#what is reach in digital marketing

[dwmmphotography]

A series of photos created using the digital zoom feature (crop tool) of my photo-editing software on a full frame sensor (Nikon D850) photograph to replicate the field of view provided by common camera sensor sizes. Full frame: roughly the same size as ye old 35mm film cameras. Field of view: 100%

APS-C: the "crop sensor" body for cameras with interchangeable lenses (DSLR or mirrorless). Field of view: ~66.67%

1-inch: found in some Point&Shoot cameras Field of view: ~37%

1/2.3-inch: common for compact and "super zoom" Point&Shoot cameras. Also, cell phones. Field of view: 18%

1/3.6-inch: shows up in secondary cameras on some cell phones. Field of view: 11.5%

Despite the frequency crop factor is associated with "extra reach" in photography circles, it's actually all about the change to field of view. So when a camera has tech specs of "4.3-357mm (angle of view equivalent to that of 24-2000mm lens in 35mm [135] format)" on the company website or in a review (more likely just shortened to 35mm equivalent of 24-2000mm), it's not saying the camera has the equivalent magnification. Just that you are magnifying a smaller part of the view. In more generalized birder terms the ~0.01-7x doesn't change to a ~0.5-40x, but you'll see the same amount of the landscape as that higher magnification. And this can absolutely work for someone depending on what the photos are for. Cameras get heavy and big (my gear takes up a full size backpack and body w/ lens is ~9lbs/4kg to hold awkwardly steady), and ones with smaller sensors are smaller and lighter.

[multyversbloger]

Meaning of Digital Marketing in Nutshell

[itscomhes]

Importance of Digital Marketing Compared to Old-Time Newspaper Marketing

There is no denying that the Internet, coupled with technological advancements, has revolutionized the face of marketing. Earlier, the best and the most effective way to promote a business was to get display ads printed in newspapers. But times have changed. Today’s generation is more hooked to the digital world than printed media. Consequently, there is a growing need to shift focus on digital marketing. There is no exception for the healthcare industry as well.

What is Healthcare Digital Marketing?

In healthcare, digital marketing refers to using digital platforms such as social media and websites as tools for marketing communication. The “sponsored ads” that pop up on your social feed and the emails you get from healthcare companies are all a part of digital marketing.

Trends in Healthcare Digital Marketing in India

The past few years have been witness to India emerging as one of the fastest-growing digital economies globally. The period between 2014 and 2017 saw the digital adoption index growing by 90%. Regarding revenue, the Indian digital healthcare market stood at a valuation of $ 116.61 billion in 2018. The numbers will expectedly hit INR 485.43 billion by 2024, with a CAGR of around 27.41% during the years 2019–2024. (Source.)

Why Are the Downsides of Traditional Marketing?

The traditional marketing mode is a conventional method to reach out to a semi-targeted audience through various offline advertising methods. It usually comes in prints, broadcasts, direct mail, telephone, and outdoor advertising like billboards. However, conventional marketing has the following drawbacks:

Very costly

Almost no direct interaction with the audience

Making updates is not easy in a static newspaper ad or an already aired TV commercial.

No room for customizations to target a specific audience

Measuring ROI becomes tough.

The rate of leads converting into paying customers is meager.

Receiving feedback is not easy.

Why Go Digital with Healthcare Marketing?

As per ClickZ, the global population has 57% internet users with an average online activity of 6 hours 42 minutes each day. (Source) With different channels like social media, websites, content marketing, pay-per-click, and more, there can be no better time to tap the digital platform’s potential. While traditional newspaper marketing is still useful, technology makes it easier to broaden your outreach, especially when offering something essential, like healthcare services. So here are the top benefits of adopting digital marketing:

Better audience profiling

Direct interaction with the target audience.

Better prediction of customer behavior

Easier to get feedbacks on your service or brand

Tracking your marketing progress is easy.

Cost-effective compared to traditional advertising.

Enough scope for customizing and updating marketing communication

Conclusion

With progressive government policies, India’s robust digital footprint has played a vital role in nurturing the country’s digital healthcare ecosystem. Healthcare providers are turning to digital media to grow their business while offering their services to the public. Digital marketing has promising prospects for the future, far outweighing the limitations posed by traditional marketing.

There is no denying that the Internet, coupled with technological advancements, has revolutionized the face of marketing. Earlier, the best and the most effective way to promote a business was to get display ads printed in newspapers. But times have changed. Today’s generation is more hooked to the digital world than printed media. Consequently, there is a growing need to shift focus on digital marketing. There is no exception for the healthcare industry as well.

What is Healthcare Digital Marketing?

In healthcare, digital marketing refers to using digital platforms such as social media and websites as tools for marketing communication. The “sponsored ads” that pop up on your social feed and the emails you get from healthcare companies are all a part of digital marketing.

Trends in Healthcare Digital Marketing in India

The past few years have been witness to India emerging as one of the fastest-growing digital economies globally. The period between 2014 and 2017 saw the digital adoption index growing by 90%. Regarding revenue, the Indian digital healthcare market stood at a valuation of $ 116.61 billion in 2018. The numbers will expectedly hit INR 485.43 billion by 2024, with a CAGR of around 27.41% during the years 2019–2024. (Source.)

Why Are the Downsides of Traditional Marketing?

The traditional marketing mode is a conventional method to reach out to a semi-targeted audience through various offline advertising methods. It usually comes in prints, broadcasts, direct mail, telephone, and outdoor advertising like billboards. However, conventional marketing has the following drawbacks:

Very costly

Almost no direct interaction with the audience

Making updates is not easy in a static newspaper ad or an already aired TV commercial.

No room for customizations to target a specific audience

Measuring ROI becomes tough.

The rate of leads converting into paying customers is meager.

Receiving feedback is not easy.

Why Go Digital with Healthcare Marketing?

As per ClickZ, the global population has 57% internet users with an average online activity of 6 hours 42 minutes each day. (Source) With different channels like social media, websites, content marketing, pay-per-click, and more, there can be no better time to tap the digital platform’s potential. While traditional newspaper marketing is still useful, technology makes it easier to broaden your outreach, especially when offering something essential, like healthcare services. So here are the top benefits of adopting digital marketing:

Better audience profiling

Direct interaction with the target audience.

Better prediction of customer behavior

Easier to get feedbacks on your service or brand

Tracking your marketing progress is easy.

Cost-effective compared to traditional advertising.

Enough scope for customizing and updating marketing communication

Conclusion

With progressive government policies, India’s robust digital footprint has played a vital role in nurturing the country’s digital healthcare ecosystem. Healthcare providers are turning to digital media to grow their business while offering their services to the public. Healthcare Digital marketing has promising prospects for the future, far outweighing the limitations posed by traditional marketing.

