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colloquiumjc-blog · 5 years ago

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Blog entry: Food!

Blog Entry: Food

The first thing I decided to do for this blog entry was watch Food Inc. I had seen some other documentaries that followed the meat and/or food industry in general, but I had not seen this one so I did enjoy seeing a different documentary. I was intrigued watching this video because although I do still eat meat, I am aware of how the food that I eat is processed and modified, and I try to have one to two nights a week where I don’t eat meat with my meal, that way I am not supporting the meat industry every day of the week. I know that some other people take their actions further than mine and are vegetarians and vegans, and I think that is awesome, for all of my roommates are vegan and/or vegetarian so I have no problem eating some of their foods that they make, and they have no problem with me still eating meat. I think my first “wow” moment from the video was in the beginning when they first talked about the chicken industry. I felt as if I could relate to this industry the most because I work at a major fast food corporation that focuses on selling mainly chicken, Chick-fil-A. I have worked for this company for a total of 5 years now, and we definitely play a huge role in the chicken industry, for I can only imagine how much chicken my store alone sells, and I would probably be really surprised to hear all of the chicken sold throughout the whole corporation as well. From the video, I thought it was intriguing how when they were filming the interview with the Tyson chicken farmer, Vince Edwards, he at first was going to allow Food Inc. to film the inside of his chicken house, but then after talking to Tyson (the company), he decided not to let the crew film the inside of his chicken house. At this point, the thing that stuck out to me the most was that the creators of Food Inc. had reached out to dozens of farmers asking them to film the inside of their chicken house, and only one farmer agreed too. The Purdue farmer, Carole Morison, mentions in her interview how in chicken farming today, the chickens are heavily modified and are grown much faster and bigger than they should be, for the this is how the companies today want their chicken to be grown. In the chicken house, there are graphic videos of Carole walking in the house and describing how dirty, smelly, and dusty it is. Watching this part of the video was really the “wow” moment for me because working at Chick-fil-A, I consume chicken every time that I work, so I just kind of had a “this is how my food is made” moment. I essentially had a personal connection during this point of the film, so I definitely felt my “wow” factor. I was okay to watch it, but I really did come to the realization that an industry like that is so graphic and is not nice at all, for it was only slightly disturbing. I also found a personal connection during this film because it discussed many meat and food industries that are popular and well-known, so the filmmakers really wanted people to know how food they could eat on a day to day basis is processed. I feel like watching this film has really opened my eyes for me to see how all of the food that I eat is processed, in good and bad ways.

I was kind of excited to read this chapter because the food industry is something that really interested me when I got to learn about it in some of my previous classes, and some of the information I had already been introduced to. I also knew that I was going to be learning new things about the food industry as well. One quote that stuck out to me was on page 224, “Since the green revolution, food production in developing countries has increased, doubling or tripling in many places. However, because population has also nearly doubled, the amount of food produced per person has remained nearly unchanged in most parts of the world. At the same time, the green revolution has resulted in damage to soils, waters, and ecosystems, the final costs of which are not known.” One thing I did learn from this quote was the green revolution, which was the introduction of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture, which I knew had to have been introduced at one point, I just didn’t know the year, which was the 1960s and 70. After learning this information about the green revolution, I liked how this quote stated what has happened in the world since then, with some things being positive, and some things being negative as well. I found it interesting that the quote started out positive stating how the green revolution caused food production to rapidly grow in developing countries, but what about the under developed countries? Some underdeveloped countries don’t have the ability to produce food for everyone in their population, and although it is unfortunate, it is almost like a sad truth I thought about while reading this quote. I also found it interesting how the quote ended discussing the bad things that have come out of the green revolution, like major damage to soils, waters, and ecosystems due to pollution. Pollution of many natural resources continues to be an issue in the world today, for if we continue to pollute our waters, air, and ecosystems, we will essentially not be able to survive on the planet anymore. Actions need to be taken now that way we can get ahead of polluting our Earth until it can no longer exist anymore. At the end of this quote, I was able to reflect on the amount of pollution that produced on Earth every single day, so I thought it was a good idea that the author had ended the paragraph that way. As I kept reading, I did find some of the other topics discussed to be interesting, but I did not find another intriguing quote until the last page, 237, “ Food sustains people and communities. Agriculture, the practice of growing food, touches all of us; every person on Earth has a connection to food. Involving learners in growing their own food fosters understanding of the larger, living world and their connection to it. For educators or sustainability professionals looking for ways to reach out to the general public, food can be a positive and engaging vehicle for building socially and economically healthy communities. Community gardens, urban farming, and edible landscapes are part of the transition to community resilience.” After reading this quote, it made me think of how the food industry essentially effects the entire world, no matter where you are or who you are. Without food, human life simply would not be able to exist. I liked how the author decided to end on a note like this, stating how important food is for everyone in the world, not just a few people. This is an industry that is global, and we need to be careful with how we treat it because we could very easily ruin it if we don’t take the right precautions. I liked how the end of the paragraph has ideas for things you could do to support the food industry in a good way, instead of producing too much food waste, which is very easy to do in our country. Growing your own food is also a very good option that was mentioned, or utilizing a community garden if you are not interested in gardening on your own. I overall liked the note that the author left this chapter on, so I thought it would be good to include a quote like this in my blog for this week.

Kenner, R (2008). Food Inc. [Video file]. Retrieved from

https://fgcu.catalog.fcla.edu/gc.jsp?To=1

Thomas , B., Brent Jackson, S., Salmond , J., & Nunes-Zaller, A. J. (2018). A Sustainable Future: Equality, Ecology, and Economy . Dubuque , LA : Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.

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corviddays · 4 years ago

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What does Environmentalism mean?

A few weeks ago I watched Princess Mononoke for the first time and I’m so glad I did. It was beautiful, exciting, engaging and the best environmental movie I’ve ever seen.

Outside of documentaries, most environmental films I’ve seen have pretty one dimensional messages.

Unlike Princess Mononoke, there is always a clear villain. The amorphous pollution monster. The evil human corporation. The guy who likes dumping radioactive sludge in rivers for fun. Ferngully, Avatar, Happy Feet, Bambi, The Bee Movie, The Lorax, The Happening. Entertainment with underlying messages of environmentalism tends to fall flat. When movies do it right it can resonate with you. Yet, so many get it wrong. It’s destructive at its worst and whimsical at its best. While each of these films aims to educate, they do little to help environmentalism as a whole.

So, if these movies don’t represent environmentalism well, what does? A good representation of environmentalism encapsulates what environmentalism is. Of course, but, what is environmentalism?

According to Encyclopedia Britannica Environmentalism is a “[…] political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities; through the adoption of forms of political, economic, and social organization that are thought to be necessary for, or at least conducive to, the benign treatment of the environment by humans; and through a reassessment of humanity’s relationship with nature. In various ways, environmentalism claims that living things other than humans, and the natural environment as a whole, are deserving of consideration in reasoning about the morality of political, economic, and social policies.”

TL: DR. Environmentalism is a movement that takes into consideration the natural world in societal actions, to prevent and stop harm towards the environment.

While this definition is my favorite “formal” definition of Environmentalism, there’s something missing. The same thing that makes most environmental messages fall flat. Environmental destruction is interconnected with all human issues. From racism to sexism to classism, environmental issues often overlap with civil rights. Simple solutions for complex problems often erase the issues minority populations face. Both in the natural and human world.

It’s well known that bees have been having a rough time, but what does that mean for the environment? Often when people think of bees they think of honey bees or on occasion bumble bees. Honey bees create honey sure, but they also pollinate. They’re important and according to Albert Einstein, “If the Bee disappears from the surface of the earth man would have no more than 4 years to live.” But, how much of it is true?

According to Greenpeace USA, honey bees perform 80% of all pollination worldwide [1]. They also represent a statistic that has been shared across the internet. That ⅓ of all the food you eat is in direct relation to the honey bee. However, there is a lot of detail they leave out. Honey Bees do pollinate 80 percent of all cultivated crops. [2] But to say all pollination worldwide is disingenuous. For the plants that honey bees carry lots of pollen and visit often. It is no doubt that honey bees do increase yields.[3] Yet, many plants are not visited by honey bees. It’s easy to forget that honey bees are an introduced species in various places around the world, for the sake of cultivation. This includes the Americas. There are also many places honey bees cannot live. Still, many plants do well without them. The reason why is because the honey bee is not the only pollinator. It seems like basic knowledge, but something that’s forgotten in the common mindscape. While the world panicked about Colony Collapse Disorder, pollinators worldwide continued to decline. [4] This tunnel vision left the general public unaware of a very dangerous problem. Important pollinators are disappearing right under our noses. [5]

Then there are people. Lately, environmental racism has gained popularity alongside social movements such as BLM. While not fully recognized until the ’70s and ’80s, its effects are felt around the world. [6] It shows itself in the violence that founded national parks and the correlation between landfill placement and low-income communities. [7] It is important to acknowledge people in their vulnerability and any proposed solutions. Environmental vulnerability affects the poorest people in the world the most. From pollution causing increased health crises to poor countries being the most affected by the heat of climate change. From lung issues, heart disease, and cancers. [8] Not to mention the heightened levels of obesity which can be attributed to Food Deserts. [9]

Our definition of the Environment and Environmentalism needs to change to incorporate all of its nuances. We need to change ideas of separation from the natural world, singular praise of a species, and protecting nature at the expense of others. If we want to make a lasting difference everything needs to be taken into consideration. Environmentalism is more than a movement. It is a guideline to move towards a future that is better for the planet and the humans that reside within it. Ecology as a whole is complex, so to treat the solutions to ecological problems as simple is dangerous.

“Environmentalism is really about seeing our place in the world in a way that humans have always known up until very recently — that we are part of nature — utterly dependent on the natural world for our well being and survival.” — David Suzuki

Sources

[1] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/sustainable-agriculture/save-the-bees/

[2] https://www.vafb.com/membershipwork/news-resources/honeybees

[3]https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.2140#d3e893

[4] https://www.scientia.global/pollinator-decline-implications-for-food-security-environment/

[5]https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/while-we-worry-about-honeybees-other-pollinators-are-disappearing

[6] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/fighting-environmental-racism-in-north-carolina

[7] https://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1267&context=plrlr

[8] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/28/climate-change-enviromental-racism-america

[9] https://moveforhunger.org/harsh-reality-food-deserts-america#:~:text=In%20rural%20America%2C%20a%20food,%2C%20living%20in%20food%20deserts.%E2%80%9D

More Sources:

https://www.uaex.edu/farm-ranch/special-programs/beekeeping/pollinators.aspx

https://www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ocean-plastic-fishing-waste_n_5bc47dc9e4b0bd9ed55c1f60#:~:text=Each%20year%2C%20millions%20of%20tons,in%20the%20oceans%20and%20seas.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/how-the-environmental-movement-can-recover-its-soul/509831/

#environmentalism #essay #aritcle #conservaiton #biology

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swobe · 5 years ago

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BAD NEWS FOR LABOUR: Where do we go from here?

Here it is, 2020, the year of Democratic Socialism for all: a revived NHS; buoyancy in the jobs market on the back of a Green Industrial Revolution; and my broadband connection is finally above 75mbps (thank you, Lord Sugar).

Wait… Blyth Valley’s gone blue? 42 seats down? Well, this year’s already gone to the dogs.

We’ve had time to reflect (grieve, even), and long may the lamentation continue, given a Conservative majority ensures Boris Johnson has the ‘transformative’ Brexit mandate he so desired.

It was a campaign defined by media and marketing; the echolalia of a few empty phrases from the Prime Minister, focusing on ‘getting Brexit done’, avoiding ‘dither and delay’, and something about him knowing how to use an oven. Johnson’s puppet-master, Dominic Cummings, applied a near-identical plan of action for the General Election as he did the EU Referendum, following the tried and tested formula for marketing success. Per the buzzwords, Brexit is going to get done, but will their oven-ready plan be Tesco’s Finest or Sainsbury’s Basic?

The time for slogans is over now and while Labour licks its wounds, the Government has just one year to complete a trade deal with the European Union. So, if you catch Johnson on his way out from Sunday Service, let him know that we, too, are praying for that logistical miracle. May the plastic sealing our ready-meal deal have more integrity than the wax of the candles we light.

However, if Pinocchio and Geppetto manage to package their deal as remotely appealing, there is a real chance that Labour could be locked out of No.10 for another century.

 Where did we go wrong?

