#Consumer products and services

[globalcourant]

NM city, victim of government burn, now faces water shortage

NM city, victim of government burn, now faces water shortage

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, buzzing chainsaws interrupt the serenity. Crews are hustling to remove charred trees and other debris that have been washing down the mountainsides in the wake of the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history, choking rivers and streams. Heavy equipment operators are moving boulders dislodged by the daily torrential summer rains…

[articlesminer]

Employees at a Trader Joe’s store in Massachusetts have voted to unionize; 1st of the grocery chain’s locations to do so

Employees at a Trader Joe’s store in Massachusetts have voted to unionize; 1st of the grocery chain’s locations to do so

Employees at a Trader Joe’s store in Massachusetts have voted to unionize; 1st of the grocery chain’s locations to do so

[don-lichterman]

Stocks closed mixed; investors brace for Fed meeting | Business News

Stocks closed mixed; investors brace for Fed meeting | Business News

If you know of local business openings or closings, please notify us here. PREVIOUS OPENINGS AND CLOSINGS · Jimmy’s Barbershop in Allentown has moved to 822 N. 19th Street · Air Products and Chemicals Inc.’s chosen warehouse developer, Prologis Inc., will have to wait until July 13 for a final decision by Upper Macungie Township’s zoning hearing board on 2.61 million square feet of warehouses.  ·…

[coochiequeens]

Update on a story I already posted about

By Anna Slatz February 5, 2024

The family at the center of a custody battle with Montana Child and Family Services over their 14-year-old “transgender” daughter is reportedly facing imminent arrest after speaking to media about their ordeal. Krista and Todd Kolstad had previously been ordered by a judge to remain silent on the case, but chose to speak out about their situation last week.

Reduxx was first to break the story after speaking to the Kolstads about their tragic situation on January 29. In the interview, the Kolstads revealed that their 14-year-old daughter, Jennifer*, had been removed from their custody after they declined to actively “affirm” her newfound gender identity. Montana Child and Family Services (CFS) argued to a court that it was in the child’s “therapeutic best interest” to have her gender identity “respected,” and a petition was presented for the child to be sent to a family member in Canada.

Stepmom Krista and “Jennifer” Kolstad. Photo Source: Provided.

The removal was the culmination of a months-long battle between the Kolstads and CFS which started on August 18, 2023, after Jennifer claimed to a friend that she was suicidal and suffering from terminal cancer. The friend reported the claims to police, who reached out to the Kolstads to confirm that Jennifer was alright.

Later on that evening, a CFS case worker arrived at the Kolstad home for an inspection and private interview with Jennifer, at which point the child declared she had drank toilet bowl cleaner and overdosed on pain medication.

Though she showed no symptoms of illness and had no access to either substances, Jennifer was taken to the hospital on an emergency basis for bloodwork, which conclusively determined she had fabricated her claim of overdosing. She also does not have a medical history of cancer despite having claimed to her friend that she was terminal.

The Kolstads attempted to inform CFS that Jennifer had a tendency of attention-seeking behavior and fabricating wild claims, but throughout the incident, Jennifer’s “gender identity” was the main point of contention. The child told CFS she identified as a “boy” named Leo, and that her parents were abusive and not willing to facilitate her gender transition.

Jennifer spent two days in the hospital for suicide monitoring, at which point the Kolstads agreed with CFS that she would benefit from being sent to a residential treatment facility for counseling. While there were a number of Montana-based facilities floated as options, the possibility of Jennifer being sent to Wyoming was also mentioned as an unlikely alternative.

The Kolstad family. Photo Source: Provided.

On August 22, the Kolstads were told that Jennifer was next in line for a bed in Billings. But, later on that same day, they received a call from the hospital informing them that she was instead being sent to an unnamed facility in Wyoming. Faced with a number of unanswered questions and a concern about Wyoming’s laws allowing children to transition, the Kolstads expressed a hesitancy to allow Jennifer to be sent across state lines.