Source: https://comhes.com/

[cosmicpuzzle]

What is your Career like?👩🏻‍💻💼💰💸

The 10th ruler in your chart can indicate your career but it is not the only factor. However, the house placement of 10th lord/ruler can indicate at times the type of career you desire and also can indicate your job literally.

1st House : You will do well in careers which gives you a certain amount of independence. You can be an entrepreneur or a boss or a team leader. Authority and power are essential for you.

2nd House : You will do well in careers which pays you well. You can be good with numbers, finances and any responsible/routine job. Careers that depend on your appearance like modelling are good. Your job would need a good self esteem and self worth.

3rd House: You will do well in careers that involve mobility, communication, writing such as YouTube. Freedom of expression, and movement is important to you. You should be able to experiment as you wish. Change of careers as times change

4th House: You will do well in careers that gives you emotional satisfaction such as nursing, psychology. making an impact on people’s lives is important to you. Working from home can be good.

5th House: You will do well in careers that allow your self expression such as art, acting . Careers connected to children and transfer of knowledge are good. A career in which you are a genius and unique such as music, painting, investor.

6th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to maintain order such as backend work. Routine and a stable job is important to you. You may also do well in health , healing and animal careers.

7th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to exchange things whether product or service. You will do will in public careers like politics. Business is good as well as client based careers. You will do well in careers that allow you to work with another person.

8th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to research things like a biomedical or chemical engineer. Careers in digging like oil petroleum or digging another’s finances as auditing, insurance are good. Investigation and finding secrets. Psychology, medicine , surgery are good choices.

9th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to reach a wider audience around the globe such as publishing books, writing, online teaching, academia. A sense of meaning and purpose is important in your job.

10th House: You will do well in careers that allow you to be skilled and efficient in what you do. A generally good position for executive and managerial jobs or Government routine jobs

11th House: You will do well in careers that allow you to build your network such as social media manager, politics, businesses, digital marketing etc.

12th House : You will do well in careers that heal people and raise their consciousness. Careers in spirituality, metaphysics, non-profit work would be good for you. You need freedom and a flexible schedule.

For Readings DM

[sturnioz]

fratboy!chris has no reason to hang out with girls if there's no fucking involved — but it's a little different with shy!reader.

the subway car is fairly quiet, the faint hum of the train along the tracks the only sound breaking the stillness. a few strangers occupy random seats, each absorbed in their own world — some listen to music through plugged-on earphones and bluetooth headphones, some are busy reading their books, turning their pages softly, and others have surrendered to their tiredness, their eyes closed, heads leaning against the cool metal poles or the windows.

you're sitting on one of the wall seats beside chris, your anxiety bubbling beneath the surface as your teeth gnaw on your bottom lip, a nervous habit. your leg bounces restlessly, tapping against the hard floor as you glance up at the digital clock on the train's schedule, the late hour staring back at you.

now, you don't have a curfew at all — but you've always been mindful of getting home at a reasonable hour to avoid worrying your parents, and with your phone dead and unable to call them about your whereabouts, a wave of unease washes over you at the thought of getting into some sort of trouble.

chris is calm and relaxed beside you, his legs comfortably spread, knee bumping against yours as the train ways. his head rests back on the wall, eyes closed, while he chews on a stick of a lollipop that he devoured minutes ago, the muscles in his jaw twitch with each chew.

spending the entire day together was a little odd. you were originally heading to the city alone (after mustering up the courage when your friends had told you they all had plans) and you had bumped into chris on the way into the station. he was straightforward with his questioning, wondering why someone as shy as you would go to the big city alone, before announcing that he was coming with you.

the two of you spent the day walking the busy streets of the city, going into your favourite little thrift stores — which you felt embarrassed with when chris followed you inside instead of heading to a different store, making small comments under his breath and snorting at the little trinkets he came across. when he had led you towards the large stores, the price tags that made you squirm, you trailed behind like a little puppy, feeling out of place.

and when you went to go eat, that's when time had seemed to go by so quickly. you were enjoying yourself in the markets, eating delicious foods at stalls that left your stomach full — although you definitely made some room when chris brought you to one of his favourite dessert stalls, sharing a chocolate fudge and cherry sundae.

"will you fuckin' stop, kid?" chris grumbles suddenly, interrupting you from your memories of today, and your eyes flit to him. his hand lands firmly on your knee to stop your restless bouncing. "you're pissin' me the fuck off with your thumpin'... like a fuckin' rabbit, jesus christ."

"sorry." you whisper an apology, warmth riding to your cheeks as you try to steady your nerves, but it only spikes when you realise chris' hand remains on your knee.

"you need to relax, a'ight? because you on edge right now is.. well, it's makin' me all fidgety 'n shit. just relax... breathe," he tells you as he shifts, his head rolling to the side to meet your gaze, his eyebrows scrunched. "seriously, kid, what's got you all jumpy? huh?"

"it's late," you murmur quietly, glancing at the digital clock once again.

"late?" chris echoes, the corner of his lips twitching in amusement. "what? don't tell me that you got a curfew or some shit?"

"no, no," you shake your head. "it's just that... i always make it home at a certain time so my parents don't have to worry about me, and not only did i go into the city today, but my phone is dead too. i'm really worried that they've been trying to call me and—"

"okay, okay, okay," chris interrupts your rambling, a huff escaping his lips as he shifts his hips, reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone. "you know your parents' number, yeah? jus' call from my phone, kid. tell 'em you got busy and your phone died — it's easy."

you nod slowly, taking a much more relaxed breath as you accept his phone to do just that. chris scoffs quietly, resuming his chewing on the lollipop stick while squeezing your knee, before slumping his head down nonchalantly on your shoulder, listening as you speak to your parents — completely unaware of you trying to keep your voice steady and ignoring the flurry of butterflies through your stomach at the close proximity.