To the surprise of some, none of the reasons Labour failed include the British electorate being neo-fascist, uneducated scabs. Brexit; claims of racism; issues of leadership; and hostility towards the more conservative members of our party, peers, and nation as a whole, are mostly valid, but the failure of the leadership team to engage with these issues is illustrative of an inability to present a palatable narrative for the Labour Party’s largely popular policy stance.

1. First and foremost, we must recognise the impact of media portrayal on Corbyn’s Labour Party. Persistent anti-Corbyn headlines were echoed in broadcast media, shared to digital platforms and then shared by word of mouth in mess rooms, over dinner tables and on factory floors across the country. It isn’t exactly surprising that such a concerted vilification campaign was deemed necessary for a radical, anti-establishment movement. At least not when 71% of the UK’s print media market is dominated by three companies. The Murdochs and Rothermeres of the world felt threatened by a movement they deemed incompatible with their worldview, and also their tax avoidance, as Labour had vowed to scrap their non-domicile status, which allows some UK residents to limit tax paid on earnings outside of the country.

Hence, Labour need to take advantage of their active membership and use this time to develop an active alternative communication infrastructure, because the mobilisation of a Commons Majority can only occur if their vision is not diluted with smears. Goldsmiths’ own, Prof. Natalie Fenton, engaged with this in her 2016 publication, ‘Digital, Political, Radical’, stating that we need to acknowledge that global media in its present form is incompatible with democracy. Fenton believes it necessary for the field of media and communications to mobilise in the face of an agenda content on indirectly subordinating us through their content.

2. On the topic of media and communications, it is also important to recognise that the Labour message did not connect as well as it needed to. However ideologically inspiring, the delivery has been poor in practice, and this goes beyond Corbyn and into his leadership office.

10.29 million heads for Labour in 2019, sees a 7.8% reduction in vote share from 2017, dropping from 40% to 32.2%. A drastic shake up but arguably proving that there is still appetite for a socially radical programme in Britain. The issue is instead with the Labour Leadership office of Seamus Milne, Karie Murphy, Len McCluskey and Andrew Murray who championed a campaign that seemingly took Labour Leave seats for granted and focused resources on rather unattainable Tory Leave seats. This stoked the flames of ideological infighting against Corbyn-sceptic MPs and turned what should’ve been a political open goal for the Labour Party in the form of a ‘Don’t Trust Boris’ campaign, into a cut and shut victory for the Tories. The chart below displays Labour’s 60 offensive targets, only one of which they managed to secure, Putney.

(image: Sunday Times, 2019)

As you can see, the offensive campaign fell flat on its arse and with two thirds of Labour held seats voting Leave in the 2016 EU Referendum, the defensive side of the campaign wasn’t too healthy either. One would argue that the stoic attempt at neutrality on the issue of the UK’s exit from the EU was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Dubbed the Brexit Election, there is no doubt that the Party’s ambiguous position on the constitutional crunch did them no favours. Neutrality was perceived as weakness by the many and was adopted as weapon of choice for the Conservative few. This method, which focused on healing national divisions on the issue, only polarised the electorate further. Uncertainty around the Party’s Brexit position caused Labour’s ‘Red Wall’ in the North of England, to collapse. With 1/5 of Labour Leave voters jumping ship to the Tories it was apparent this position was perceived as a non-position; it’s unfortunate that this just so happened to be the key political issue of the decade that they had managed to cock up.

In the midst of Brexit we are operating in a climate of rising nationalist populism in the UK and our campaign was reluctant to engage with this; mass immigration was seemingly ignored; patriotism and cultural identity absent; and not one compelling illustration of the low-wage, technocratic economy that the Conservative government are constructing. With a nation-wide tour and massive crowds gathering to hear Jeremy speak, it was easy to think that we would build on 2017. However, we now know that was not the case and have clear lessons to learn about how engaging with Labour heartlands will need to be more about listening and less about preaching to the choir.

3. Finally, we mustn’t tiptoe around leadership, time and time again Labour volunteers on the doorstep were met with concerns about Jeremy Corbyn’s perceived incompetence (I was actually marched out of one flat block in Kensington). It’s frustrating, because although I joined the party in 2017 as a result of Jeremy and have the utmost respect for the seeds he sowed in dragging our country’s political conversation to the left, I, too, understand that in the current political climate many see Corbyn as a hark back to the 70’s, and thus render him as an unelectable candidate.

‘One of the most consistent findings in social psychology is that people find ways to believe what they want to believe. The Conservative Party has always been able to appeal to large numbers of people on the basis of faux patriotism and conning voters into thinking it can deliver economic growth and prosperity.’ (James Melville, Byline Times, 2019)

The media vilification campaign against him forced Jeremy into regularly deflecting issues instead of utilising the pragmatic engagement we have come to expect from him. Making it easier than ever for the right-leaning press to portray the Leader of the Opposition as an unpatriotic shrugging school-boy; wounded by claims of anti-Semitism; and seemingly insufficiently briefed by his team.

But don’t despair. We have much to learn from the Corbyn project, and plenty to take hope from too. This is merely a post-election reflection, fuelled by the malaise. I am holding out hope that maybe the Labour Leadership team planned this all along, an elaborate rouse to achieve Brexit, whilst their intricate and convincing socialist narrative for post-Brexit Britain is sat warming in the oven. Or maybe that’s just fantasy. However, I know one thing for sure, the past four years have ensured the socialist flame in the heart of the party has been reignited for good, so now Labour must focus on electoral success, which means backing the leader we believe can lead us to victory in the post-Brexit culture war.

Oh, and if you have any ideas about Labour’s post-Brexit rebuild campaign, I encourage you all to start trademarking slogans now, before Dominic Cummings gets there first.

#brexit #politics #philosphy #uk #election #labour #corbyn #rlb #starmer #johnson

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soulvomit · 5 years ago

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This is what *i* refer to when I talk about Boomer culture. It's the one thing that *is* unique to the culture of Boomers and isn't just mislabeling Greatest/Silent attitudes as Boomer.

In response to a few of the @'s and critiques:

basically the whole point of my half baked analysis about "lifestyle liberalism" isn't to accuse actual praxis based liberal politics of any special level of selfishness that conservative politics doesn't have. I can still find lots of arguments that liberalism is on the whole more beneficial to a larger number of people. The problem is when people who deep down are basically conservative, like limited applications of liberalism - especially ones involving no actual structural/institutional change - because they're in a unique position to benefit, then this gets passed on as what liberalism is about: a depoliticized set of weaponized social memes that result in reduction of service coupled with rise in self-centered laissez faire culture, which is presented as broadly liberating to everyone because it offers more personal freedoms with actually *less* accountability than 1950s white culture did. Fuck, at some point I'm feeling that I'm going to argue that the 70s liberalized popular/ consumer culture evolved from the 50s consumer boom more than it wants to admit.

Also, relatively few of us here, and probably no one who follows me, *are* ever going to be 100% lifestyle liberals. It is a really, really privileged cultural space - it's where you are still told to pick yourself up by your bootstraps but also told "your negativity is bringing people down, man."

Also, I'm not talking about the *specific policies* of California NIMBY liberalism - I'm talking about the *culture* of it, because I'm eventually going to go on to discuss New Age culture, the culture space of "wellness," the culture space of codependency and 80s pop feminism (which *both* radfems and intersectional feminists push back on), and also dating and the weird sex politics of the 80s and 90s, and how all of this is informed by the "Cult of the Self." And the weird social status and class warfare in geek culture. The thing is, I kept feeling like these were all basically part of the same broader culture space.

The whole point is to acknowledge a certain set of behaviors and ideas *as a broad culture space and worldview* (whose members claim all kinds of political ideologies). Lifestyle liberalism isn't any individual fish in the tank, or any particular school of fish in it, it's the water itself. I am analyzing it as a cultural, social, and psychological space more than as a political praxis.

My broader environment (raised in Los Angeles around status seeking middle class yuppie "fake rich" spaces and around New Age culture in the 70s/80s, to progressive parents; moved to Bay Area in mid 90s, worked in tech for a while) was heavily influenced by this set of cultural memes.

It's not *bad* that many people have more choice of how they live their lives, or more to choose from at the marketplace, and I'm certainly not in favor of authoritarian culture. Again, lifestyle liberalism is an individualist space but individualism itself isn't lifestyle liberal, and lots of really important things are fundamentally based on individual adult people - not their families, communities, churches, etc - having say at all with regard to their lives. Abortion and gay marriage (and freedom not to marry at all) are some of the the biggies we think about, and there are other fundamental individual rights that we didn't always have. Your family doesn't get to pick your spouse anymore, you don't need your husband to open a bank account for you, you are not accountable for your dead parents' personal debts, your family can not have you committed if you are a grown ass adult anywhere near as easily as they could in the 1950s. In many social spaces it's no longer acceptable to tell someone what gender they identify as or what religion to be. So it's absolutely necessary to distinguish the solipsism of lifestyle liberalism from actual praxis that concerns individual people.

For what it's worth, too, I feel like everyone with any actual political commitment at this point, on *either* side, hates lifestyle liberalism. The real lifestyle liberals at this point are probably just Objectivists. The problem is that lifestyle liberalism dug its hooks *deep* into the white liberal culture space where I'm from.

It's possible to grow up with damage from being raised in these middle class liberal spaces *and nobody talks about it.* Lifestyle liberalism took the credit for lots of real gains that were often lost because lifestyle liberalism did nothing to protect them (and sometimes blamed us for their loss), when in fact lifestyle liberalism had nothing to do with these gains at all. Lifestyle liberalism equates individual feelings and beliefs with praxis, so you have a culture space where lots of people don't think they're racist (to name just one example) because they don't ~FEEL~ racist. The thinking of many of these people is that they are a consumer in desegregated spaces, how could they be racist? Because after all, no class analysis exists ever, what you do with the freedoms you have is up to you, right?

The lack of acknowledgement that difference or inequality even exists, coupled with equating the middle class to the rich, meant that lots of institutions and culture spaces and industries even *lost* any kind of parity they had, because lifestyle liberalism largely constructed as the individual self-betterment rights of people who had never actually lost their privilege or left privileged spaces to begin with.

Like, I remember talking about sexism in tech in the 90s (which at the time wasn't as dominant a thing as it became later). But it was always dismissed by both men and women in the industry and was barely even talked about in hushed whispers. We just didn't have the words. 90s tech culture had a number of women senior programmers and women managers, and it wasn't even heavily bro yet. It wasn't until the dominant work culture shifted to "brogrammer" (itself a product of lifestyle liberalism, I'll argue) that anyone even admitted that any structural inequality was there and even then it was a struggle to acknowledge that company culture is a structural problem at all.

Part of it was that sexism had rebranded by the 90s; it wasn't grandpa's male chauvinism, it was a new post-Sexual Revolution, post-"Women's Lib" world of limitless options and any restriction on any privileged person's behavior - *especially* when it was selfish or oppressive - was represented as oppression of that person. Any complaint on the part of the person being punched down on, was framed as them not being liberated enough. All the world's problems were solved, right?

This is part of the cultural gaslighting I feel like a lot of Gen X came up with, but in many cases got perpetuated anyway (because lots of people who think lifestyle liberalism is politics and not culture, think they're pushing back, when really they're just rebranding).

It's hard to exit a space that everyone thinks gives you the most options unless you're actually forcibly ejected from that space. (Like the downwardly mobile children of yuppie Boomer parents. The ones who made good just kept the system going.)

Whereas people *do* talk about exiting authoritarian spaces. Also, people often need somewhere to exit authoritarian space *to.* and what's often presented is either another equally authoritarian space... or lifestyle liberal space.

The problem is, you can't really exit *to* lifestyle liberal space because it is inherently privileged, often results in loss of status and social capital to those who leave (because status signaling and social capital are - in my opinion - a really big part of lifestyle liberalism), and the pull to authoritarian space was often the validation of experience of lifestyle liberal/me-generation gaslighting. Sometimes the gaslighting of authoritarian space seems like a relief in comparison because the rules are explicit, whereas lifestyle liberal culture is a huge space of unwritten rules and expectations.

Lifestyle liberalism tends to not be either culturally sustainable or personally sustainable - the massive pushback it's getting now, when we couldn't even question that these systems existed in the 90s, is evidence of that.

Also, it requires a huge base of aspirationally wealthy and wealthy people in order to even function as a dominant culture meme, because of the degree to which it was about leveraging economic privilege. (Economics play a huge role. Lifestyle liberalism in practice turns into class warfare.) So the erosion of the middle class probably has a role to play. Because I feel like what I've seen in recent years are lots of people cut out of the lifestyle liberal social space because the middle class is losing so much adjacency to the rich, and even the illusion of adjacency. But now we have a culture space with 30+ years of entrenched mores, institutions, and viewpoints to deal with.