Within 10 minutes of refusing to immediately sign paperwork releasing Jennifer to the facility, Montana Child and Family Services arrived at the Kolstad residence with police and served them with paperwork temporarily removing Jennifer from their custody.

Jennifer was eventually returned to Montana to enter a youth group home for additional counseling, but the Kolstad’s fight with CFS had only just begun.

Though initially told that Jennifer would be returned to their care after her time at the group home was finished, CFS petitioned the court to remove Jennifer from their custody completely and have her sent to her long-estranged biological mother in Canada.

“We were told that letting Jennifer transition and live as a boy was in her ‘therapeutic best interest’ and because we aren’t willing to follow that recommendation, the court gave CFS custody of Jennifer for six months,” Krista told Reduxx. “CFS is now going to place Jennifer in the care of her birth mother in Canada, who has never really been a part of her life. The judge said to us ‘you need to expect that reunification with your family may not be what you are expecting.’”

In response to the decision, the Kolstads released a video on social media pleading for help. The court demanded they remove it and issued a gag order restricting the Kolstads from speaking further on the case.

They voluntarily defied the order, re-uploaded the video, and spoke to press regardless out of concern over what was happening to their family. While a contempt of court hearing was set for January 29, the Kolstads had to file for a continuance in order to leave the state and attend to a severely ill family member in Ohio.

But the already-mind boggling story has only continued to grow in complexity after the Governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte, released a statement on X (formerly Twitter) siding with the decision of the state’s Child and Family Services.

While not directly accusing the Kolstads of abuse, Gianforte suggested that Jennifer was removed from the household for legitimate reasons.

While the CFS affidavit does extensively detail the child’s complaints of abuse for not being “affirmed” in her desire to live as a “boy,” the argument made by CFS that resulted in her being removed from her parent’s care was their hesitancy to immediately sign paperwork sending her to Wyoming.

Both the CFS affidavit and the accompanying report neglect to acknowledge that Jennifer had lied about having terminal cancer, drinking Clorox toilet cleaner, or overdosing on prescription medication — all statements that would lend weight to the parent’s initial warnings that Jennifer had a history of attention-seeking behavior.

The Montana Safety Assessment completed by CFS.

Previous accusations of household instability detailed in the CFS report from 2016 and 2017, both of which involved Todd’s ex-wife, were noted “unsubstantiated,” and there has never been any history of Todd nor Krista physically harming or otherwise neglecting any of their children’s care.

But despite the clear indications that the “abuse” in the Kolstad residence was limited to not affirming Jennifer’s “gender identity” and expressing a hesitancy to sign paperwork allowing Jennifer to go to Wyoming, a push to paint the Kolstad’s as legitimately abusive has begun in an apparent effort to justify CFS’s actions. Disturbingly, many of those pushes appear to originate directly from the Governor’s office.

Travis Hall, Governor Gianforte’s senior advisor, has shared two posts to his social media account in which it is implied that the Kolstads were severely abusing Jennifer.

In one post shared by Hall, a user claims that even children living in “absolute filth, meth labs, with both parents being dealers and addicts” were not taken away from their parents in the way Jennifer was, implying what was happening in the household was far worse.

Another post shared by Hall features a link to an article from TownHall reporter Stephen Brown which appears to have been created with the input of the Governor’s office. In the article, Brown refers to Jennifer with “they/them” pronouns, and runs defense for Gianforte’s suggestion that the Kolstads were abusing Jennifer and that CFS acted appropriately.

On X, an individual claiming to be a lawyer who works to “protect trans kids” in Montana has been spreading the false accusation that Todd Kolstad, Jennifer’s father, was “convicted” of domestic abuse. In actuality, documents reviewed by Reduxx demonstrate the charges, which were unrelated to Jennifer, were dropped in 2021. The Kolstads are currently engaged in a lawsuit against the Glasgow Police Department for their alleged mismanagement of that case, and the officer at the center of the suit is also being pursued by other Glasgow residents for similar acts of misconduct.