© STURNIOZ

[bunnys-kisses]

Hi Bunny! Could I request a croissant with a side of mocha coffee & champagne + Fernando please? 🙏🏻

bakery menu

want to suggest your own order? look at the menu for more information! i love getting requests in! please if you can reblog and comment! this bunny feeds off praise! as for this one, thank you lovely anon! i hope you love this! enjoy!

croissant ("i wonder if your father knows what happens during the off hours. if he knows you're here with me.") + mocha coffee (breeding kink) + champagne (sugar daddy au) served by fernando alonso (formula one)!

cw: smut/pwp, daddy issues, age gap (20s/40s), daddy kink, sugar daddy au, breeding kink, pregnancy, bimbo!reader, missionary, fingering

you'd go to visit 'friends' in spain during the off season of formula one, and you'd always come home with some kind of bruise. mostly on your face or knees, your father knew how clumsy you were, and didn't really bother him too much. his poor, simply daughter got another bump and bruise.

you were just happy that fernando's cum didn't stain the front of your shorts.

madrid was beautiful even in january. it wasn't particularly warm, but it wasn't freezing like your father's home across the atlantic. but that just gave you more of a chance to be closer to your lover, fernando alonso.

the much older formula one driver that was working with your father's marketing firm on a new collaboration. it meant you saw a fair bit of fernando when you were 'helping' your father around the office. (your father thought that since you couldn't get into post-secondary that some working experience would bridge the gap!). but, you were doing less organization of paper work and more having the formula one driver fuck you over top of the photocopier. (he even got a photocopy of your pretty tiddies out of it).

the world was such a big place, and you were just a simple girl.

but, you never did have to worry. not with fernando by your side, letting the older man keep you like a perfect little pet. and that meant spending your time in spain, letting the driver just make you feel like the most perfect princess in the world.

the house that fernando lived in was beautiful and gave you plenty of room to explore. you'd be by the pool or snuggled up in front of the large flat screen television.

you were a pretty live in toy that frenando enjoyed nothing more than to fuck the living daylights out of him. currently you were in the bedroom on your back with your sugar daddy crowding your space, with his fingers buried inside of you.

he said softly, "i wonder if your father knows what happens during the off hours. if he knows you're here with me." he knew it riled you up when he mentioned your asshole of a father.

you squirmed and said, "nando! c'mon! no fair?" your back arched a little when he rubbed against the perfect spot. your pretty pains dug into the covers as he continued to finger you.

he shook his head, "no, no. you are just too cute under my thumb. your father gave you your job to keep you busy, but i think that you work harder on your knees then in the office."

you whined, "i'm a good employee."

he leaned in and kissed you on the cheek, leaving a wet mark on your skin, "sure, beautiful. you're the employee of the month." he chuckled as he slipped a third finger in, which made your core throb.

you squirmed a little more and reached for your lover. he went in for a searing kiss which made you moan loudly. you felt your heart batter in your chest as he continued to sink his digits into your pussy. the wet sounds made him hot all over.

"you're so pretty like this." he said as his cock twitched in his boxers as he continued to pleasure you. he licked his lips, "such a dumb little thing, you think you get by because you look so cute. but, just know, you're all mine."

you squeaked and nodded, "yes, daddy."

he took his fingers out of you then slapped your pussy which made you almost cum right there. he got himself out of his underwear soon after and got between your legs. his cock was impressive in size and made your skin burn as you watched him get comfortable between your plush thighs.

you looked up at him and said, "please, daddy. i need you." then kept your eyes on him as he shifted your hips up to meet his cock. he sank into your pretty pussy with relative ease, the entire process made the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

"my pretty princess." he purred, "so beautiful. so good under me, you are so painfully sweet. and stupid." he said as he placed both hands on either side of your body and started to move up against you. he felt the thump of pleasure in his head with every hard thrust.

"i'm not dumb, daddy."

he chuckled and grabbed you by the face to look at him, as he moved against you. he grinned at you, "not when i'm done with you, princess."

fernando was a rough lover, he was the kind of daddy dom who kept you on a tight leash. he had to, you had a habit of getting into trouble. maybe next time he'd get you a collar to yank on when he fucked you.

when he bred you.

that was what this all boiled down to. fernando had to make sure that his special little princess didn't stray too far. it was hard to do that when a plump little baby in your belly. maybe it'll smarten you up to be a mother. your father would be happy that his dumb little daughter married rich.

you whined as he continued to move against you.

fernando felt the sweat drip down his back as he continued to rut into you. the painfully sweet thing that he managed to trap, to keep under his thumb while he reamed your sweet cunt. he could feel his heartbeat in the back of his throat as he moved against you.

"you're so perfect.' he said.

"thank you daddy." you whimpered as you felt hot all over.

he loved it, he loved the control he had over you. the sweet little girl that he found, the place to leave his seed. let it spit into the back of your womb. it all belonged to him.

you whimpered, "please daddy." most sugar daddy's would pay to keep a baby quiet, but not fernando. he'd pay for you to raise his little baby properly. be a good mother and wife. it was a roundabout way of making sure you'd marry him.

he was a possessive old bastard like that, make sure he nabbed himself a pretty young thing he can empty his balls in and watch care for his brats. it was quite a charmed idea.

and you had no idea what was going on. only that it felt good when fernando fucked your cunt with heavy thrusts that made your mind swim.

"so precious.' he said, "and all mine."

you felt the moan get stuck in your throat as you arched your back. you clung to the soft covers of your shared bed and clenched around his dick.

"fuck, pretty girl. my princess." he groaned as he continued his heavy thrusts. your cunt felt like a dream around his cock as he buried it to this hilt, made sure that every inch was snug inside of you. he continued to move you up and down the bed as he fucked you.

with one last heavy thrust, he finished inside of you. you gasped heavily as you felt his cock throb inside of you. he gave it a few more thrusts of his hips before he stopped and relaxed. his shoulders were curved over top of you and panted heavily.

you looked up at him, still feeling a little blissed out. you said softly, "thank you, daddy."

he looked down at you and took in the sight of you. he smiled briefly at you and said, "that's a good girl. remember to take all of it."

-

your new years was in spain then became spring in spain, then summer in spain. now you were expecting a baby girl in october and you had a nice ring on your finger.

you spent most of your time around the house, mostly tending to things around it. you rubbed your lower back and soon felt the arms of your husband around your middle.

fernando came closer to kiss you on the cheek, he cupped your swollen middle and said, "how is my beautiful princess?" he melted against you, love the feeling of his child in your womb. he sighed contently as he said, "the most perfect woman." <3

[whatstheplanlou]

INSTAGRAM REACH VS IMPRESSIONS

INSTAGRAM REACH VS IMPRESSIONS

Instagram reach and impressions are not always well understood by users. When you try to analyze your account, you better know the difference between those two Instagram metrics. Good to Know: Not all platforms take the same metrics the same way. For example, snapchat has “story views” instead of impressions. Google Ads even differentiate two types of reach : “cookie-based- and “unique…

[tangibletechnomancy]

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Utah’s getting some of America’s best broadband

TOMORROW (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

Residents of 21 cities in Utah have access to some of the fastest, most competitively priced broadband in the country, at speeds up to 10gb/s and prices as low as $75/month. It's uncapped, and the connections are symmetrical: perfect for uploading and downloading. And it's all thanks to the government.