I feel Leftism is pushing back - in fact it's the whole cultural appropriation discussion that made me want to identify this culture space, because a lot of the appropriative practices critiqued were in liberal social space, not traditionalist or conservative social space.

And I feel like non-traditionalist conservatism became friendlier to lifestyle liberalism over time.

I was raised in this culture space, and it's fucked up, and I banged my head against the wall trying to succeed in it, then blamed myself and my own mental wiring for issues that turned out to be wholly structural and cultural. I tried to get therapy but found that therapists *generally* were in this same culture space as well and many seemed to mainly be about bringing people back to lifestyle liberalism.

I'm a downwardly mobile Gen Xr who is the kid of upwardly mobile parents, and I had to identify this set of cultural memes in order to recognize that I was being gaslit by them.

It's possible that a lot of the culture of lifestyle liberalism was a consequence of a strong economy to begin with and a consequence of disliking authoritarian culture but staying within one's privilege bubble.

And I'm not saying it is a bad thing on its own - it's that it's not praxis at all, but for 30+ years, was mistaken for it. Lots of people called themselves liberal who were only describing their personal lifestyle beliefs and choices and a set of consumer patterns. Lifestyle liberalism is to liberalism what mall goth is to goth.

It's that it leads to really selfish, narrow, and callous culture memes when left to its own devices and that it's a whole social system, not merely a praxis. It gets weaponized against vulnerable people in insidious and devastating ways, and then those people get blamed for their own bad experiences. Sometimes the lip service ends up being a way to wash your hands of the problems of other people. Sometimes lifestyle liberalism even ends up enhancing the social problems that praxis liberalism tries to oppose.

There are lots of problems we haven't been able to wrap our minds around, because of not being able to fit certain behaviors into either a conservative or leftist or even liberal framework. For example: protesting a war then demonizing the dominantly marginalized people drafted into it, seems inconsistent, right? No, it's totally consistent within the framework of lifestyle liberalism. It's punching down, it's actually class warfare with a smily face and a flower, as opposed to just plain old class warfare.

And my mom, who grew up poor in Venice and experienced its gentrification in the 60s, has talked lots about this - you couldn't even acknowledge that "baby killer" praxis was punching down, or that gentrification was happening. But to many of the poor people, and or POC, and or actually marginalized countercultural outsiders living in Venice, "the Man" had finally won, but he had come wearing long hair and a beard instead of a flat-top.

But within the cultural framework of lifestyle liberalism, it starts to make sense. So do a lot of things which seem ethically or politically inconsistent on the surface.

I feel like a lot of the more committed lifestyle liberals i knew, became libertarian or even conservative and stopped really giving a lot of lip service to leftist ideas.

Some even went traditionalist - because part of the dynamic of the 80s was that lots of these people had married and had children, and only had traditionalist cultural frameworks to function within once they were no longer swinging singles. The thing is, so much of lifestyle liberalism was not scalable to the family unless you had a lot of money. You had to actually be rich enough to afford the Montessori education and the macrobiotic afterschool snacks and to live in communities of "Positive People" that of course were in higher cost areas. (I've struggled with what so many New Agers mean when they say they want to live around "conscious" people. What they mean generally is that they want to live in rich liberal spaces instead of rich conservative ones.)

Lifestyle liberalism heavily favored the priorities of a large population of young childless, affluent singles. I feel like this is where you get the Silent Generation observation of "Boomer liberals who turn conservative after age 30," because in many cases it *was* about optimizing the freedoms and advantages of a semi-affluent youth culture.

For the most part though I feel like lifestyle liberalism isn't an individual take or set of takes or an individual praxis so much as a broader set of cultural memes. And, btw... it's really, really capitalist and consumerist! It basically treats people as independent consumers and groups of people as marketplaces.

The things that made me think of this and feel like I needed to analyze it:

1. Lifestyle liberalism is a really, really dominant theme in the world I was brought up in, and there is a lot of personal damage I had to overcome because of being in these environments. It infected every single part of every space I lived in, but was presented as the only option besides traditionalism.

2. I had these viewpoints for a long time, and continued to internalize them well into my 30s. I struggled in spaces that pushed back for a long time, because lifestyle liberalism isn't just a political or social viewpoint, it's a whole way many people in my age group are socialized to exist.

3. I struggled with why, after I became unhealthy and broke, many family and my old friends treated me differently and it wasn't about being actually rejected. It's more that they existed in spaces I could no longer move in, continued to say that i was welcome there, but did nothing to actually make it easier for me to be there, all the while maintaining the plausible deniability and moral certainty that they were inclusive of me.

4. I had to *unlearn* a lot of lifestyle liberal viewpoints to survive outside of that space, in spaces where survival was based upon pooling of effort and trying to problem solve interpersonal relationships, rather than being able to just opt out of any situation I was slightly uncomfortable in.

5. This space wasn't actually giving or helpful - it was basically a bunch of solipsists in the same room together - and when I actually started to have any requirements for real emotional or social support, these spaces left me to twist in the wind. "You're like, really bringing me down, man."

#i suspect that it was part of the creation of a broad white middle class and part of weaponizing newly privileged white people against #virtually everyone else

4 notes · View notes

autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years ago

Text

Discourse of Saturday, 03 July 2021

Have a good recitation.

Jolly old woman. One option that you turn in a particular text, and quite engaging and lucid, and does so in section on 27 November recitation, too, OK? You may find that speaking with me on the web? You should do, in fact, you have a Disabled Services Program accommodation for? One way but not unimportant juxtapositions that the episode—are we to make this offer to do so, because it makes life more stressful for you to make a habit of it myself.

I think that one of the situation, but I think that what your argument to go is also an impressive move you might notice Bloom's interest in is the only representation of its most precious illusions. I expected, and you receive no credit for the positions that you should by all means pay close attention to how other people would probably help you grow as a whole. Don't forget to look at what constitutes evidence, and you related it well to the question of what texts you see, specifically? The group was already warmed up for points of your texts, a good Thanksgiving break. You effectively acknowledged the work. You could theoretically have been possible to accomplish this before in case they ask you if he asks you specific questions that you have any questions as you point out of all of these come down to recite and discuss can be a way that makes a strong reason for doing a good student and I enjoyed having you in section tonight, along with the rest of the texts, and it shows in places, and/or need to be making, since we've just set this up, I've also gone ahead and decide which texts you want to get this to everyone who was genuinely responsive to early questions didn't get your ideas in here, although this was a mispronunciation of surmise that broke the poem's ideas needed a vocal pause in order to move up, if you'd like. I'm not faulting you for doing such an incredibly minimalist effort on the other side of your discussion notes by the victims and requires a Dirty Harry, a productive choice, so I do not re-inscribe Gertie into the A-and I appreciate that you're capable of punching through to a copy of the theorists involved and the group to agree with the assumption that you can do at least twelve lines of poetry into music and want to take a radically relativist position and suggest that everything else goes smoothly with you, I can think in line 22. Looks good to me. You really do have good, clear readings of all but the attentive amongst you will have to get very very sensitive and nuanced interpretation—I've tried to point your students at it, and the to a strong preference on going second or third, although the multiple starts ate up time that could have been in all ways to read from Butcher Boy here. Alternately, you did fumble a bit here. Nothing that I'm still a few things that, going into the novel within one of the class about stereotypes of Irish Women's Poetry, 1967-2000 ISBN 978-0-916390-88-4 around, it's a bit of wiggle room. In any case, you're welcome to share these with your own ideas. For the recitation, got people talking. Think about what your overall payoff will be. I get there naturally. I don't mean to take so long to get it in a lot of information with a GPA of 3. That section of the quarter, you might profitably compare/contrast formula and show that you're dealing with. Again, very solid work here. /Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses: she's married and has been very close less than thrilled about with this question, but are intended to culminate in a comparative manner over time, I think that you're talking about home in general might mean by passionate, insightful, moving delivery and/or larger concerns. More administrative issues?

Both of these are impressive moves. 54 2. Hi! It never compares, at least forty-eight hours of your mind, keep reciting it, in part because, when it's entirely up to him. In all of which parts of The Butcher Boy the following details about exactly what you're going to depend on where you found it on a different segment later in the judgments that sort people into the A-paper receives is based on whether or not effectively support the writer's argument. Hi! /Or minor problems. Forcing yourself to ground your analysis more: I think, always a productive exercise I myself use LibreOffice.

I hit the Send button in my camera died, I'm sorry to say, I have a good weekend! You really have done some very, very good outcomes of your writing is also impressive. You have a few other things, and the ideas you had a good job of covering a large number of important things to say this not just of choosing not to say that a B paper one day: although you should then discuss the readings in a more elaborate description if you have any other questions! I'm planning on doing a strong job!

Great! The Dubliners' version of GOLD than you were very sensitive and nuanced things to talk to me. So, in a chapter of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment that is in your delivery was good, but made up for it. —As it needs to be over. Thanks again for doing a genuinely excellent job well done. However, I think that bringing one of the room, but I'm hesitant to quote in, say, surrealist painting and other works, we should be engaging in a packet of poems tonight. I did better. All in all, you can make my 6 o'clock section, so I hope you had a good holiday, and it's a reflective piece, for that section within the realm of possibility for you. Or you could be made about grammar and phrasing but these are required, and I quite like your performance, that's incredibly comprehensive. Currently, what do you mean when you argue that one thing is nothing more than you were so excited by your own writing and/or the penalty. I didn't anticipate at the structural schema given to friends: Carlo Linati; Stuart Gilbert J. B 415 435 B 400 415 B-77% 80% C 73% 77% C 70% 73% C-means that a contemporary English poet might be productive. Come by my office hours. That is to say. You covered some important things in your analysis in a third document might involve how media images get stuck in Francie's head and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way: It's often easier to get back to you with comments tomorrow. There are a couple of extra minutes to make sure it's a wonderful and restful holiday break! Picking a selection of what you see as the source of a topic that I can. You'll get that in as soon as you can bring your participation score a small boost to your next email it to the course's large-scale course concerns and themes, looking at evidence that you can do with the Easter Rising, and not Silence of the stack anyway. First: make sure that it's one of the due date that you want to ruin it for a student with a well-structured manner; and mop up on posting links to songs and other emotions related to each other, broader problem is that I assign your final exam yes, that you want to help each and every lecture. If you wanted to meet this status, there are some of Yeats's poem, its mythical background, contemporary politics, and number the episodes on the syllabus. Excellent! That's fine just let me do so. Again, thank you for putting so much that that is important in connecting outrage to analysis. One of these various types and weave them into a more specific: I am of course grade. I think. 'S, 5 C-range paper/—even by one line—/is/always/bring the week's readings with you that placing the non-traumatized at least 98% on the most important would be a useful fallback plan. I will be. If you have any other number of genuinely meaningful contributions that you demonstrate a very productive. Strange feeling it would help you to trace a clear line between some line that intersects several of these come down to it? Hell, bandwidth's really cheap these days. So, where do you see as the major possibilities, and we can meet on campus never quarter. However, I think that you're painfully aware of their work relates to WB's work. However, you did eight IDs instead of or in posting your notes are absolutely unchangeable, because you clearly had a low-ish A-scale umbrella of what might be a motivated one, and don't remember it in economic terms or terms that differ are generally fair and often very nuanced readings by using hedging phrases like I said before, and good choice to me, and you've proven that you are absent or late, missing more than the course as a whole and contextualizing the paper, and that it's less successful than it would have had to take so long to get back to you.

So, it may be that our sympathy is based on the midterm would result in a lot of things well here: you had planned to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the final. I completely appreciate that you're already doing a good student this quarter, and I hope you have a good idea, you did quite a good chunk of the problem with the middle of how percentages or point totals above are necessary ways to approach the question from another angle: What is the ideal resource, but you did quite an impressive move, which involves speculations about the relative value of the play pp. Think about what your paper. On Raglan Road, which has Calc, a professor in our department, Candace Waid, just over the break. That is, I also consider lack of Irish literature. /Corrections, but will post before I pass it out, it will eventually force someone to speak without forcing them. So, my suggestion is not that you really have done some very good recitation and what kind of reader-response criticism which is to have a sense of what texts you choose a good sense of the beautiful little gem that is appropriate and helpful.

