can make certain decisions to slow down the deployment of AI. But for humanity as a whole, it’s not possible. We’ve opened Pandora’s box. We did, as humans, control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but that technology was secret and required a huge amount of capital investment. In AI, the algorithms are well known to many people, and it’s not possible to forbid people to use them. College students are using them to start companies.
Take autonomous trucks as an example. While China is building cities and highways to facilitate autonomous trucks, the American trucking union is appealing to President Trump to forbid testing on highways. If the U.S. is currently ahead on autonomous trucks, but chooses to slow down the development for fear of taking away jobs from truck-drivers, the only outcome is that China will catch up. Chinese companies will test the trucks, get the data, that data will make the AI better, at some point the technology will be so good that China will export it to the rest of the world. At that point, the U.S. will still have to give in to automation.
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Facing Death
Spectrum: You call this a grim picture, but then go on to say that there’s hope, and that the potential for human flourishing has never been greater. You had your own grim experience that led to your own flourishing. Can you talk about your cancer experience?
Lee: I had been a workaholic for my whole life, and I always put work as my top priority. It was only when I faced cancer and possible death that I realized that no amount of money, success, or fame could substitute for the love I have from other people. And I felt great regret for not giving back what they gave me. That was a wake-up call.
After I became better and my cancer was in remission, I changed my life. It’s not that I don’t work hard anymore, I still do. But I prioritize differently. I prioritize family, I found a much better balance. I realized that the optimization that I used to do at work brought me money, success, and fame, but those are not the things that really matter to me… although I once thought they were.
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A Blueprint for Coexistence
Spectrum: So that experience led to your idea for what you call a blueprint for coexistence with AI, in which the use of AI gives people more time to love each other. You write that we must “forge a synergy between artificial intelligence and the human heart.” Can you give me an example of how this synergy might manifest in the job market?
Lee: One of my favorite examples is in medicine. Imagine a future clinic, in which the room is enhanced with all sorts of sensors that take readings of your body and give the human doctor lots of information. The doctor will help tease out information like family history and specific symptoms. 
AI can make a great diagnosis and suggest the treatment, the prescription, and so on. In early days, AI will give statistics and the doctor will make the final choice. But in time, it will be very rare that the doctor overrides the system. So the AI will do the diagnosis, then the doctor will deliver the message in a way that feels caring and warm. The doctor will also let the patient tell his or her story. In many countries, each person gets only five minutes of doctor’s time—but while the doctor may only need five minutes, the patient needs much more to feel heard, to ask questions, and to be reassured. 
If each doctor spends more time with each patient, there will need to be more doctors. Maybe they don’t need to be full MDs with 10 years of education and internship, since they no longer need to memorize all the symptoms and treatments. Instead they could get four years of education to become caring, compassionate caregivers, similar to nurse practitioners. Then the cost of health care will come way down, people will get better care, and the number of caregivers will go way up.
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Former Head of Google China Foresees an AI Crisis–and Proposes a Solution syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com
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