This broadband service is, of course, delivered via fiber optic cable. Of course it is. Fiber is vastly superior to all other forms of broadband delivery, including satellites, but also cable and DSL. Fiber caps out at 100tb/s, while cable caps out at 50gb/s – that is, fiber is 1,000 times faster:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

Despite the obvious superiority of fiber, America has been very slow to adopt it. Our monopolistic carriers act as though pulling fiber to our homes is an impossible challenge. All those wires that currently go to your house, from power-lines to copper phone-lines, are relics of a mysterious, fallen civilization and its long-lost arts. Apparently we could no more get a new wire to your house than we could build the pyramids using only hand-tools.

In a sense, the people who say we can't pull wires anymore are right: these are relics of a lost civilization. Specifically, electrification and later, universal telephone service was accomplished through massive federal grants under the New Deal – grants that were typically made to either local governments or non-profit co-operatives who got everyone in town connected to these essential modern utilities.

Today – thanks to decades of neoliberalism and its dogmatic insistence that governments can't do anything and shouldn't try, lest they break the fragile equilibrium of the market – we have lost much of the public capacity that our grandparents took for granted. But in the isolated pockets where this capacity lives on, amazing things happen.

Since 2015, residents of Jackson County, KY – one of the poorest counties in America – have enjoyed some of the country's fastest, cheapest, most reliable broadband. The desperately poor Appalachian county is home to a rural telephone co-op, which grew out of its rural electrification co-op, and it used a combination of federal grants and local capacity to bring fiber to every home in the county, traversing dangerous mountain passes with a mule named "Ole Bub" to reach the most remote homes. The result was an immediately economic uplift for the community, and in the longer term, the county had reliable and effective broadband during the covid lockdowns:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Contrast this with places where the private sector has the only say over who gets broadband, at what speed, and at what price. America is full of broadband deserts – deserts that strand our poorest people. Even in the hearts of our largest densest cities, whole neighborhoods can't get any broadband. You won't be surprised to learn that these are the neighborhoods that were historically redlined, and that the people who live in them are Black and brown, and also live with some of the highest levels of pollution and its attendant sicknesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/10/flicc/#digital-divide

These places are not set up for success under the best of circumstances, and during the lockdowns, they suffered terribly. You think your kid found it hard to go to Zoom school? Imagine what life was like for kids who attended remote learning while sitting on the baking tarmac in a Taco Bell parking lot, using its free wifi:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/02/elem-s02.html

ISPs loathe competition. They divide up the country into exclusive territories like the Pope dividing up the "new world" and do not trouble one another by trying to sell to customers outside of "their" turf. When Frontier – one of the worst of America's terrible ISPs – went bankrupt, we got to see their books, and we learned two important facts:

The company booked one million customers who had no alternative as an asset, because they would pay more for slower broadband, and Frontier could save a fortune by skipping maintenance, and charging these customers for broadband even through multi-day outages; and

Frontier knew that it could make a billion dollars in profit over a decade by investing in fiber build-out, but it chose not to, because stock analysts will downrank any carrier that made capital investments that took more than five years to mature. Because Frontier's execs were paid primarily in stock, they chose to strand their customers with aging copper connections and to leave a billion dollars sitting on the table, so that their personal net worth didn't suffer a temporary downturn:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

ISPs maintain the weirdest position: that a) only the private sector can deliver broadband effectively, but b) to do so, they'll need massive, unsupervised, no-strings-attached government handouts. For years, America went along with this improbable scheme, which is why Trump's FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave the carriers $45 billion in public funds to string slow, 19th-century-style copper lines across rural America:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/all-broadband-politics-are-local/

Now, this is obviously untrue, and people keep figuring out that publicly provisioned broadband is the only way for America to get the same standard of broadband connectivity that our cousins in other high-income nations enjoy. In order to thwart the public's will, the cable and telco lobbyists joined ALEC, the far-right, corporatist lobbying shop, and drafted "model legislation" banning cities and counties from providing broadband, even in places the carriers chose not to serve:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/

Red states across America adopted these rules, and legislators sold this to their base by saying that this was just "keeping the government out of their internet" (even as every carrier relied on an exclusive, government-granted territorial charter, often with massive government subsidies).

ALEC didn't target red states exclusively because they had pliable, bribable conservative lawmakers. Red states trend rural, and rural places are the most likely sites for public fiber. Partly, that's because low-density areas are harder to make a business case for, but also because these are also the places that got electricity and telephone through New Deal co-ops, which are often still in place.

Just about the only places in America where people like their internet service are the 450+ small towns where the local government provides fiber. These places vote solidly Republican, and it was their beloved conservative lawmakers whom ALEC targeted to enact laws banning their equally beloved fiber – keep voting for Christmas, turkeys, and see where it gets you:

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

But spare a little sympathy for the conservative movement here. The fact that reality has a pronounced leftist bias must be really frustrating for the ideological project of insisting that anything the market can't provide is literally impossible.

Which brings me back to Utah, a red state with a Republican governor and legislature, and a national leader in passing unconstitutional, unhinged, unworkable legislation as part of an elaborate culture war kabuki:

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165975112/utah-passes-an-age-verification-law-for-anyone-using-social-media

For more than two decades, a coalition of 21 cities in Utah have been building out municipal fiber. The consortium calls itself UTOPIA: "Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency":

https://www.utopiafiber.com/faqs/

UTOPIA pursues a hybrid model: they run "open access" fiber and then let anyone offer service over it. This can deliver the best of both worlds: publicly provisioned, blazing-fast fiber to your home, but with service provided by your choice of competing carriers. That means that if Moms for Liberty captures you local government, you're not captive to their ideas about what sites your ISP should block.

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, Utahns in UTOPIA regions have their choice of 18 carriers, and competition has driven down prices and increased speeds. Want uncapped 1gb fiber? That's $75/month. Want 10gb fiber? That's $150:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/15/utah-locals-are-getting-cheap-10-gbps-fiber-thanks-to-local-governments/

UTOPIA's path to glory wasn't an easy one. The dismal telco monopolists Qwest and Lumen sued to put them out of business, delaying the rollout by years:

https://www.deseret.com/2005/7/22/19903471/utopia-responds-to-qwest-lawsuit/

UTOPIA has been profitable and self-sustaining for over 15 years and shows no sign of slowing. But 17 states still ban any attempt at this.

Keeping up such an obviously bad policy requires a steady stream of distractions and lies. The "government broadband doesn't work" lie has worn thin, so we've gotten a string of new lies about wireless service, insisting that fiber is obviated by point-to-point microwave relays, or 5g, or satellite service.

There's plenty of places where these services make sense. You're not going to be able to use fiber in a moving car, so yeah, you're going to want 5g (and those 5g towers are going to need to be connected to each other with fiber). Microwave relay service can fill the gap until fiber can be brought in, and it's great for temporary sites (especially in places where it doesn't rain, because rain, clouds, leaves and other obstructions are deadly for microwave relays). Satellite can make sense for an RV or a boat or remote scientific station.