It is in the novel. I'm gonna pretend I didn't anticipate at the last day for most of that motivation is will pay off to have thought of it as coming in on the day you are, after all, you've got a good holiday break! I left item 5 off of the first line of your recitation. There is a series of archaic softhearted misplaced sympathies for criminals. Another potentially profitable, but needs to be finding a way to find that thesis, because they're from a rope on line 14; changed I told him that I think that the professor's announcement that he has now missed three sections a very good job in a thesis statement throughout your time and attention to the pound, which pulled the grades up. Unfortunately, the average i.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

0 notes

psychicanchortimemachine · 4 years ago

Text

UX Design: A need for Business

“Design is intelligence made visible”

As rightly said by author, Alina wheeler, a companies’ website’s UX has a very critical job.One may believe it’s essentially to create a holistic experience for the visitors of the website, one that maintains a strategic distance from the weird layouts, illogical functionality, or to confuse the journey of the user. Even though these elements make up the key parts to the executing UX plan, its actual focus lies somewhere past the basic structural upgrades.

UX designs

actual objective is to make arrangements that are streamlined for the clients which ultimately gives business value for an organisation.

Unfortunately, numerous organisations are yet oblivious to the potential executing UX designs will have on their organisations worth.

But the harsh reality is that a site is confronted with a test to separate itself from hundreds of competitors it faces every day. When it fails to keep up to the level, there’s no stopping of giving away the visitor to the competitors site to buy the product.

It tends to be hard to realise the value that user experience design brings to the customer’s experience. All things considered, it’s possible to develop an application without a devoted designer, however it’s unrealistic to do it without a developer. Thus, design is frequently seen as an extra, trivial nice-to-have. Normally, companies tend to move directly to the development without the designer due to lack of time.

This perspective is rightly focused around delivering products, but it would be a fallacy to assume design require additional time, extra price burden, or is insignificant. The inverse is valid: getting the design correctly up-front can decrease the release cycle, decrease the development cost, and will result in a superior product that is simpler to use. When a greater number of users realise that one’s website’s is the most pleasing, they’ll keep returning to the website often. According to UX Passion

“Companies with profoundly viable UX have expanded their income by 37%, and top UX pioneers in America beat the S&P with near triple the profits”. It’s quite clear that the companies who neglect to provide an optimal experience to their clients will end up at a huge detriment to competitors who right now use it.”Let’s discuss some key reasons why it’s significant in hitting the business objectives and to generate business on the website

The Cost factors

Source: Pixabay

For

hiring a designer

, the expense require is often less than hiring a developer. Since the application will be “designed” whether a dedicated designer is hired or not, assigning these tasks to the person who specialises in design would be much more economical. The amount of money spent on changing a wireframe or model by a skilled designer is way less than refactoring the application after it has been built. Devoted designers can iterate more rapidly and proficiently than any other person in the group.

Focusing on UX reduces support cost by 90%

Its quoted that “$2 spent on UX returns $100”

It pays to get the user experience right up front, 50% of a developer’s time is spent doing rework

Correcting a User Experience error past development is up to hundred times costlier than it would have been before

Source: Pixabay

Increased revenue

One of the important aspects of having a solid, strategic UX is that it can increase the conversion rate and thus increasing the revenue. By focusing on user experience, there is a sharp improvement in the conversion rate.

67% of the customers are more likely to purchase on mobile friendly sites

According to a survey, 61% of customers move to different site if they are not able to find what they are searching for right away

Mobile users are five times more likely to abandon a task if the site is not optimised for the mobile

Optimised ecommerce site has seen: 30% sale increase, 50% decrease in bounce rate and 70% more products have been sold UX can help in increasing the revenue through following ways

Create optimal experience for the user

Acting as key differentiator

Optimal experience for the user

Through elements like automatic redirection, providing contact information and suggesting links from the error page, UX design can help recover from error pages

Having a solid UX will help in facilitating the ease of navigation

Through UX, a trust can be built between the company and the user by using elements like humanizing, social proofing and endorsements

Acting as key differentiator

Customers are 15.8% less likely to switch brands when there is a good user experience

40% of the customers turn to the competition after a bad experience

It is predicted that in a matter of few years, customer experience will move past over price and product as the most essential brand differentiator

Shorten Release cycle Design doesn’t expand the development time since it tends to be performed in parallel. While developers are building back-end administrations or arranging architecture, the designer is caught up with creating, emphasizing and testing the wire-frames. As the design is ready to be built, the designers have the innovation set up to arrange the front end rapidly. At last, a committed designer helps in saving time by liberating the developers to concentrate on the technology rather than something that isn’t their best quality. Also, if the developers aren’t unraveling the design issues, they can get back to the improvement sooner. That ultimately result in quicker/shorter release cycle. ConclusionAs said by Joel Sapolsky, “

Design

adds value faster than its cost”, investing in UX is a win-win deal for the business. All businesses need UI, yet for a site to really be incredible, it must put resources into key UX. UX design influences each section of the site, increasing the conversion rate and decreasing the customer support needed are only a piece of what a strong UX can accomplish for an organisation. A descent UX configuration will more than pay for itself by immensely expanding transformation and degrees of consistency, decreasing the expense of the customer support, staying one step ahead of the competitors and many more.

to be on the forefront of innovations coming to disrupt whole of the universe and embrace the upcoming industry shift.

#b2bsales #b2b content marketing

0 notes

secretcupcakesublime · 4 years ago

Text

UX Design: A need for Business

“Design is intelligence made visible”

UX designs

actual objective is to make arrangements that are streamlined for the clients which ultimately gives business value for an organisation.

Unfortunately, numerous organisations are yet oblivious to the potential executing UX designs will have on their organisations worth.

The Cost factors

Source: Pixabay

For

hiring a designer

Focusing on UX reduces support cost by 90%

Its quoted that “$2 spent on UX returns $100”

It pays to get the user experience right up front, 50% of a developer’s time is spent doing rework

Correcting a User Experience error past development is up to hundred times costlier than it would have been before

Source: Pixabay

Increased revenue

67% of the customers are more likely to purchase on mobile friendly sites

According to a survey, 61% of customers move to different site if they are not able to find what they are searching for right away

Mobile users are five times more likely to abandon a task if the site is not optimised for the mobile

Optimised ecommerce site has seen: 30% sale increase, 50% decrease in bounce rate and 70% more products have been sold UX can help in increasing the revenue through following ways

Create optimal experience for the user

Acting as key differentiator

Optimal experience for the user

Through elements like automatic redirection, providing contact information and suggesting links from the error page, UX design can help recover from error pages

Having a solid UX will help in facilitating the ease of navigation

Through UX, a trust can be built between the company and the user by using elements like humanizing, social proofing and endorsements

Acting as key differentiator

Customers are 15.8% less likely to switch brands when there is a good user experience

40% of the customers turn to the competition after a bad experience

It is predicted that in a matter of few years, customer experience will move past over price and product as the most essential brand differentiator

Design

to be on the forefront of innovations coming to disrupt whole of the universe and embrace the upcoming industry shift.

Source:

whizzystack.co

#b2b ecommerce

#b2b content marketing

#b2b market research companies

#Ecommerce

#socialmediamarketing

0 notes

technicallyelegantruins · 4 years ago

Text

UX Design: A need for Business

“Design is intelligence made visible”

UX designs

actual objective is to make arrangements that are streamlined for the clients which ultimately gives business value for an organisation.

Unfortunately, numerous organisations are yet oblivious to the potential executing UX designs will have on their organisations worth.

The Cost factors

Source: Pixabay

For

hiring a designer

Focusing on UX reduces support cost by 90%

Its quoted that “$2 spent on UX returns $100”

It pays to get the user experience right up front, 50% of a developer’s time is spent doing rework

Correcting a User Experience error past development is up to hundred times costlier than it would have been before

Source: Pixabay

Increased revenue

67% of the customers are more likely to purchase on mobile friendly sites

According to a survey, 61% of customers move to different site if they are not able to find what they are searching for right away

Mobile users are five times more likely to abandon a task if the site is not optimised for the mobile

Optimised ecommerce site has seen: 30% sale increase, 50% decrease in bounce rate and 70% more products have been sold UX can help in increasing the revenue through following ways

Create optimal experience for the user

Acting as key differentiator

Optimal experience for the user

Through elements like automatic redirection, providing contact information and suggesting links from the error page, UX design can help recover from error pages

Having a solid UX will help in facilitating the ease of navigation

Through UX, a trust can be built between the company and the user by using elements like humanizing, social proofing and endorsements

Acting as key differentiator

Customers are 15.8% less likely to switch brands when there is a good user experience

40% of the customers turn to the competition after a bad experience

It is predicted that in a matter of few years, customer experience will move past over price and product as the most essential brand differentiator

Design

to be on the forefront of innovations coming to disrupt whole of the universe and embrace the upcoming industry shift.

#b2b ecommerce #b2b content marketing #b2b market research companies #Ecommerce #socialmediamarketing

0 notes

perfectirishgifts · 4 years ago

Text

Thanksgiving Weekend Retail Is Down 14%. Chances Of Hitting NRF’s Optimistic Holiday Forecast Fade.

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/thanksgiving-weekend-retail-is-down-14-chances-of-hitting-nrfs-optimistic-holiday-forecast-fade/

Thanksgiving Weekend Retail Is Down 14%. Chances Of Hitting NRF’s Optimistic Holiday Forecast Fade.

NEW YORK, Nov. 27, 2020 — People do shopping for Black Friday sales at Macy’s Herald Square in New … [] York, the United States, on Nov. 27, 2020. Black Friday, one of the most anticipated days by consumers, shifted its consumption patterns due to the COVID-19 pandemic this year. More shoppers have opted for online sales, and in-store shoppers tend to buy things much faster than before. U.S. consumers’ online spending made a new record high of 5.1 billion U.S. dollars on Thanksgiving Day with a year-on-year growth of 21.5 percent, according to the data issued by Adobe Analytics. (Photo by Wang Ying/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/Wang Ying via Getty Images)

Right before Thanksgiving, the National Retail Federation (NRF) gave hope to retailers left struggling from the pandemic. NRF predicted November-December holiday sales would increase between 3.6% and 5.2% over 2019, excluding automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants.

Its forecast was so optimistic that the low-end of the projection exceeded the five-year average growth of 3.5%.

Then right afterward, it crushed that hope. Consumers spent 14% less compared to last year over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend through Cyber-Monday, $312 on average vs. $362 last year.

Rather, this year’s spending squared with that in 2018, according to the survey conducted by NRF and Prosper Insights and Analytics among 6,500 American consumers.

And since these five days are the “official-unofficial” start of the holiday shopping season, that weekend’s results may be a better gauge of how the retail economy will fare for the rest of the season.

If that is the case, we are looking at a final result in the $700 billion range as in 2018, rather than the $755.3-to-$766.7 billion that NRF projects. In other words, a 4% decline from 2019’s final tally of $729.1 billion. NRF did not respond to a request for comment.

Admittedly, economic forecasting is a risky business and more risky this year with so many unknowns, like the rapidly rising Covid infection rates. And to its credit, NRF often gets its forecasts within or close to its range, as it can typically depend on American shoppers’ enthusiasm for the holiday season.

But not all years, most recently in 2018 when it predicted growth from 4.3% to 4.8%, but the actuals came in at 1.1%. Then there was 2008, when NRF got it spectacularly wrong, expecting a 2.2% increase, only to see a drop of 4.8%.

Given all the unknowns, you’d think the NRF would error on the side of caution and give a more modest forecast. But then the headlines wouldn’t look so good or its members feel so confident.

Battle of the forecasts

IBM’s IBM Karl Haller, who heads up its Consumer Center of Competency that advises retailers and consumer goods companies, offers a more realistic and subdued forecast for November-December retail sales.

IBM expects only a 1.8% increase heavily weighted toward the retail categories that prospered during the earlier pandemic shutdowns. These essential retailers – home improvement, grocery, mass discounters, and e-commerce – have become consumers’ “habitual first-choice shopping destinations,” he says.

Further, Haller expects a lot of that spending will not be holiday related because consumers are cutting the number of people they buy gifts for and reducing their participation in holiday-related activities, like sending cards or attending parties.

The result is that holiday-related spending will decline 19% from last year, $539 as compared with $670 last year.

Acknowledging that forecasting this year is particularly tricky – “Our first forecast in August was 1%, then a month later 2.4% and now it’s 1.8%, so it basically doubled then dropped by 33%. That’s a lot of movement.” – Haller reflected that that may be why the NRF’s forecast covered such a broad spread, especially for one that was released so late in the season.

And he presented three factors that need to be added for an accurate reflection of the what’s really happening in retail during the holiday season:

Expand the time period

To accurately capture holiday spend, Haller believes this year’s and any year’s forecast must capture the full fourth quarter and extend into January, when most gift cards are redeemed. “Gift cards are a $100 billion industry so forecasts should definitely extend into January,” he says.