But while the Kolstads have experienced an outpouring of support on an international level after taking their story public, Governor Gianforte appears to be doubling down once again.

This time, the Kolstads have been made aware through their lawyer that they may be arrested when they return to Montana from Ohio where they are still caring for a sick relative.

“We were very concerned, but not surprised, to learn from a credible source that the Governor of Montana plans to arrest us the moment we step foot back in Montana. We are also told that he has tasked his senior adviser and director of strategic communications to use the media to punish us for speaking out about the state’s medical kidnapping of our daughter,” Krista Kolstad said to Reduxx in an exclusive statement.

“It was an abuse of power for the state to revoke custody of our daughter because we wouldn’t affirm her ‘gender identity.’ It is an abuse of power to use tax-dollars to smear us as negligent in the press despite records that prove we have always proactively sought care for our daughter’s ongoing, unrelated mental health issues. We have also followed medical recommendations pertaining to these issues since she has been in state custody. The only thing we ever objected to is ‘transitioning’ our daughter.”

Krista continued: “Any accusation that she was taken from our home due to abuse or neglect secondary to this issue is a bald-faced lie with political foundations. Our daughter is not a political pawn. She is a child and she should be with her family – not the state. We are never going to stop fighting for our daughter.”

Since receiving the news of their possible arrest, the Kolstads have no plan to return to Montana at this time.

Mattie Watkins, the family’s media representative reiterated Krista’s sentiments, and slammed Gianforte’s office for participating in the “smear” campaign against the Kolstads.

“We anticipated Governor Gianforte’s next move would be to smear US Air Force veteran, Todd Kolstad and his wife, Krista, as abusive parents. It’s clear that his top priority is his political reputation – not the child at the center of this increasingly political fight,” Watkins said.

“Surely to defame parents as abusive, to take away their child, requires some standard of evidence. If not, where does this stop? Which family, in which state, is next? In my opinion, Gianforte is giving state agents a manual on how to sever the parent-child relationship and bypass all levels of law and government in order to put any minor they like on the affirmation to lifelong medicalization pipeline. Our children are not safe in government care.”

*The child’s name has been changed at the request of her parents.

[girl4music]

I thoroughly believe that the main 2 issues plaguing the TV art/entertainment industry today are representation anxiety and cancellation anxiety.

Representation anxiety is the reason why the quality of the storytelling is suffering.

Cancellation anxiety is the reason why the quality of the production is suffering.

ANXIETY is what is ruining TV show storytelling and producing in general. If people were less anxious about the way the story in a show should or has to go, there would be more focus on what actually matters.

There are so many storytelling and production issues in a show because people are not focussing on the overall experience when creating/watching a TV show. Showrunners/creators are not focussing on it because they’re too anxious about providing the “correct” or “best” or “most palatable” representation because if they don’t provide it, their show will just get cancelled.

Honestly imagine the extreme anxiety a showrunner/creator would feel in this day and age of showmaking.

It is a never-ending loop for them of “I must provide the representation that appeases both the audience and the network alike” and then “if I don’t do this as soon as possible, my show will be cancelled and everybody that depends on me will lose their jobs”.

Show disappoints the network, gets cancelled - which in turn disappoints the audience, stops them from watching anything else like it in case it happens to them again - which then makes the network misjudge it as “this kind of content must not be engaging enough for consumers to invest themselves in” but they throw it out for consumption anyway because quantity over quality even though they’re ultimately going to axe it regardless because “it doesn’t sell.”

And then the whole thing happens all over again. 😩

Sounds to me like they should just have better communication with the showrunners/creators and more faith and trust in what they’re able to deliver.