But wireless services are orders of magnitude slower than fiber. With satellite service, you share your bandwidth with an entire region or even a state. If there's only a couple of users in your satellite's footprint, you might get great service, but when your carrier adds a thousand more customers, your connection is sliced into a thousand pieces.

That's also true for everyone sharing your fiber trunk, but the difference is that your fiber trunk supports speeds that are tens of thousands of times faster than the maximum speeds we can put through freespace electromagnetic spectrum. If we need more fiber capacity, we can just fish a new strand of fiber through the conduit. And while you can increase the capacity of wireless by increasing your power and bandwidth, at a certain point you start pump so much EM into the air that birds start falling out of the sky.

Every wireless device in a region shares the same electromagnetic spectrum, and we are only issued one such spectrum per universe. Each strand of fiber, by contrast, has its own little pocket universe, containing a subset of that spectrum.

Despite all its disadvantages, satellite broadband has one distinct advantage, at least from an investor's perspective: it can be monopolized. Just as we only have one electromagnetic spectrum, we also only have one sky, and the satellite density needed to sustain a colorably fast broadband speed pushes the limit of that shared sky:

https://spacenews.com/starlink-vs-the-astronomers/

Private investors love monopoly telecoms providers, because, like pre-bankruptcy Frontier, they are too big to care. Back in 2021, Altice – the fourth-largest cable operator in America – announced that it was slashing its broadband speeds, to be "in line with other ISPs":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/immortan-altice/#broadband-is-a-human-right

In other words: "We've figured out that our competitors are so much worse than we are that we are deliberately degrading our service because we know you will still pay us the same for less."

This is why corporate shills and pro-monopolists prefer satellite to municipal fiber. Sure, it's orders of magnitude slower than fiber. Sure, it costs subscribers far more. Sure, it's less reliable. But boy oh boy is it profitable.

The thing is, reality has a pronounced leftist bias. No amount of market magic will conjure up new electromagnetic spectra that will allow satellite to attain parity with fiber. Physics hates Starlink.

Yeah, I'm talking about Starlink. Of course I am. Elon Musk basically claims that his business genius can triumph over physics itself.

That's not the only vast, impersonal, implacable force that Musk claims he can best with his incredible reality-distortion field. Musk also claims that he can somehow add so many cars to the road that he will end traffic – in other words, he will best geometry too:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Geometry hates Tesla, and physics hates Starlink. Reality has a leftist bias. The future is fiber, and public transit. These are both vastly preferable, more efficient, safer, more reliable and more plausible than satellite and private vehicles. Their only disadvantage is that they fail to give an easily gulled, thin-skinned compulsive liar more power over billions of people. That's a disadvantage I can live with.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

Image: 4028mdk09 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rote_LED_Fiberglasleuchte.JPG

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

[tumblhurgoyf]

#NoMagicMay

I watched the Professor chatting with someone else about the Pinkerton thing.

One thing they expressed was that there was no way to act in an immediate way that influences sales number to send a message to Wizards. Like with the DnD stuff recently people could cancel DnDBeyond to send a message and that did something.

I think Magic players do have a medium to send a message. The medium is online play. We should blanket boycott all Magic apps, especially MODO and especially Arena for at least 30 days. They can't take back what has happened but we can send a message that they will feel. I think we should also throw FNM and all physical sales including the secondary market in as well, but digital play is big and more immediate.

This is unacceptable though I don't expect players to stay away forever. A month long boycott for the entirety of May would send a strong message and make them reconsider how they handle future leaks. Backed up with plenty of emails and public messages to say this is why it's happening.

#NoMagicMay

If you agree and want Wizards to know it then I humbly suggest you spread this. Encourage your friends. Encourage content creators. Reach out to big Magic influencer and let them know you're participating in #NoMagicMay and would like them to join.

[sinkovia]

Black Market: II

Hitman Simon Riley x Doctor Fem!Reader

In desperate need of money to clear a million-dollar debt, you accept Simon's offer to become his personal doctor, earning twenty percent of each contract he completes. But as you plunge back into the black market, ghosts from your past emerge, threatening to unravel everything you've worked so hard to run away from.

Masterlist - Black Market Masterlist

Your eyes shot open, and you quickly sat up, scanning the unfamiliar room around you. The soft bed beneath you and the clean, modern surroundings were unexpected, given the circumstances. It felt more like being in a newly furnished home than the aftermath of a kidnapping.

Checking your clothes, you realized you were still in your pajamas, and nothing seemed out of place. A sigh of relief escaped your lips as you confirmed that you were unharmed.

Getting off the bed cautiously, you scanned the room for any potential weapons. Your eyes landed on a trash bag on the floor next to the bed, prompting you to approach it carefully and untie it.

As you sifted through the contents, your brows furrowed as you found your clothes inside. You pushed aside your confusion and moved to the nightstand, you searched for anything usable, but it was empty. With a plan forming in your mind, you unplugged the bedside lamp and approached the door with caution, slowly turning the knob and stepping out.

You hear noise coming from the next room over, prompting you to press against the wall and cautiously peek over. Your eyes widen as you spot a man with his back turned, busying himself with making coffee.

Moving stealthily, you approach him, intending to use the lamp as a weapon. But just as you lift it, he turns around, catching the lamp before it can hit him.

"Good morning to you too, love," he remarks casually, holding the lamp securely.

Your wide-eyed gaze meets his, and you attempt to retrieve the lamp, but it remains firmly in his grasp. A rush of disbelief floods through you as you recognize him from the courthouse.

Why the hell would he-?

You let go of the lamp and took a step back shaking your head “No. absolutely not. I already fucking told you I don’t want to be your doctor.” You turned around and immediately started walking back to the room you came from and grabbed the trash bag full of your belongings. 

You walked to the front of the door and when you reached out to unlock you were met with a digital passcode. You dropped your bag and turned towards him, “Open the door.”

“You are in need of money and I’m in need of a doctor. What more could you ask for?”

“I’ll find another way to make up the money.”

Simon stood against the counter with his arms crossed and a smug smile playing on his lips. He knew you needed this job, knew you needed the money no matter how much you didn't want to work for him. 

"Why are you smiling? This isn't funny," you cursed at him, frustration evident in your voice. "Unlock the door so I can leave."

He leaned back, his smile widening. "You'll get forty thousand dollars for a single contract I complete," he said casually, watching your reaction.

Your brows furrowed at the offer. "Forty thousand?" you quietly repeated.

He nodded. "You'd be paying off your million-dollar debt for the rest of your life with a regular paying job. And even then, you might not pay it off before you die of old age."

You sighed, running a hand over your hair. He was right, as much as you hated to admit it. You needed the money. 