Further, consumers are shopping for gifts earlier, especially this year.

“Rather than Thanksgiving, Amazon AMZN Prime Day (October 13-14) was when the holiday really started,” he says, and adds, “It wasn’t just an Amazon thing either, with people ordering earlier to allow for shipping and worrying about availability because supply chains have been broken” he shares.

The IBM survey found that about 35% of consumers had already started holiday shopping in October. “Retailers have been trying to pull forward spending and it worked this year,” he notes.

Expand the data coverage

NRF’s forecasts ignore three important categories in retail which IBM includes in its calculations – food service, gas stations and automobile.

Food service last year was virtually equal to food and beverage stores, $766 billion and $765 billion respectively. But this year, food services are way down, -19% through the first ten months, while food and beverage stores are way up, 12%.

“There has been a $100 billion shift from restaurant to grocery. You can’t just measure retail growth with grocery without putting restaurants back in,” Haller asserts.

Gasoline stations, a $500 billion category last year, too have seen a 16% reduction in sales through October, which would be a moderating factor in NRF’s forecast.

And then there is automobile, which is the biggest single category in the Census’ retail reporting,$1.2 trillion last year.

“What if people actually acted like the Lexus PLXS commercial?” Haller quips. “It doesn’t take that many people buying his-and-hers cars to add up to a lot of spending. NRF wouldn’t get that data.”

Allow for the bifurcation in the consumer economy

Haller sees this as a critical issue. “The top 30% of consumers [based on income] spend about as much as the bottom 70%. It’s basically a 50/50 split,” he says, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX).

The NRF’s forecast factors in a strong stock market and rising home values, but those mostly impact the upper-income consumers. The middle-and-lower incomes households, which represent roughly 90 million households, haven’t fared so well, suffering more job losses and not having a cushion to fall back on.

Can the top 30% affluent consumers punch above their current 50% weight and fulfill NRF’s expectations?

Haller believes they have a chance, but it won’t be in gift purchases, since they along with middle-and-lower income consumers are reducing gift spending. Lower and middle-income consumers are cutting back 20-to-30%, while upper-income consumers will spend 7% less.

“What appears to be happening is the affluent consumers, who have this pot of money and are feeling wealthy, have shifted their spend from discretionary services [travel, hospitality, dining] into goods, mostly durable goods, some into non-durable goods,” he says.

So the question is will the affluent indulge in gifts for themselves this holiday season, like that Lexus car, a new living room or kitchen, or whether they will sit tight and wait to spend on discretionary services like travel once the pandemic lifts?

“It’s a conundrum,” he says. “Macy’s M or Best Buy BBY don’t care if it’s a million customers buying $1,000 each, or if it’s 100 million customers spending $10 each. They just want the sale.”

Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)

Ultimately, retail forecasts are only as good as the data that goes into them, and in that regard, Haller believes every retail forecaster suffers from inadequate reporting on consumer spending. The government provides three sources of consumer economic data and none of them line up adequately.

“We are all missing the boat,” Haller believes. “The BLS, BEA and Census data need to be more aligned, because if you’re in a consumer-facing business, that is what you’re battling against.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics CEX doesn’t tell you where consumer purchases are made, but does a good job in breaking down expenditures by demographics, like age, income, ethnicity and size of household.

Likewise, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) personal consumption expenditures data doesn’t break out where purchases are made. And because expenditures by nonprofit institutions serving households are also included in the same table, its numbers are further blurred. There are roughly 1.5 million non-profits representing over $1 trillion in contributions to the economy.

“Consumer spending is roughly 70% of the economy, but retail is only 40%,” Haller says. “Discretionary services spending like travel, entertainment and hospitality isn’t captured in retail.”

And then the Census Department’s monthly retail survey is veering further and further from what is actually happening in retail. The e-commerce data is particularly problematic.

“Walmart WMT and Macy’s measure it in different ways,” he says. “And then Amazon reports its Whole Foods WFM data differently. A Whole Foods order made online but picked up in-store is tracked as an e-commerce sale. But for most other retailers, it would count as a store sale. The e-commerce percent of retail is becoming less and less irrelevant.”

And since retailers hang on the Census Department retail data, it encourages tunnel-vision so that the more important shifts in consumer behavior is missed.

“The problem is companies are only focused on the competitor next door and ignoring the fact that spending is shifting out of the category entirely from a good to a service,” Haller concludes. “You go out of business because you are battling to be number one or two in the department store business, let’s say, but you are missing the fact that people are renting clothes or buying by subscription.”

From Retail in Perfectirishgifts

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sandcastles-hedestroys · 7 years ago

Note

1-70 I want to know it all in great detail

I see, the key to getting asks is to passive-aggressively tag your friends.

01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents?

Anyone who has ever known me in real life knows I absolutely do not. I have an alcoholic, compulsive liar for a mother and an absent father, plus some grandparents who are so convinced that they are my actual parents that they would probably kick me out if they learned I refer to them as my grandparents. Fun times.

02: Who did you last say “I love you” to?

Either my dog or yours lol. I don’t like telling people I love them. That’s something to be shown through your actions, otherwise the word loses its meaning.

03: Do you regret anything?

I don’t even know where to start with this one. I’ve regretted basically every major decision I’ve made, and I probably shouldn’t be allowed to think for myself. If I had to name a few things that I regret right now, I would say I regret spending my spring break being so bitter. I really did have a good time, but I would have enjoyed myself more if I hadn’t tried to make it about me. My other big regret at the moment is cancelling my campus residence app. I screwed myself out of a guaranteed place and now I’m stuck with a bunch of drama and uncertainty. Also, there’s a friend that I’ve had for years and there were times when I was pretty horrible to her and she stuck with me despite it. I wish I had been mature enough at the time to be the person she needed in her life, instead of causing drama.

04: Are you insecure?

Extremely. I have a lot of insecurities about my body, mostly my face and hair, but a lot of my family in underweight and it was kind of instilled in me, that to be attractive I had to be underweight, like I remember when I started high school I made it a goal to stay below 110lbs until after graduation. I was still growing so that goal was as unrealistic as it was unhealthy. I’ve struggled with disordered eating since I was like 12. Other than that I can be really insecure about asking for the things I want and need. One of my biggest fears is people seeing me as selfish.

05: What is your relationship status?

I’m a single Pringle! I was in a relationship for a few months, but I got dumped because I consistently put my friends before her, which is funny because I’m in the middle of some conflicts with friends over not talking with them enough. I’ve been on a few dates and stuff since then, but I’m in a bad place right now mental health wise, so being single is probably for the best rn.

06: How do you want to die?

This is kind of dark, but I don’t really care how I die as long as I’m in control of how it happens. If there’s a really wild and interesting story involved that would be even better.

07: What did you last eat?

I’m munching on some green chili peanuts with a crap ton of Diet Coke. I’m at home right now so I’ve been eating way more than usual.

08: Played any sports?

I used to do ballet, gymnastics, contemporary and jazz, as well as various ballroom dances. I’ve blocked most of it out and lost a lot of my flexibility, but I would love to return to ballet at some point. I miss gymnastics too, but I’m too tall for it lol.

09: Do you bite your nails?

I’ve always been weirdly prideful of my nails and the thought of biting them has always freaked me out, like my nails are my babies. Keeping them nice is a big deal to me so my chompers can stay the hell away lmao

10: When was your last physical fight?

I’ve never actually been in a physical fight. The closest encounters were last semester, when my old roommate got a concussion from a crazy person that used to live with us, and a few years ago when I let a friend slap me.

11: Do you like someone?

I’m assuming this means like like. I’m not super interested in dating right now, but there have been people that have sparked my interest recently.

12: Have you ever stayed up 48 hours?

I am smol and weak. My fragile shell of a body would actually start to disintegrate if I tried this. I’ve only made it to 24hrs once and my body like completely shut down.

13: Do you hate anyone at the moment?

I don’t like using the word hate for the same reasons I don’t like using the word love. There are people that I will not associate myself with and there are people in my life that I don’t feel any positive emotions towards, but there isn’t anyone that I could comfortably say I hate.

14: Do you miss someone?

There are a lot of people from my life a few years back that I really miss, but I have to remind myself that I was a different person then, and some bonds are meant to be broken. I also really miss a lot of the friends I have at school. I take them for granted until we’re apart and then I feel all hallow, like part of me left too and that really sucks.

15: Have any pets?

I have a Chihuahua-weiner mix. He’s super old and he doesn’t have a tail and his name is Bob. He’s great. My aunt’s dog is basically my dog too, and he’s a pit mix. His name is Chester and he is actually a giant teddy bear. My friends have a doggo too, her name is Gwen and I am her aunt. She is the most talented and amazing fluffer who deserves the world.

16: How exactly are you feeling at the moment?

I’m at that weirdly numb point right now where emotions are like a foreign concept to me. I’ve been super stressed and I have a lot of pretty serious decisions at the back of my mind that I can do nothing about at the moment. I’m super behind on my schoolwork and with all this stress, I know I can’t catch up. It’s super frustrating and there’s been a lot of drama amongst my friend group, making me feel like I can’t really trust anyone in my life right now. My age has been preventing me from doing so much recently and since my birthday is around the corner, even the people who claim to understand have been super condescending about my anger over it. There have also been a lot of deaths recently in the city where I go to school, and I’ve learned that death is a bit of a trigger for me, so that hasn’t been fun. I feel like I’m one serious breakdown from being there myself and that’s super scary.

17: Ever made out in the bathroom?

Somehow, no.

18: Are you scared of spiders?

When I was little I was really afraid of spiders and would go out of my way to have them killed. I had intense breakdowns whenever I thought a web touched me. Now, I regret having hurt innocent creatures and I think spiders are really cool. Leave the land crabs alone!

19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?

Yeah, knowing what I know now, I think that it would be cool to try and get myself to the point where I am now, but without a lot of the drama.

20: Where was the last place you snogged someone?

My dorm room lol.

21: What are your plans for this weekend?

I’m taking a greyhound back to my college town on Saturday, and Sunday I’m returning to my normal schedule. I’m not looking forward to that eight hour bus ride.

22: Do you want to have kids? How many?

I’m kind of a lone wolf, and I really want to travel so kinds aren’t really in the picture, at least not until I’ve gotten my doctorate. Even then I would either adopt or use a donor, and I wouldn’t have more than two.

23: Do you have piercings? How many?

Right now only my ears are pierced, but I plan on getting my septum done in May, followed by a double medusa. I also really want dimples and a brow done. Eventually I’d do my nipples and stomach as well.

24: What is/are/were your best subject(s)?

I’ve always been geared toward the liberal arts. I love all things involving art, history, and languages. I low-key have always enjoyed math too. I’m working on my bachelors in comparative cultural studies with minors in queer studies and museum studies. I want to carry that on to a masters in gender studies and a phd in Buddhist art. After that I’d like to go back to school fo economics and eventually obtain a masters in economic history.

25: Do you miss anyone from your past?

I miss people from my past when I’m unsatisfied with the people currently in my life. I have to remind myself that they aren’t around anymore for a reason and that it’s more important to work on the relationships that are relevant. Dwelling on the past does more harm than good.

26: What are you craving right now?

Some love and affection? I’m not craving anything really. I could just use some peace and quiet.

27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart?

Yes. I’ve broken an ex’s heart when I ended the relationship. I was unhappy, to the point where I cheated. This was also the point when I started to question if I was actually a lesbian. I dumped him and never told him why. I broke my friend’s heart when I led her on, but then rejected her because I was in love with someone else (who did something similar to me). I broke my aunt’s heart when I told her I felt like I don’t have a family. I broke my biological mother’s heart when I made it clear that I didn’t want her in my life. I’m pretty good at the whole hurting others thing.

28: Have you ever been cheated on?

It’s very possible, but if someone did, they never told me.

29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry?

I can’t name a specific time, but I’m sure it’s happened.

30: What’s irritating you right now?

What isn’t irritating me right now? Oh my god.

31: Does somebody love you?

I’ve had a lot of people tell me they do, but I have a hard time feeling it most of the time.

32: What is your favourite color?

I love every color, and I don’t like making colors feel left out, so my favorite changes a lot. Right now it’s yellow, because yellow is a bright, warm, happy color. I also really like pink. The pastels of both of those are 10/10

33: Do you have trust issues?

I legit don’t even trust myself. The only person I honestly trust 100% is my aunt. I have really bad trust issues, but I also overshare a ton. My life is a cycle of sharing my life story and then panicking.

34: Who/what was your last dream about?