And maybe once in a while CONSULT THE AUDIENCE themselves. Make them apart of the conversation more than with just the standard lazy feedback questionnaires. I’m pretty fucking sure were a BIG WIG network executive to actually take the time out of their oh so busy work week to talk to us about what it is we want and what we don’t - things would be better for all sides. For the networks, the showrunners/creators+team, and for the customers/consumers.

At the end of the day the people I really feel sorry for regarding this is not us. It’s the showrunners/creators.

I feel so sorry for the producers, writers and directors because I know they’re all running rings around themselves trying to please every fucking body and every complaint from either side goes right to them.

They’re the mimimim wage staff at your favourite restaurant where customers and employers alike yell at them over something they’re personally pissed about but they can’t do anything about it other than offer their sympathies and provide other alternatives.

You think we have it rough as the viewers.

The network thinks they have it rough.

No.

Who has it rough are the showrunners/creators.

[researchers-me]

Customer Satisfaction Survey | Consumer Insights Research in UAE

Want to conduct Customer Satisfaction Surveys or consumer insights research? Boost your customer experience, happiness & loyalty with Researchers in Dubai, Abu Dhabi.

[asalescommunity]

If CBA from a city of Warsaw was led by a government from the city of Warsaw to do a theft from a private sector, and from a public sector in a country where A Council does function in a correct manner, the government can be fined.

CBA can be proven to represent an interest of a criminal gang.

An author Piotr Sienkiewicz

+48 721 951 799

[algoworks]

What is Branding?

By building and defining a brand in consumers' perceptions, branding is the process of imparting a meaning to a certain organisation, company, products, or services. By defining what this specific brand is and is not, businesses can help people immediately recognise and experience their brand and offer them a reason to prefer their products over those of the competition.

“Branding is endowing products and services with the power of a brand”

[globalcourant]

NM city, victim of government burn, now faces water shortage

NM city, victim of government burn, now faces water shortage

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, buzzing chainsaws interrupt the serenity. Crews are hustling to remove charred trees and other debris that have been washing down the mountainsides in the wake of the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history, choking rivers and streams. Heavy equipment operators are moving boulders dislodged by the daily torrential summer rains…

[articlesminer]

Union vote to wrap up at Trader Joe's store in Massachusetts

Union vote to wrap up at Trader Joe’s store in Massachusetts

Labor organizers at a Trader Joe’s store in Massachusetts will find out Thursday if there is enough support among employees to form the chain’s first union. About 80 workers at the store in Hadley were expected to cast ballots over two days, said Maeg Yosef, a union organizer who has worked at Trader Joe’s for 18 years. The workers are organizing under the name Trader Joe’s United, which if…

[don-lichterman]

Turning up heat, US targets Nicaraguan sugar imports | Business News

Turning up heat, US targets Nicaraguan sugar imports | Business News

If you know of local business openings or closings, please notify us here. PREVIOUS OPENINGS AND CLOSINGS · Jimmy’s Barbershop in Allentown has moved to 822 N. 19th Street · Air Products and Chemicals Inc.’s chosen warehouse developer, Prologis Inc., will have to wait until July 13 for a final decision by Upper Macungie Township’s zoning hearing board on 2.61 million square feet of warehouses.  ·…

[sindoshipping]

How To Ship Branded Goods With SindoShipping to Indonesia

Why shipping branded luxury goods to Indonesia difficult and expensive? Shipping branded luxury goods to Indonesia presents a series of challenges that make the process both difficult and expensive. Understanding the dynamics at play requires a look into various aspects such as the market landscape, logistical reach, prevailing trends, and the broader impact on the world market and general…

[fbiinspectiontechnology]

[petnews2day]

Introducing Els Pet Self-Cleaning Cat Litter Box with Safety Door, Taking Care of the Dirty Work for You

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/hjajA

Introducing Els Pet Self-Cleaning Cat Litter Box with Safety Door, Taking Care of the Dirty Work for You