"You need the money," he continued, his tone matter-of-fact. "And I'm not letting you go. So you better start getting comfortable sweetheart."

"Fuck you," you seethe, grabbing your bag full of clothes and storming back to the room, cursing under your breath.

"There's coffee hot in the pot," Simon calls after you, but you cut him off, slamming the door shut behind you with a loud bang. Simon's smug smile remains as he walks over to his basement, unfazed by your outburst.

Who the hell does he think he is?

You drop the bag on the floor and look around the room, finding only an empty closet behind a set of double doors and a small bathroom behind another. No windows in either, no means of escape.

Sitting heavily on the bed, you bury your head in your hands. It's only a few months, right? You'll be able to pay off your debt, and then you'll be back home again, far away from him.

Suddenly, you're on your feet, determined to confront him. You swing open the door and stalk around the house, slamming open doors in search of him.

Finally, you come to one that's locked, another with a digital code. You sigh in frustration and knock. After a few moments, the door unlocks, revealing Simon towering over you with that infuriating smug smile.

"Come to your senses, love?"  Simon's voice broke the silence, drawing your attention.

"We need to talk rules," you assert, and Simon quirked his brow, gesturing for you to follow him down the stairs into the basement. You hesitate for a moment before reluctantly obeying, your curiosity piqued.

As you descend, your eyes widen at the sight that greets you. Rows upon rows of different guns and weapons are mounted on the walls, the basement stretching out before you, vast and intimidating.

"Okay, John Wick," you remark dryly, Simon's lips twitch into a slight smile. He walks over to his desk and picks up his coffee mug.

Leaning against a nearby counter, you face him. "What's your name?" 

"Simon. You?" 

"Y/n," you reply shortly, cutting straight to the point. Your gaze sweeps the room, taking note of the absence of any medical supplies.

"First of all, you have no medical supplies: no blood bags, no needles, no medication, no defibrillator. How the hell do you expect me to be your doctor with nothing to work with?"

"Give me a list of everything you need, I'll buy it," his tone firm as he stared at you expectantly.

You released a breath, looking away from him. "I'll patch you up here, I'm not joining you on missions,"

Simon furrowed his brows, scoffing. "How in the bloody hell are you going to be any help to me if you're here?"

You shake your head, meeting his gaze squarely. "Even if you get gutted like a fish, if you make it back to me, I'll save you,"

Simon shook his head, striding over to you and standing directly in front of you, his imposing figure towering over you. "You're coming with me,"

You glare up at him, your resolve unyielding, "You can grab a gun off the fucking wall and shoot me. I'm not coming with you." Within a second, Simon grabs the pistol behind your head and holds it against your forehead. You slightly lean forward, pressing the barrel even harder against you. 

Simon had underestimated everything about you, but would he gamble underestimating your medical abilities?

"Why do you refuse to come?" His voice was stern and deep as he held your gaze.

You gaze was unwavering as you held eye contact, not an inch of fear coming from you. "I have my reasons, but if you want me to be your doctor, then I stay here."

Simon released a breath through his nose, dropping the pistol and returning it to the shelf. He walked over to his desk, retrieving a notepad and pen. "Write down everything you need and give it back to me," 

You took the notepad and sat down on the leather chair near his desk, jotting down the list of medical supplies you required. Simon took a seat at his desk, reviewing a contract he was considering.

It took you thirty minutes to write down everything you needed, meticulously listing all the medications, surgical tools, and large equipment required for your medical setup.

Simon would occasionally glance at you from time to time, unable to read your demeanor, which only added to his frustration. He couldn't understand why you refused to join him on missions or why you remained so composed after being kidnapped. Did you have ties to the black market? His mind buzzed with questions, but you offered no answers.

You set the notepad down on his desk and crossed your arms, awaiting his response.

“Where will all this stuff go?” Simon motioned to the opposite side of the basement, where sleek cabinets lined the walls. You glanced over, pleased with the ample space for your medical equipment.

He examined the list and began searching for the items you needed on the black market. “Should come in a few days,” 

You nodded and started walking back to the stairs leading up to the main floor of the house.

“The kitchen is yours to cook whatever you want. If we run low, just write it on the notepad on the fridge,” 

You nodded in acknowledgment and continued on, finding solace in the confines of your room. As you settled in, you couldn't help but wish he had just shot you back there; it would have freed you from the debt, the black market, and the haunting memories of your past.

By the end of the week, you had organized everything neatly in the cabinets of your designated space. As you finished sorting through the medications, you hoisted yourself up onto the counter and let out a tired sigh.

Meanwhile, Simon was gearing up, packing his black duffel bag with all the essentials for his upcoming contract. You observed silently as he selected guns, securing one to his belt and concealing several knives over his body. 

With a sniper case in hand, he made his way up the steps, his back turned to you. Without so much as a backward glance, he muttered, “Be back in a few hours.”

“Wait, how am I going to get in and out? What's the code for the basement?” you called after him. 

“Twelve twenty-five,” he replied before disappearing through the door. As it closed behind him, he added, “And no, the guns aren't loaded.”

You rolled your eyes at his parting remark. Killing him wouldn't solve your problems. You'd still be trapped behind the locked front door, food would eventually finish, and you’d be dead with time.

You prepared yourself some lunch before settling in the living room, turning on the TV to pass the time. After a few hours, the sound of the front door opening alerted you, and you glanced up to see Simon entering, clutching his side with traces of blood on his hand.

Moving swiftly, you rose and opened the basement door, beating him to the bottom of the stairs to wash your hands and don gloves. Simon followed, dropping his duffle bag on the floor before approaching you.

“Take off your shirt,” you instructed, your tone brisk and no-nonsense.

“Take me to dinner first,” Simon grinned as he shrugged off his shirt and reclined in the chair. You rolled your eyes, focusing on the task at hand.

“Bullet graze?” you asked, assessing the wound on his lower torso.

“He was expecting me. Fucker had twenty bodyguards,” Simon replied, closing his eyes as you gathered the necessary supplies.

Seating yourself on the rolling chair, you elevated to his level, swiftly tending to the wound. Your hands worked with precision, staunching the bleeding, disinfecting the area, and stitching him up in a matter of minutes. Simon kept his eyes closed, not even wincing as you stitched him up.

"All done,"

Simon's eyes flew open, surprise evident in his furrowed brows as he glanced down at his now-bandaged wound.

“How’s the pain?” Simon marveled at the swiftness of your work, feeling as though mere seconds had passed since he closed his eyes.

“Barely hurts. Scotch will help,”

You responded with a nonchalant hum, proceeding to disinfect your workspace. Meanwhile, Simon fetched a clean shirt from the cabinet near his desk, swiftly pulling it on before making his way back to where you were.