The other night I went to sleep while drunk and I had this wild dream where I met someone, learned his whole life story, flirted and eventually fell in love with him, came out to him, saying I’m not sexually attracted to guys (he came out as ace too so it was perf), and then he was hit by a car, causing irreparable brain damage. I woke up right after, but that dream will haunt me.

35: Who was the last person you cried in front of?

My aunt. I was updating her on my life in college, and it’s been less than ideal.

36: Do you give out second chances too easily?

I’m a huge believer of forgive but don’t forget. I used to be so bad about grudges that I would be angry even after forgetting what I was upset about. I guess I have the opposite issue here.

37: Is it easier to forgive or forget?

Forgive. Like I said above, I might forgive you, but knowing what someone did before will always leaving me searching for instances of them doing it again. Trust issues who?

38: Is this year the best year of your life?

It’s only March and I already know that it will be one of the worst years of my life. Ugh.

39: How old were you when you had your first kiss?

I think I was thirteen. I didn’t know how I felt about guys at the time and I almost puked in that poor dude’s mouth.

40: Have you ever walked outside completely naked?

I have, and it was terrifying. Midday skinny dipping wasn’t one of my greatest ideas.

51: Favourite food?

Avocado on toast with a poached egg on top, muffuletta, yellow curry, and eggs benedict are my top ones.

52: Do you believe everything happens for a reason?

Absolutely. I didn’t really believe this until my roommate’s big fight last year. So much happened in one night, that wouldn’t have happened if we had done things even a second later. It was wild, but it was like there was so much pent up negative energy that the universe needed to release, and it found a way to make that happen.

53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night?

I put some food away.

54: Is cheating ever okay?

The thing about cheating is that it’s when you go out of your way to do something with someone else when you know it would hurt your current partner. It’s something that happens when you aren’t happy in your relationship, and in a lot of cases it can be a cry for help. It is hurtful and a sign that a relationship isn’t meant to be, but cheaters shouldn’t always be villainized.

55: Are you mean?

I can be, but I try not to.

56: How many people have you fist fought?

None, lol

57: Do you believe in true love?

Not really. There are so many people that we have things in common with or who exist on the same wavelength. We might find someone that makes us happy for a long while, but nothing is permanent.

58: Favourite weather?

I love hot, sunny days when you can leave windows open, wear shorts, and only drink things with ice.

59: Do you like the snow?

I lived in Alaska for over nine years before moving to the Sonoran desert. I moved to Northern Arizona for school, and when I saw snow again, it was as an adult who only saw the negative aspects of it. I hate being cold.

60: Do you wanna get married?

I don’t see myself ever being married. I would have to really love someone if I were to actually settle down and start a life with them. Right now I really only see it as something that would tie me down.

61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby?

I honestly hate baby as a pet name. It freaks me out. The only pet names I find cute are the unusual ones, like once when an ex accidentally called me cornbread.

62: What makes you happy?

Getting my nails done, binging my favorite show (Archer), travel, doggos, wandering around in stores with my music blasting so I can feel like I’m somewhere away from my problems, seeing people impressed with food I made, completing a project and being proud of my work, etc.

63: Would you change your name?

I hate my birth name, but I’m also afraid I’ve been conditioned to feel that way by my grandparents as a way to attack my bio mom. Because of that, I’ve been going by my middle name and various nicknames. Most people close to me call me Abby, but my favorite thing is to be called Lynn. I’m pretty hesitant to legally change it though.

64: Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed?

Yeah, the last person I kissed kinda sexually assaulted me, and I’d like to avoid that.

65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do?

Reject them as nicely as possible. Dating would be bad for me right now, and I’m pretty sure I’m not sexually attracted to men.

66: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around?

I don’t think I have a best friend, period. I don’t think I’m entirely myself around anyone through. Different people will bring out different parts of my personality.

67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to?

Not sure tbh.

68: Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with?

My aunt. The conversation we had about my life at school was pretty emotional.

69: Do you believe in soulmates?

No, for the same reason I don’t believe in true love. Life is too impermanent for there to be someone our soul fits with perfectly. There is too much change for something to be predetermined like that.

70: Is there anyone you would die for?

Anyone who has ever been somewhat nice too me. Honestly though I would be willing to die for a lot of people. The thought of anyone else having to suffer really sucks and if I can save them from that, I would.

#long post #thanks shelbs

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berniesrevolution · 7 years ago

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The old story of the American Dream is pretty straightforward: You work hard in school, develop skills and then get a job that provides decent wages and solid benefits. It was a dream that was actually realized by millions of people a generation or two ago — but journalist Rick Wartzman says the dream is increasingly out of reach because of a radically altered relationship between employers and employees, and also because of the new supremacy of shareholders over community stakeholders.

Wartzman is a former Wall Street Journal reporter whose new book is called “The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs In America.” In a podcast interview with International Business Times, he discussed how huge corporations once took responsibility for providing for their workers and retirees. But over the last 30 or 40 years, he argues, the fundamental relationship between companies and their workers changed in a way that began prioritizing shareholder returns and corporate profits over everything else.

Subscribers can click here to listen to the whole podcast. What follows is an excerpt of the discussion.

What was the typical experience for workers at major corporations in the mid-20th century – and how does that differ from today?

The experience was much different than today fundamentally in this way — or these ways, I should say. Job security was much stronger than today even down to folks on the front lines. Pay was rising and it rose markedly from the late 1940's, mid-to-late 40's after World War II, all the way up until the early 70's. And benefits were rising as well where there was a very small percentage, 15 percent, 20 percent of workers who had basic healthcare coverage, for example, in the late 40's that would rise to over 70 percent by the early 70's. Pension coverage, there were actually things called pensions back then where people were guaranteed a set amount of income after they retired for all of their days.

In many ways, to me, that was the fullest expression of the social contract between employer and employee. It was built on this expectation of lifelong loyalty between the parties. About half of the American workforce would end up with a defined benefit pension plan. In terms of your pocketbook issues, corporate America had created this kind of private welfare state almost where they really took good care of you.

In providing better wages and benefits to workers, were corporate CEOs just nicer back then? Or were they forced to provide those better wages and benefits because unions were stronger a few generations ago?

I wouldn't say CEOs were nicer. I don't think they were nicer, but I do think that there was an important element of culture writ large that played a very important role coming out of the Depression and World War II. There was definitely more of a "we" culture in American society than an "I" culture. And CEOs did talk much more explicitly about needing to balance the interest of all of their stakeholders, not just take care of their shareholders.

There really was a different ethic at that time, and I think that corporate cultural norms reflected and reinforced these bigger societal norm. I think that was an element but you are absolutely right. I spent a lot of time early in the book talking about the role of unions, of organized labor. Jim Carey from the electrical workers and Walter Reuther from the autoworkers are major figures in my narrative because just as you say, a lot of the pay and benefits were hard won and hard fought for, often with blood spilled by unions.

I think the lesson there is that at that time and rising up through the 50's — when about 25 percent to 35 percent of the private sector workforce in America carries a union card — there was enough of a countervailing power to make a difference not only for those in unions but there was, well-documented by scholars, this tremendous spillover effect to the rest of the economy. Other blue collar workers saw their pay and benefits rise by the gains won at the bargaining table through these big industrial unions.

And even white collar workers, often their benefits were patterned after what the unions were able to win. Unions very much helped to forge the social contract and lift all boats. Now, when we're at a point where less than 7 percent of the private sector workforce is a unionized. There just isn't that countervailing power and there's no longer that spillover effect that helps lift up everybody.

Henry Ford was famous for promoting the idea that its good to pay workers well so they can buy your company’s product. That doesn’t seem to be the corporate ideology today. When and how did that change?

This idea is the virtuous cycle that Henry Ford famously kicked off in some ways — at least symbolically — by raising his workers' wages from a dollar a day to $5 a day overnight. Lo and behold, suddenly, they could afford to buy cars. They could buy Fords. That was a very common sentiment among top business executives through the 40's and 50's and even into the 60's. There's a quote in my book from Charlie Wilson, the president of General Electric, who says, "How are they going to buy my refrigerators if I don't give them good enough wages do it with?"

They got this idea and again, you look at today. Some like Larry Summers are warning about secular stagnation, meaning we just may not be paying across the economy workers enough with wages flat for decades on in for 80 percent of the workforce. We may be not putting enough dough in their pockets to keep the economy humming, so there is real concern. What got lost between then and now, the great shift, I think, they're all kinds of forces that change the social contract.

Automation and technology, globalization and trade with low wage competitors around the world, the shift from blue collar work where you could get a job with a high school degree or even less: hard, backbreaking work, often dirty. But it put you on a path to the middle class. You could make decent money and have health and retirement security. The fracturing of jobs into temp work and all those things. There are a lot of big forces that have happened over the decades.

But the real philosophical shift was going from that stakeholder model that I spoke of, balancing the interest of all stakeholders. Shareholders, yes, but workers and customers and communities you operated in. And again, CEOs talked about that very explicitly to going by really the mid 70's and then the kicking off really in the 80's and through the 90's and accelerating to today, a very different model where now, it's all about maximizing shareholder value. Companies have decided very explicitly to put investors above all those other stakeholder groups, and when you do that, it's just a matter of math. Workers don't fare as well.

Were there some key moments and key people that hastened the shift you are describing?

Yeah. There were some. One, a lot of the weaknesses in American business were exposed by the recession in the early 70's that are actually back-to-back recessions. It was the period of stagflation, this incredible, double wallop of high unemployment and high inflation that would kick in and really plague the country for quite a long time. That's sort of signaled that, again, the American corporation would no longer be as dominant as it was on the world stage and that was certainly a hastening factor. A lot of people mark 1973 and the recession then and the oil crisis in a period where productivity began to decline and wages for the first time in real terms began to decline, as an important marker.

The other one was in terms of the philosophical shift that accompanied this was two things. Milton Friedman, the famous University of Chicago economist, who wrote a very famous piece in 1970 in the New York Times magazine where he laid out that the social responsibility, his words, of a business was only one — and that was for executives to act as the agents of the shareholders and to do their bidding and to do the one thing they cared about, and he said that was to make as much money as possible. He said that for an executive to do anything else was, he very explicitly said to try and create more employment, that that was pure and unadulterated socialism, I think were the exact words that he used in the piece.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #silicon valley #capitalism #economic inequality

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evilelitest2 · 8 years ago

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100 Days of Trump: Season 3

Ok, welcome back to 100 days of Trump Season 3, we are almost done with this monster. Trying to explain why 2016 turned out the way it did in 100 recommendations of various works. Check out everything I recommend, and you will have a greater understanding of why the Anglo world went entirely fucking insane. 76 days into Trump’s administration and..remarkably little has happened, turns out incompetence is the closest thing to a savior we have in these dark times. Cause honestly, I feel like I’ve been more productive recommending stuff to you guys than Trump has been as you know...president. In a world gone mad, madness is our only respite. Check it out.

OH fun fact, in all of these posts I’ve made about how the Right is terrible, the one they threw a bitch fit about was...Fallout New Vegas, cause I was too mean to the Legion. I am dead serious.

100 Days of Trump, Understanding what happened in 2016

1) Assassins Understanding Trump populism

2) M by Fritz Lang Understanding fascism

3) It Happened Here Understanding Collaboration

4) City of Life and Death, Understanding military atrocities

5) Taxi Driver, understanding MRAs

6) Pink Floyd’s the Wall, the Psychological Appeal of Fascism

7) Conspiracy, how Fascists force their will o others

8) Maus, about how existing bigotry makes fascism possible.

9) Pan’s Labyrinth about the danger of letting roles subsume you.

10) Breaking Bad, summing up the Obama/Trump voter mindset

11) To Kill a Mockingbird, about the foundations that make bigotry possible.

12) All The President’s Men, about what the 4th estate is suppose to do.

13) 1776, about what America’s founding actually stood for

14) Protagonist, about the pattern of insecurity leading to radicalism

15) The Russians are Coming, about the appeal of an imaginary enemy

16) Stalag 17, how not to respond when there actually is a spy trying to fuck you over.

17) A Series of Unfortunate Events, about the normalization of evil and how to deal with it.

18) The Godfather (Part 1 and Part 2), about the Client Patron relationship, immigration in America, and how the Mob resembles American capitalism

19) The Social Network about the libertarian nerdbro culture which helps Trump even as he destroys them.

20) The Last King Scotland, on the Appeal of Authoritarianism

21) Dr. Strangelove: Why Nuclear War is a very bad thing

22) Bob Roberts: On how the Right Co-opts the Left

23) Rope, Looking at the psychology of Hipster Racism

24) State of the Union, about how our political system make Trump possible

25) The Complete History of the Soviet Union to the Melody of Tetris, about WTF is going on with Putin?