SHERIDAN, Wyo., March 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Taking care of our furry pals brings joy, but dealing with litter boxes can be a hassle. Traditional ones need manual scooping, lead to unpleasant odors, and constant cleaning. Recently, ELS PET launches Self-Cleaning Litter Box, which changes the game. No more scooping by hand – it does […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/hjajA #CatsNews #AnimalsPets, #ConsumerCosmetics, #ElsPet, #Household, #HouseholdProducts, #NewProductsServices, #Retail

[head-post]

EU agreed new law giving consumers right to repair products

Under a new legislation passed on Friday (February 2), European consumers will have the right to repair common household appliances, including mobile phones, with EU countries obliged to develop schemes to increase repair rates, according to Euractiv.

The European Commission proposed a new law in 2023 to give consumers the right to have their devices repaired even long after the warranty has expired. Parliament and EU countries will only be required to approve the agreement. Alexia Bertrand, the Belgian consumer protection state secretary, stated:

With the agreement reached today, Europe makes a clear choice for repair instead of disposal.

Read more HERE

[chloedecker0]

Maximizing Retail Profits: Harnessing B2B Price Optimization Software

In the ever-evolving world of retail and e-commerce, businesses are constantly seeking ways to gain a competitive edge. Among the many strategies employed, B2B Price Optimization and Management Software stands out as a game-changer. Price optimisation and management (PO&M) software solutions enable businesses to oversee and optimize the prices of their goods and services. These services also provide a growing range of sales intelligence advice, such as best-next-action suggestions and customer churn warnings. In the industry, vendors either focus on back-office price management and product management roles, or they focus on providing real-time sales intelligence to sales representatives and B2B digital commerce websites, or both. Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, a leading global advisory and consulting firm, has recognized the significance of this technology in their report, “B2B Price Optimization and Management Applications, 2023”. Quadrant Knowledge Solutions focuses on helping clients in achieving business transformation goals with Strategic Business, and Growth Advisory Services. 

Download the sample report of Market Share: B2B Price Optimization and Management Software

Understanding the Retail and E-commerce Landscape 

The retail and e-commerce industry is a highly dynamic and competitive space. Companies within this domain face the continuous challenge of pricing their products right to maximize profitability while staying attractive to their customers. In this context, pricing becomes a critical element of their strategy. Let's delve into some of these challenges: 

Rapidly Changing Market Dynamics: Retail and e-commerce markets are highly volatile, with ever-shifting consumer preferences and market trends. Adapting to these changes in real-time is essential to stay competitive. Without the right tools, businesses risk making pricing decisions that are out of sync with market realities. 

Intense Competition: In retail and e-commerce, competition is fierce. With numerous players offering similar products or services, pricing becomes a key differentiator. Setting prices too high can drive customers away, while pricing too low can erode profit margins. 

Complex Supply Chain and Cost Structures: The retail and e-commerce sector often deals with complex supply chain operations and cost structures. Understanding the true costs associated with a product or service is essential for setting optimal prices. Traditional methods of cost calculation can be time-consuming and error-prone. 

Customer Behaviour and Expectations: Today's consumers are more informed and price-sensitive than ever before. Their buying behaviour can change rapidly in response to various factors, including promotions, discounts, and market trends. Retailers must be agile in responding to these changes. 

Competitor Pricing Strategies: Keeping a constant eye on competitor pricing is crucial. Businesses need to respond promptly to pricing moves made by competitors to remain competitive. Manual tracking and analysis of competitor pricing are arduous and inefficient processes. 

Download the sample report of Market Forecast: B2B Price Optimization and Management Software

B2B Price Optimization and Management Software: A Necessity 

B2B Price Optimization and Management Software is the solution to these challenges. This technology leverages advanced algorithms, data analytics, and real-time market insights to help businesses make data-driven pricing decisions. It empowers retail and e-commerce companies to optimize their prices efficiently while taking into account factors like demand fluctuations, competitor pricing, and customer behaviour.

Talk To Analyst: https://quadrant-solutions.com/talk-to-analyst