"What made you want to become a doctor?" his curiosity evident in his tone. Memories stirred within you, but you maintained a neutral expression as you responded, "I just want to save people."

"People are shite, why would you want to help them?" Simon probed further, attempting to understand you more.

"Not everyone is," you replied cryptically, your mind drifting to past experiences.

"They're not until they are,"

As Simon's words hung in the air, you remained silent, your attention focused on meticulously disinfecting every surface for a second time. His probing didn't faze you; you were determined to keep him at arm's length, unwilling to share any details about yourself or your past. If he wanted to uncover the truth, he'd have to delve into the darkest corners of the web to find any semblance of who you truly were.

Tag list: @shinchanboi @talooolaaloolla @lieutenantlashfaz @neothewitch @birdienotting @jupiternighties @samiiii333 @elowynnlane @silverianni

[mornington-the-crescent]

The Poll

So, for those who don’t know, I put up a poll of, “Who was the worst American President?” The list was FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon. It got up to about 13k notes before I deleted it, because I was tired of the notes clogging up my feed. And the results were... telling.

About 75-80% of all the notes were, “Where is Reagan/Andrew Jackson?!?” Many of the rest, though, can be seen below:

What this tells me is that more than ten thousand people didn’t have an education; they had an indoctrination.

You want to hear it? All right, buckle up, because it’s time for a stroll down memory lane.

Why was FDR a bad president?

It is almost hard to know where to begin with this. Let’s start with one of the most basic ones: The belief that FDR got us out of the Depression.

Point of fact, No the fuck he did not.

Making American Depressed

If you ask almost any historian or economist, they will tell you flat-out that not only did the New Deal not end the Great Depression, but that it made it significantly longer and worse than it would have been otherwise. Hoover bears some of the blame for this, but the pseudo-socialist dogshit that was the New Deal bears the brunt of the blame for this one.

The stock market crashed in late October, 1929. Two months later, unemployment peaked at 9%. Over the next several months, unemployment started to fall, down to 5-6% by the spring of the next year. Half a year after the crash, unemployment had not hit double digits. Hoover’s intervention, though, did cause unemployment to reach double digits. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and took office in 1933, and unemployment did not fall out of double digits for the remainder of the 1930′s. The thing that actually pulled the US out of the Depression was the second World War; turns out that removing roughly 12 million people from the labor force to go and fight does wonders for unemployment numbers. FDR even said that Doctor New Deal was replaced by Doctor Win-The-War.

This was hardly the first economic downturn in American history. For the first 150 years of this country, there were downturns all the time. And what the government did was nothing, and the economy recovered on its own. But Roosevelt represents the first massive large-scale intervention in the economy. And government intervention in the economy slows economic recovery; when you have no idea what the government is going to do tomorrow in regards to the economy, it’s hard to make smart financial decisions, so you just don’t bother. After all, why do anything if tomorrow, the rules of the game are going to change?

Separation of Powers Who?

FDR issued more executive orders than any other President of the 20th century. He may, in fact, have issued more than all the other Presidents of the 20th century combined. Rather than letting Congress, the legislative branch of government, you know, legislate, he preferred to try to do everything himself.

The President is supposed to be the weakest branch of the government, but Roosevelt did everything he could to try to establish its supremacy over the other branches. When Congress didn’t give him his way, he used executive orders. When the Supreme Court challenged some of his acts as unconstitutional, his response was to threaten to have them replaced, or to simply pack the court with judges more sympathetic to his aims. This is a man who was openly contemptuous of the concept of the rule of law.

Here’s a fun entry from the notes:

Hey, you want to talk about fascists? Actual, honest-to-goodness Fascists, not just the modern definition (i.e. anyone a nanometer to the right of Noam Chomsky)? Let’s talk about the originals. Let’s talk about the inventor of Fascism, Benito motherfucking Mussolini. And how FDR openly admired him, and was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished”, calling Fascism the “cleanest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery [he had] ever seen”, and that it made him “envious”. And Mussolini, for his part, said of Roosevelt that, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices … Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.”

When the guy who fucking invented Fascism is saying that he thinks that you are also doing Fascism, then maybe you’re not a good person.

Concentration- I Mean, Internment Camps

And just like his buddies on the other side of the Atlantic, right when World War 2 kicked off, Roosevelt thought it would be a good idea to take “undesirables” and throw them into prison camps. Roughly 20 thousand Italian- and German-Americans, American citizens, were thrown into camps, simply for the crime of having ancestors from countries we were at war with. And then, of course, there’s the 120 thousand Japanese-Americans who were likewise rounded up and put into prison camps, two thirds of whom were natural-born American citizens.

Almost 150 thousand American citizens, thrown into literal concentration camps, without the bother and expense of due process, stripped of their constitutional rights simply on the basis of race.

As for the concentration camps set up in Europe by the Nazis, however? Despite being told of their existence by people who had escaped, as well as journalists and lawyers from Germany, once American planes gained the ability to attack those camps, to shut them down? FDR refused to grant them permission to do so.

Commander in Thief

Executive Order 6102 outlawed the private ownership of gold, allowing the government to confiscate all of it. Once that was accomplished, the Gold Reserve Act allowed him to change the value of gold, debasing America’s currency (which was on a gold standard at the time), which permitted him to steal literally billions of dollars from American citizens, without any compensation.

World War, Too

There is evidence to suggest that Roosevelt knew about the imminent attack on America by Japan in December of 1941. He discussed with several high-ranking people in the War Department, and in his own cabinet, how to get Japan to fire the first shot in the war, so that he could get America involved. It would make sense: His oil embargo was designed to provoke a Japanese response, so as to draw America into the war. And once America was in the war, ordered the Philippines to be abandoned, outright lying that there was an army waiting to retake it once it had been conquered by Japan.

And as the war dragged on, he got quite cozy with Uncle Joe, Stalin himself. He helped to repatriate two million people to Russia, who very much did not want to go back, many of them ending up either in the gulags, or simply killed outright. And his constant concessions to Stalin helped the Soviet Union hold on to eastern Europe, setting the stage for the Cold War. Even when he was informed of Soviet spies within the American government, and provided evidence of their disloyalty and subversion, he simply let them keep at it.

Racism, Racism, and more Racism

Remember how you cheered when lynching was made a federal crime a few months ago, and asked why it hadn’t been done before now? Well, the main reason was good ol’ FDR himself. A bill was proposed in the Congress which would have made lynching a federal crime, and Roosevelt refused to pass it.

Or what about during the Olympic games in Berlin, when black athletes from America took home multiple gold medals? Roosevelt invited the white athletes to the White House, but not a single black one. Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, said, “Hitler didn’t snub me --- it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”

And then there was his nomination of a KKK member to the Supreme Court; Hugo Black, who had zero judicial experience, was nominated simply because he supported the New Deal.