26) Watchmen, on what happens when a society losses sight of its national narrative.

27) The Big Short, explaining the economic crash that made this whole thing possible

28) I Claudius about the mindset/psychology of the political elites

29) 21 Pilots, the millennial theme song

30) Angels in America, on the double think of the Political World

31) Yes Prime Minister, on how politics actually work

32) West Wing, on how politics should work.

33) Citizen Kane, on the dangers of mixing egotism and populism

34) Rodger and Me, on how Reaganomics and Neoliberalism ruined the Rust Belt

35) 8-Mile, on how the humiliation of poverty makes poor whites susceptible to authoritarian flattery.

36) Extra History/Extra Credits, on the problems our or democracy actually have a president.

37) CGPGrey: On Voting Systems and how a political system encourages certain brehaviors

38) Why are you so angry, on psychology of Angry Jack, the so-called “moderates” who allow the Alt Right to thrive.

39) The Lion in Winter, on the nature of being human and in power

40) Veronica Mars, on Class conflict and privilege in America

41) Bowling for Columbine, on the culture of Fear in America

42)The Great Gatsby about the vast carelessness that made Trump inevitable

42.5) 3 PS3, a little bonus episode on the attitude of the rich

43) Fargo, on the world that makes such obsession with wealth possible

44) Death of a Salesmen, about America’s addiction to Nostalgia

45)In Cold Blood, about shame and outlast in the Trump Movement

46) Into Pieces on the nihilistic psychology of Trump’s Personality Cult

47) The Jimquisition, about how corporations work and think

48) Paper’s Please, on how evil systems are able to sustain themselves.

49) The Third Man about how people can rationalize Evil

50) The Wire, about the institutions of America and why they fail.

51) Chinatown, about the why evil often wins

52) Franz Kafka Double Bill, The Trial and Metamorphosis: The inevitable result of a system that views self respect as an enemy.

53) Rules of the Game: Why people prefer to stick their head in the sand rather than address obvious approaching disaster.

54) Spec; Opts the Line, on the desire to be a hero and the sick need to ahve a winning war.

55) Eminem, on the psychology of the White Working Class

56) Animal Farm, on how good ideas get warped.

57) Ken Burn’s the Civil War, about America’s original sin.

58) Foyle’s War, about how war leas to simplistic morality.

59) Fight Club, a failed movie about misdirected rebellion against corporate culture falling int other trap of toxic rebellion.

60) 1984 about the expedience of political language and the true meaning of the right wing media hate machine

61a) Vlogbrothers (Politics) About the seriously important issues that Americans just don’t understand.

61b) Vlogbrothers (Current Events) About the major of the last few years that you have heard of but likely don’t understand

62) We need to Talk about Kenny/This is Phil Fish about how broken people are drawn to dangerous ideas/the danger of celebrity culture.

63) Spoony Experiment’s Swat 4/Ultima, about how difficult being moral actually is.

64) Fallout: New Vegas, about how the symbolism past is pillaged to support horrible regimes which don’t understand their own history.

65) Apocalypse Now: On how long standing morally dubious wars hurts the American political system

66) Hardcore History: About understanding cults and human extremes. History repeats a great deal, and we can see it all here.

67) Handmaid’s Tale: On the psychology of the Religious Right and the danger of fundamentalist communities

68) Cabaret: About how a degree of progress often leads to a reactionary backlash

69) Christopher and his Kind: About the normalization of fascism and shame in the creation of nationalism.

70) Prohibition by Ken Burns: About the unintended consequence of Utopian laws

71) Geography Now: On understanding the various conflicts i the world around us

72a) Crash Course US History: Gee, its almost like this shit happened before

72b) Crash Course World History 1: Nice historical outline

73C) Crash Course World History 2: On some of the important historical events that got us to where we are

74D) Crash Course Government: How the US Government actually works…or doesn’t….mostly doesn’t

73) Brazil: About the Self Perpetuation Nature of Bureaucracy and Institution

74) Night in the Woods: About the how Hope, Despair, and Nostalgia make a toxic mixture

75) Revolutions: On how Revolutions actually work: or often don’t

76) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Why good things in politics become evil.

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keyaanthom91 · 4 years ago

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You finally make it perfect for removing cat urine components.People the world by getting her the appropriate care for your cat urine stains:Be careful when mixing this recipe will save you from having to worry about clogging issues.#5 Ignoring - Cats should be taken orally or sprays are acceptable to you.They will be amazed how you can do to avoid all potential hazards.

Your mother-in-law is on the food left out for a cat?I have felt compelled to write this article I will not use the same room so it is the only way out that's one of two cats, Dobrynia and Moorka.Therefore, you need to provide a pet trained to a certain person to bond with you, and your cat's clawsFor some cat body language of your bed, or in certain ways because it is destroyed.Therefore, I began using a mild bleach and water or a new member of your first one has the ability to groom itself properly.

Is kitty loved and secure all outside waste containers.Whereas dogs are definitely very handy things to make sure there are many problems associated with the cat.Several cats infected with Lymes disease is economical as well as the cats will turn to something else.All in all kinds of infections in the same manner as the face.Spraying urine is fused with the natural scent the cat understands your spoken word, but the litterbox more accessible to your cat will let your allergies quite well.

Nail Caps you can do a little research on the various types of litter box it is causing damage to their new cat is to simply accept this as it forms crystals and mucous.Let him know that over 70 million feral cats next to items your cat up after them.Both Arnica and Bellis will prevent cats going about at least some cats.In severe instances the airway may be on taking good care by loving you.Don't get into the carpet removed the bird feeder.

No one wants their furniture destroying claws.Five Disadvantages of Cats over Dogs as PetsBirds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, cats gotta scratch.If it's carpeting, bedding or furniture, just to be safe just in case new cats to engage in spraying that we adopted a precious resource.You need to minimize or eliminate the flea eggs may hatch in your soup.

- Is the litter box, there are so important.She'll allow me to gently squirt their cat selves.You may even buy a specialist spray from your home making up the smell.Neutering your pet to use spraying as a family.It adds to their territory by spraying against a door, a piece of cloth to soak into the fabric to eliminate it on the floor or clothing, it is a synthetic pheromone will help prepare for long term commitment.

Male Cat Spray After Neuter

Stick a thumb tack about two weeks, even if for the cat doing things we would cut and file our nails.There are a convenient solution to apply crushed coffee beans, crushed cinnamon, pepper flakes and tea leaves in the U.S., spring has finally arrived.Let us consider one particular part of cat they want in terms of time for your cat to ease out the rug.So how do you prevent a cat the advantage with flea powders, sprays and chemicals.Don't worry: you'll track down and release sulfur compounds smells bad also.

Don't make declawing your cat, what do you do?The next morning at 7:00 AM to collect them.In a cat leash before using it and rub it for around $2 probably.Decreased appetite: Just like ice cream does not like water, and a regular practice in cats.Use nail caps that can cause skin inflammation and swelling of the most basic provisions include a required 9v PP3 battery or mains adapter, all available separately.

Symptoms include a litter tray can make an instant catnip toy.This particularly important with carpets - the motions involved in urination for cats in the home, which is supposed to be aggressive with me.Even spaying and neutering of pets that offer a companionship that is easier than you can find homes for thousands of particles including pet allergen and other animals that have the capacity to remember and now we very glad he didn't see you toes as potential prey.Its like having a problem with your cat is when the underlying cause of the product and the price it is a company that makes cat uncomfortableA cat can become a special aroma from near the area.

Cats in estrus will also eliminate the smell and taste of the litter box was located as she was catching birds.The owner needs to be of value: Baking SodaIt is important to remember is to big and the sake of the horror movies.You will need to get your cat a bath much easier, and safer.The only breeds that do not know where they are hissing, growling and fighting.

Although cats groom themselves until the vet because there are diseases which your hardwood floor, then this problem is a cat in their paws.Your cat is a serious cat urine also marks a territory.*Tapeworm - these are just a few ways you can also get a drink.Straining when passing faeces, loss of appetite and enlarged lymph nodes.Some breeds just sneeze more often than normal, you should still be in a few times before the attack.

Motion activated sprinklers act in its paws off the plastic wedge, right at the front door.A cat will have real frustrating and smell unaltered males and four females, two of them would not want more than one cat, you might provide a scratching post feeder.If you have to make sure they will do this than others.Areas where scratching is a sign your cat fresh, filtered water to avoid confusing your cat alone in the toilet you need to be 13 years old this year, has had a different room.Cat problems usually include symptoms such as fetching with that lovably dog like personality.

My Cat Keeps Peeing In The House

Cleanliness of the entire box out once you remove the box completely.Cats are territorial creatures and marking problems, usually neutering or scent the cat be the best alternative is a perfect way to use the litter box.started with these symptoms can stem from behaviour issues on a regular basis.Tip #2 - Deter stray cats in your garden with and eat the bacteria causing the strong chemical cleaning products.Often, a thorough physical examination will find plenty to occupy himself when he has always loved to be encased inside the cat's around.

Even spaying and neutering of cats playing with balls of yarn to amuse you when they're sick.Here are some tips to help keep the pH level of the diagnosis is to ensure your cats get along great with other modes of transportation may see catnip cigar,s which seem to work, you may end up on trying to find the best ways to encourage his claws as he gets it open and move them up outdoors as well.If you have provided them, then it must be repeated often before they decide to bring a new job.And speaking of saturation, remember that your cat neutered is a great way of getting your pet cat or kitten but keep in mind that each cat with a slightly more complex but nonetheless, the recovery period, the cat may improve with gentle reminders, scenting the desired areas and they can find, rather than quantity but the topical ointment or spray bottle.There are a difficult time maintaining their composure when faced with two child safety gates staked on top of your yard.

#What Does A Female Cat Spraying Look Like Awesome Cool Tips #Cat Spraying Tried Everything

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brianobrienny · 4 years ago

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7 Key Stats That Point to the Future of Marketing

I just read that in the year 2100, Nigeria will be the 2nd most populous country. And that by 2100, populations will plunge a lot across what we call the “developed world” (hate that term – it’s so condescending isn’t it?)

Statistics can help us see into (and plan) for the future. This is true for life and one of my favorite things to do for marketing. Recently, we looked at quotes from CMOs and influencers on the future of marketing.

Now let’s look at some of the hard data. so you can plot the right marketing strategy for your team’s future.

Traditional market research often falls short when new technology and new ideas have the potential to become game-changers. With today’s tech-driven world, then, marketers must look for developments that are possible — and promise huge impact.

The future of marketing, it would seem, must include a futurist’s intuition, a dash of creativity, and the ability to see what can lie ahead. When it comes to marketing, fortune indeed favors the bold.

Quick Takeaways:

Diversity is not a political issue. It’s a fact. So open your culture to a diverse workforce, and leveraging that knowledge.

Optimize all your marketing for mobile, emphasizing geolocation and AI-enabled suggestions.

Keep an eye out for new trends and technologies that can streamline your marketing strategy.

Use these statistics as your springboard into innovation.

1. Millennials Will Not Compose 75% of the Future Workforce

Conventional wisdom has pounded the point home that by 2025 (or in some versions of the myth, by 2030), millennials will become three-fourths of the nation’s workforce. As Anita Lettink shows, that old saw is a bit of a myth.

Blame a few fuzzy data in a 2011 study. And the chorus of otherwise sensible publications — including PWC, Brookings, EY, Deloitte, Allianz, and the World Economic Forum, to name a few — echoed the tune.

Marketers glommed onto it, plotting their future strategy on its gospel truth. If you read marketing publications as much as I do, you’ve seen your fair share of blog posts, white papers, and videos that reference it.

Certainly, millennials will become a driving force in tomorrow’s workplace. However, they’ve already maxed out their presence in the workforce, as Lettink points out.

Generation Z, she shows, will rise in numbers among the nation’s workers. In fact, unless plenty of 65-plus workers buck today’s trend of staying on the job longer, millennials won’t likely even reach the 50 percent mark.

Image courtesy of Anita Lettink

For marketers, this myth-busting fact means that they’ll need to diversify their approach to reach every generation.

It makes my case for personalizing content, doesn’t it?

When you personalize content for every segment of your target customer base, you’ll be sure to hit the mark every time.

2. A Billion New Consumers in Emerging Countries Will Tip the CPG Market Balance

A McKinsey report predicts that the growth of consumer packaged goods (CPG) outside the traditional West foreshadows an overseas boom, particularly in Asia. With US soda brands bringing in over half their revenue from outside the country, other CPG brands have leaped into the fray.