He also was of the opinion that America was, and ought to remain, a white and Protestant country, and that too many Jews was inherently a bad thing, because of how distasteful he found them. He boasted that there was no Jewish blood in his veins, as a mark of pride. He even went so far as to turn away ships of Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi tyranny in Europe.

In conclusion

FDR was a massive piece of shit. He massively overstepped his constitutionally-appointed bounds at every available opportunity, massively expanding the power of the Presidency at the expense of all other parts of government, and at the expense of individual liberty. He was openly racist and anti-Semitic. His economic policies brought ruin upon the American economy. He openly praised fascism right up until the moment that it was no longer politically expedient to do so, and switched to deferring to authoritarian communism instead. Almost everything that you hate about the modern United States can be traced directly back to this one man.

The fact that he is remembered as not just a good President, but one of the best Presidents, shows how utterly broken American education is.

[elumish]

My Experience With Digital-First Royalty-Only Publishing (Part 2)

Disclaimer: just my experience, may not reflect other people's

Part 1 (What is this sort of publishing; how did I get published; what does the submission, contract, and editing process look like)

Book Release:

My [redacted] book came out in April 2024. It is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the publisher's own website, where it is listed for a couple dollars less than on Amazon/B&N. It's available both digitally (in multiple different file formats) and for print (paperback).

I can't speak for whether this is standard across these sorts of publishers, but it probably isn't unusual. This does mean that the book can't be available on Kindle Unlimited, given how Kindle Unlimited's requirements work.

The timing for this sort of publishing is extremely fast compared to traditional or even small-press print publishing. I signed the contract in late August 2023 and sent in the final draft to my editor in late October 2023, and the book was released in late April 2024.

Book cover:

For designing my book cover, they pointed me towards where they pull stock images from and asked me to describe the sort of cover I would want, including possible stock images. They also asked for physical characteristics of my characters, which is when I realized that I had no clue what my characters look like.

The stock image website included AI art, as well as regular non-AI stock images. I specifically requested no AI art, including no AI-generated stock images. As far as I am aware, they respected that request.

Once they created one, they sent me a mock-up and asked about minor changes (typography, etc., from what I remember). I didn't have any changes. Overall, my cover looks like what I described to them, and I'm really happy with it.

Marketing:

My marketing experience with my publisher has been decidedly underwhelming. They seem to have started to revamp their marketing process right around when my book came out, so my book didn't receive/hasn't received a huge amount of marketing support from them.

What they gave me marketing-wise: a few marketing images for pre-release/post-release, including Twitter and FB header images, etc.; general marketing guidance for what I could/should be doing; a couple of mentions on their publisher Instagram post-release and a mention in their weekly newsletter

What they didn't give me marketing-wise: connection to reviewers, including sending an ARC or providing a list of reviewers that might be good to work with; marketing materials for sites like TikTok or Instragram; a meaningful amount of airtime/mention on their accounts; a large following of their own

Overall, the marketing is what is probably most like self-publishing--a huge amount of it is on me (and I am terrible at it). It will be interesting to see what their revamp brings, but they are starting from a minimal following and not a lot of previous activity on their accounts, and so they also need to build their reach to make their marketing on their accounts more effective.

Royalties/payment:

I get paid on a monthly basis through PayPal. I also receive a royalty statement that lists days, amount/type sold, etc. so I can reconcile with what they have paid me. From what I have seen this royalty statement is pretty standard.

So far, they've been prompt and haven't had issues with payments.

However, because of (among other things) their general lack of marketing, my royalty statements have been fairly low. So far (and, granted, the book came out less than 2 months ago) I have made very little money on this.

My Path Forward:

I've thought a lot about whether I will continue to do this sort of publishing. I am currently querying my "main" books, and I don't plan to publish them through this sort of publishing, even if the publisher would likely accept them.

My contract stipulates that my publisher has right of first refusal for the rest of the books in this series. I am currently writing book two, and I plan to also write a third, as I had initially discussed with them. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I don't mind working with them as a company, but I don't know if they have the processes in place for me to make money publishing with them.

One thing I will likely do is explore other romance publishers that accept unagented submissions. They have a much lower barrier of entry and they are often willing to accept books that trad publishers might not want to spend money/reputational risk on.

As such, I would likely submit to these publishers stories that I don't think traditional publishers/agents would likely to be willing to publish, including more niche subgenres and less standard lengths that are easier to publish digitally.

Why do I redact the name of my book?

Honestly because I'm a coward and because people are weird about romance, especially certain subgenres of romance. I also plan to use this account for my main agented publishing, if I ever reach that point, and I don't necessarily want those two pen names associated.

Any other questions about this sort of publishing?

[cosmicpuzzle]

🌟What is your Ideal Career?🌟

The 10th ruler in your chart can indicate your career but it is not the only factor. However the house placement of 10th lord/ruler can indicate at times the type of career you desire and also can indicate your job literally.

1st House : You will do well in careers which gives you a certain amount of independence. You can be an entrepreneur or a boss or a team leader. Authority and power are essential for you.

2nd House : You will do well in careers which pays you well. You can be good with numbers, finances and any responsible/routine job. Careers that depend on your appearance like modelling are good. Your job would need a good self esteem and self worth.

3rd House: You will do well in careers that involve mobility, communication, writing such as YouTube. Freedom of expression, and movement is important to you. You should be able to experiment as you wish. Change of careers as times change

4th House: You will do well in careers that gives you emotional satisfaction such as nursing, psychology. making an impact on people's lives is important to you. Working from home can be good.

5th House: You will do well in careers that allow your self expression such as art, acting . Careers connected to children and transfer of knowledge are good. A career in which you are a genius and unique such as music, painting, investor.

6th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to maintain order such as backend work. Routine and a stable job is important to you. You may also do well in health , healing and animal careers.

7th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to exchange things whether product or service. You will do will in public careers like politics. Business is good as well as client based careers. You will do well in careers that allow you to work with another person.

8th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to research things like a biomedical or chemical engineer. Careers in digging like oil petroleum or digging another's finances as auditing, insurance are good. Investigation and finding secrets. Psychology, medicine , surgery are good choices.

9th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to reach a wider audience around the globe such as publishing books, writing, online teaching, academia. A sense of meaning and purpose is important in your job.

10th House: You will do well in careers that allow you to be skilled and efficient in what you do. A generally good position for executive and managerial jobs or Government routine jobs

11th House : You will do well in careers that allow you to build your network such as social media manager, politics, businesses, digital marketing etc.

12th House : You will do well in careers that heal people and raise their consciousness. Careers in spirituality, metaphysics, non profit work would be good for you. You need freedom and a flexible schedule.