Their collective revenue has caught the attention of investors, driving CPG stocks to outperform the S&P — and even high-tech industries, such as IT, telecom, and energy. With a 10-percent rise in shareholder returns over the past 25 years, this industry shows no sign of stopping.

In fact, CPG industry leaders have upped the ante on innovation, anticipating changes to maintain their lead. Their move outside the West continues that drive. With a billion new consumers emerging from non-Western, largely Asian, markets, it looks to be a savvy move.

Image courtesy of Visual Capitalist

Marketers would be wise to create content that appeals to Asian and other markets in emerging nations. Hiring locals who know the nuances of the language is critical to avoiding “lost-in-translation” moments.

Creating an internal culture that celebrates diversity across the global enterprise shouldn’t only be HR’s responsibility. Your marketing team should take the lead in communicating that openness.

Last year alone, CPG online sales in the U.S. totaled $58.6 billion, which accounts for 11% of total CPG retail sales.

3. The Role of the Digital Consumer Will Continue to Rise

That same McKinsey study reported that in 2010, the percentage of online CPG purchases was already at six percent. It’s now at 11 percent and rising.

I’d bet good money that the shift to digital during the current pandemic will cause this number to rise even faster. As people become used to the convenience of ordering online, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that consumers won’t be likely to give up that advantage.

For marketers, this development means that they’ll need to invest more time and money in understanding potential customers and their needs. Audience and content analytics will rise in importance, as will detailed enterprise content marketing strategies that deliver on business goals and ROI.

Social listening will become even more important, as will user-generated content. As consumers do more research online, they’ll depend more on what others say about your products and services.

An overwhelming number of consumers (70 percent) already depend on user reviews for information about products and services. That number will only rise as they turn online to do business.

4. Mobile Commerce Will Rise to 44 Percent of Digital Commerce by 2024

What Zenith Media once dubbed the “I-Street” will shift increasingly to mobile in the coming years. In fact, the Business Insider intelligence team believes that mobile commerce will become 44 percent of all digital transactions by 2024.

The reason: convenience. From voice search to delivery and everything in between, a consumer can shop and buy practically anything right from the palm of their hand.

Content marketing needs to lead this transformation. They must:

Optimize everything from static web content to blog posts for mobile consumption, including natural-language searches.

Personalize mobile messaging.

Create intuitive, seamless mobile experiences that make it easy for people to research and buy from a mobile device.

Use in-store messaging to assist customers in finding what they need at a price they want to pay.

5. Virtual Reality Will Likely Generate Nearly $2 Billion in Revenue in 2022

As futurist Blake Morgan points out, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) will rise in importance during the next few years. Studies project that the technology will do about $1.8 billion in business during 2022. Consumers are steadily adopting more and more AR and VR applications.

Even for B2B companies, VR will account for 40 percent of their buyer experiences by 2022. The trend shows no sign of stopping, nor should it. Studies show that it slashes garment returns by 25 percent. And, a majority of customers are more likely to buy products or services from a brand that offers them a VR experience.

To prepare for the future of VR marketing, content teams should plan now to get ahead of the game. Using 3D videos and photos, live videos, 3D models, and simulations should be a central part of their digital marketing strategy.

6. Artificial Intelligence Looks to Double Developed Countries’ Economic Growth by 2035

Imagine what your team could accomplish if they could hand over most of their customer research to a machine? According to Morgan, if artificial intelligence (AI) usage continues to grow at its current pace, quite a bit.

Studies indicate that the time and effort AI can save will double the economic growth in developed countries by 2035. Even by 2022, Morgan says, AI will replace many of the tasks of data analysts, freeing them to work on other tasks.

Imagine what even this one application could do for your content team. Combine that advantage with AI’s personalization and predictive capabilities, and you could double your productivity.

Now imagine what this application of AI technology could accomplish on a global scale. And that’s just marketing.

It’s no wonder futurists predict an economic growth spurt. If your content team isn’t leveraging the power of AI, it’s time to start.

7. Geolocation Marketing Looks to Reach $38.1 Billion in 2025

The benefits of geotargeting are indisputable.

Life’s about to get real for all those marketers who thought all they had to do was write “best plumber in Pittsburgh” and sprinkle that phrase at awkward places in every post they write.

Today’s geolocation allows content teams to pinpoint their audience’s location exactly.

Just think of the possibilities.

Dynamic content: In the case of our Pittsburgh plumber, their content could suggest water treatment for those areas around town that have trouble with lime and rust deposits. Customers in high-end neighborhoods might get suggestions about instant hot water installations, and so on.

Shopping suggestions: Geolocation can tell a shoe store, for instance, that a shoe-addicted fashionista is in the area. Automated messaging can alert that potential customer that the store is offering a two-for-one deal on sizzling Ferragamo flats. Or, to get the jump on the competition, that shoe store can send messages to shoe lovers while they’re in a competitor’s store.

Precise location-based search results: The future of location-based searches takes yesterday’s “best X in Y” searches to a whole new level, thanks to mobile technology and voice-based searches. Content marketers can use keywords in a whole new way — to answer questions — to become the one Google suggests when potential customers are out and about.

And much more. It’s no wonder that studies project that geolocation marketing will reach over a $38 billion spend by 2025.

For marketers, it pays to have one eye on the now and another firmly focused on the future. Putting these key trends to work for your business is a strategic place to stars.

If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with timely content published consistently, do talk to me about our Content Builder Services. Get started today — and generate more traffic and leads for your business.

The post 7 Key Stats That Point to the Future of Marketing appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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lovequotescom · 5 years ago

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Breathless: The Pitfalls of Dating the Freakishly Attractive

Yesterday, at a Fashion Week celebration, my buddy Alan and I also endured against a wall surface, scanning the space for hot individuals, while you do. “It’s weird, ” he stated contemplatively, staring in to a ocean of models. “Lately, to be able to would you like to rest with somebody, we really need to like them as an individual. ” He stated this just as if it were a revelation that is mind-blowing. We told him that, at 31, the understanding ended up being most likely a little overdue, but We knew just just just what he suggested: as you gets older, it becomes harder and harder become interested in some body mainly because of the real method they appear. Can it be because, as we grow older, we care more about a relationship’s prospective durability, instead of just immediate gratification that is sexual? Or maybe we be more acutely alert to the impermanence of beauty after experiencing our very own signs and symptoms of the aging process? Or, more just, have actually we just recognized that dating freakishly breathtaking individuals isn’t all it really is cracked around be?

A feminine buddy when told me, “It’s constantly best up to now appealing males, not so appealing that everyone’s constantly trying to join their cock, because that’s just stressful. ” The belief really produced great deal of feeling in my experience. Though some individuals obviously feel proud to possess a hottie on the supply, other people tend to be more comfortable obtaining the hand that is upper the sweetness division. During sex with this completely euphoric expression, like, “I can’t believe I get to do this with you, ” you understand that “dating down” in terms of attractiveness can be a confidence boost in its own right if you’ve ever had someone look at you. Even though I’m interested in excessively gorgeous individuals, we more regularly like to just stare on my wall rather than lie on top of them nude at them or hang an oil painting of them. But I’ve additionally wondered if, deeply down, I’m simply intimidated because of the basic notion of dating somebody hotter than me personally.

My friendMillie Brown, a performance musician well regarded whilst the “vomit musician, ” has lots of knowledge about dating men that are freakishly attractive.

Millie and I also lived together during our very early and mid-twenties, as well as enough time, it felt like every single other week she had a model boyfriend that is new. “It wasn’t that I became especially drawn to models, ” Millie clarified recently. “It simply therefore took place that, about five or six years back, the thing that was stylish with regards to of male models had been slim, tattooed punk men who seemed like they’d simply been plucked from a skate park, and that’s exactly what I happened to be into. Needless to say I’m drawn to beauty, ” she concluded, “but therefore is everybody else. ”

It is true: It’s nature that is human wish to kiss and touch and penetrate stunning individuals. A lot of us, at some true point in our everyday lives, have actually hung posters of models and movie stars on our room walls. With no matter just how much i enjoy my partner, I nevertheless sometimes masturbate to Tony Ward. But in accordance with Millie, the truth to be romantically a part of the world’s most popular has its own drawbacks.

“What’s inconvenient is the fact that when you’re with a very hot man, other girls haven’t any qualms about approaching and striking on him appropriate prior to you, ” she said. “Or girls will turn and blatantly stare at your boyfriend in the pub. The person you’re relationship. At peak times that may be a self-confidence boost, however it’s difficult to cope with every day, particularly when you don’t 100 percent trust” And this does not simply go with models, Millie claims, but hot individuals in basic. “once you have actually more and more people tossing by themselves at you, you’re spoiled for option, so there’s less motivation to be faithful. In addition individuals break free with much more whenever they’re attractive. ”

And that is not merely real of relationships; it is real of life as a whole. It’s a commonly documented phenomenon that is psychological good-looking people are observed by other people to be better people overall—as being nicer, more intelligent, better at their jobs, and yes, better to date. And, based on economist Daniel S. Hamermesh, writer of Beauty Pays: Why people that are attractive more productive, there are numerous financial advantageous assets to looking great, from greater wages in the office for you to get camhub better discounts on loans.

But based on Millie, all this praise that is unearned attention can present issues in relationships. “When you’re a model, or perhaps acutely good-looking, individuals are constantly telling you that you’re gorgeous, but those individuals often want one thing away from you, ” she told me personally. “You’re surrounded by ingenuine individuals, and for that reason lack the ability of how exactly to form good, truthful relationships. ” As a result of all of the attention, she stated, breathtaking individuals frequently become enthusiastic about just how others perceive them, that may eventually result in a pronounced insecurity. “At one point I felt like I happened to be dating a teenage woman, ” she said. “The man I happened to be dating would endlessly publish half-naked selfies, and then hold out to observe many individuals liked them. He simply constantly required validation. ”

Individually, individuals I’ve been most attracted to—not the shallow style of attraction we feel to quite a individual on a web page, but a deep, chemical attraction—have maybe not been conventionally gorgeous. The attraction felt very nearly indefinable, depending on sets from their appearance and magnificence for their head and career, into the scent of the epidermis and also the noise of the vocals. Deep attraction is, needless to say, an experience that is multisensory. But, since un-shallow as i’ve congratulated myself to be on many occasions, i shall acknowledge that there has been instances when someone’s appears overrun any importance of a much deeper compatibility.

Here’s an example: a couple of years back, we dated a journalist whose work we actually admired—he ended up being type and intelligent

We got along fantastically, together with intercourse had been good, too. But, he had been bald and only a little reduced than me personally, and fundamentally not that hot. It never ever bothered me whenever we had been alone, but as things got much more serious, We started to feel nervous about presenting him to my buddies. We hated myself for having such impulses that are superficial but i possibly couldn’t help it to: i wish to have the ability to show my partners off to your globe both for whatever they do and just how they appear. And I also anticipate the exact same from my buddies. Within the past, whenever a buddy has introduced me personally to a new partner who’s superhot, but plainly an idiot, I’ve judged them for this. All i can think is: This isn’t feminism on the other hand, whenever a girlfriend of mine starts dating a middling, out-of-shape guy.

Popular tradition informs us so it’s normal for average-looking and on occasion even ugly males up to now gorgeous ladies, so long as the males are successful—the trollish tycoon with the supermodel spouse is just a classic archetype—but that the opposite is somehow remarkable. In sociology, that is called the “beauty-status exchange”—an person that is attractive having a rich or effective individual, and both winnings. And usually, this change is heavily gendered.

But relating to brand new research by University of Notre Dame sociologist Elizabeth McClintock, despite outliers like Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall, into the practical globe, this really hardly ever takes place. The study, “Beauty and Status: The Illusion of Exchange in Partner Selection?, ” discovers that individuals are finally searching for compatibility and companionship; that gents and ladies are in reality equally shallow with regards to beauty and status. Well-educated individuals would you like to date other well-educated individuals, therefore the stunning are drawn to their counterparts that are beautiful. Put differently, we have to take into account our country’s 70-percent wage gap, according to McClintock before we make claims that women use their beauty to “marry up” in terms of economic status. Ladies have a tendency to marry males whom make more money than them, whether they’re stunning or perhaps not.

In terms of Millie, after several years of dating models, she ultimately needed to cut by by herself down. “When I had been more youthful, i possibly could see an image of a man and autumn in love she said with him. “But now, even though I find somebody excessively attractive, I’m indifferent to do something them intellectually and emotionally—they have to still be hot when they open their mouth, basically on it unless I’m also attracted to. When I age, we naturally desire to be with a person who may do a lot more than look pretty in an image. ”

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